Have you ever felt like the big fish in a small pond? Or been involved in a job you viewed as “below you?” Perhaps this resulted in your having a hard time concentrating, even on simple things, your overall job performance nose-diving. Indeed all you had to do is think about your job anywhere anytime, and you would lose focus.
Or perhaps you know someone who laughs at the most inappropriate moments. He just can’t help it. Once he even told a joke at a wake. The problem was, he was the only person laughing. In his own words, he is “addicted” to telling jokes. For him, jokes are like some potent elixir that takes the edge off. So regardless of the situation, he is prone to relieve his stress with inappropriate humor. And because it works, he craves this kind of relief often.
Perhaps you know someone who will just sit there with smoke coming out of her ears, all stressed out yet not wanting at any cost to discuss the reason for her anxiety.
On the other hand, you and I know exactly what music makes us feel good and we know exactly when it is needed. It feels like good medicine, and in the world of recreational neuroscience, it may very well be.
One of the possibilities for the way we attend to things in each of these scenarios is blood chemistry. Accompanying every mood, frustration, and emotion you feel is the discharge of specific chemicals into your bloodstream. And in just milliseconds, these self-produced brain drugs can hijack our attentional mechanism—sometimes deploying us to destinations not always in our best interests. We can, however, train putting our attention on the affects of these chemicals—which are an integral part of us—and thus have a better chance at identifying root causes behind many of our feelings and actions, particularly ones we would like to modify.
By listening to your body’s chemistry, you can bring into your field of attention patterns of physiology that signal specific thoughts, feelings, and actions. For example, research shows that testosterone high men and women perform below their ability in jobs they perceive as “low-status,” while those of us high on cortisol may find ourselves choking up when it comes to conflict resolution. And opioids released into the blood when we listen to our favorite songs can make us quiver with pleasure.
Just knowing, for example, that the release of a certain hormone into the bloodstream may last up to 10 minutes tells me I will be “under the influence,” so to speak, for a certain period of time, and helps me to better gauge what to do next. Putting my attention on this information in turn helps me better select actions that are more in synch with my imminent goals. But what do you listen for?
You are more likely to feel the peripheral effects of hormones. With adrenaline, you may feel cardiovascular effects such as an increase in heart rate, ventilation, stress and so on. If after a rewarding situation, your feel euphoric, it’s likely that dopamine has been released.
Additionally, our ability to compensate for what we expect will happen to us plays in. Such was the case in a research experiment in which drivers were given a dose of marijuana and then put through a driver’s test. Those who had no idea what to expect experienced impaired driving, some experienced no effect on their driving at all, and others drove better. These last two groups knew what to expect and as a result were able to compensate.
In terms of basic everyday living, what’s important is that you can begin to match patterns of behavior with certain physiology. This information will help you better attend to choices you make, regarding both yourself and others.
Everyday life is full of examples. If every time you go into a conference meeting you begin to feel a cascade of hormones making you aggressive and argumentative, putting your attention on this behavioral pattern and thinking about how to compensate for it prior to your next meeting might help you orchestrate more successful actions in the future.
Good attention is controlled attention guided by good choices. You can better regulate and enhance your choices by studying your habits and editing where needed. Practicing new proactive behaviors in advance via visualizations (see my blog: Train Your Attention: Two Easy Strategies to Get You Started) or in real time daily affairs, will help make them virtually automatic. This can give you more cognitive power for other things. Just be careful what you train because you’ll do it better and faster next time.
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For more on the effects of testosterone, take a look at a very inspiring study titled, “Testosterone, Cognition, and Status,” by Dr. Robert Josephs and colleagues, University of Texas, (Austin).
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