When stressed, you cannot distinguish what’s important from what’s unimportant. You act irrationally, without deliberation, but you don’t actually notice that yourself. On the contrary, shocking research on doctors’ mistakes in hospitals have shown that in this state of overwhelm you are more convinced than ever that you’re right.
What’s right in front of your eyes, suddenly is in your blind spot: You don’t see it. This happens a lot in organisations. It leads to eroding trust in leaders and cynicism amongst those at the receiving end of their leadership. And it leads to overwhelm and in the long run to burnout as bad decisions create a downward spiral.
Let’s first look at what actually happens in the brain, and then at what to do in order to avoid the trap.
10 million bits of data per second
Your conscious attention comes with a severely limited bandwidth. While your system is bombarded by about 10 million bits of data per second, your conscious attention can only process 50 bits of data. That’s less than 99.9995%
That’s where the salience network comes in. The function of the salience network is to determine what is important, in other words to decide what 50 bits make it to your conscious mind.
It’s a key player behind the brilliant ability to put your attention to what matters rather than letting yourself be distracted and going down rabbit holes.
Test your capacity for attention
Remember the Gorilla experiment? It blew my mind back in the day, and you can do it yourself in just 90 seconds here.
Wow, right? Still blows my mind.
How stress wrecks with your basic brain functions
During stress, the salience network stops working. That’s when our subconscious mind takes over and looks out for everything that confirms our (limiting) beliefs about ourselves and the world. And ignores all contradicting evidence!
And depending on your subconscious belief system, this can make you overlook what’s right in front of you:
- The novel solution to your problem
- The helping hand of a colleague
- The opportunity you’ve been waiting for.
Recovery and Bounce Back
In times of constant stress, it’s crucial to find down-time, like
- A good night’s sleep
- Meditation
- Staring a hole into the wall.
During down-time, information settles, and gets reorganised. Dots suddenly get connected, and truly important things find their way into your conscious mind, without you doing anything.
You might still believe that you have no time for down-time. And I get it. We coach many leaders who experience the world just like you: always on, because you are needed all of the time. A long demanding day, followed by a night of fitful sleep.
Time to invest in yourself
In coaching, you can find your own way to create the necessary boundaries to refresh your mind regularly so that you can keep making good decisions, stay healthy and energised, and be happy with yourself and your life.
Reach out for a complimentary chemistry session if now is the time to create boundaries, make better explore your patterns, beliefs, and desires.
