Brain, an amazingly powerful tool for peak performance

Brain constitutes an amazingly powerful tool for peak performance. It is even established by research in the neuroscience sector.?Advancements in the neuroscience sector are enabling insights into the brain like never before. There are personalities prominent in the field who assert it.

These are neuroscientist Friederike Fabritius, and Hans Hagemann who is a co-founder of the Munich Leadership Group. They combine science with management consulting to discover techniques for peak performance which actually work, in their book?The Leading Brain: Powerful Science-Based Strategies for Achieving Peak Performance.

In this article, we cite the World Economic Forum[WEF]’s article [https://www.weforum.org ] titled “How you can achieve peak brain performance, according to science”, among others. In 2017 Hagemann joined the Knowledge@Wharton show on?SiriusXM channel 111 , to discuss science-based strategies for peak performance. The WEF’s article was processed out of the interview which contains five takeaways. We have chosen to expound on the 1st takeaway. But we will also briefly address 3 other takeaways from the interview.

1st takeaway lesson- “regulating your negative emotions is critical to peak performance. When you try to inhibit negative emotions that you feel — anger, frustration, disappointment — in the workplace, rational and emotional systems in you compete with each other. When your brain is busy trying to tamp down negative feelings, you become too distracted to perform well. Two systems in your brain are competing. That leads to not being focused on anything anymore. To regain cognitive control, recognize and ‘label’ how you feel,” Hagemann [ Hans Hagemann ] said.

Besides anger, frustration, and disappointment, some other negative emotions involve jealousy, hatred, unhappiness, depression, sorrow and grudge. As affirmed by Hagemann, attempting to repress or just stifle these emotions hampers the extent of your performance. Yet, these negative emotions don’t only hinder your performance but also negatively affect your mood when you don’t appropriately handle them.

First of all, emotions are extremely powerful. Emotions attract corresponding feelings. If you are delighted, you will feel this emotion of delight within you. If you are angered, you will experience this emotion of anger within you.

Emotions and feelings contribute for you to behave or act in a certain way either consciously or subconsciously, and even unconsciously. If you feel delighted, it will be visible on you. Yes, we agree that you can attempt to conceal it. But there will be some subconscious or unconscious signs on you which will motivate it to leak, so that other people around you will notice it. It’s the same case when you’re angry. Of course, there are emotions easily concealable like jealousy. But again with time, people will be able to observe it on you.

Brain [a tangible body organ as represented by the Unsplash picture on the left] is closely connected with emotions and feelings. It's generally agreed that the mind [seat of emotions and feelings] exists in brain, though there are people who deny it. In fact, it’s actually unquestionable that when you feel an emotion, you will do a corresponding act. Happy people will perform acts inspired by that happiness. For instance, for you to be promoted in your employer organization, it’s because you have accomplished a certain thing which has delighted your boss. Your boss feels this in their heart to the extent that they also feel compelled to reward you with the promotion.

My own case

I remember I granted a cow to a friend of mine while I was still at secondary school specifically in the 6th form [final year]. There is a very important service that this guy delivered me and two other colleagues, free of charge during the final year. This positively and overwhelmingly touched my heart that I nourished the feeling impelling me to react. In fact, I was intensely excited with it, and unable to contain it. I was then forced to tell him “When an opportunity presents itself to me, I will give you a cow.” In the Rwandan culture, cow-giving constitutes a great sign of pact of friendship. Its strength may be decreasing, because of different circumstances including the evolution of culture. But I can vehemently argue that cow-giving in Rwanda still remains highly valid and robust indication of intimate friendship.

My heart forced me to express the promise, but I didn’t actually know how this could come true. First, I was still studying and I didn’t even know whether I could get a job or other opportunities which could enable me to fulfill the promise. I didn’t even think that I could be unable to accomplish it, even if I could obtain the opportunities. You can secure opportunities which can allow you to do something, but there can also be other circumstances which can prevent you from realizing it. But I didn’t then provide room for that thinking, though I wasn’t unaware that such circumstances would also arise. The emotion and feeling were then too strong for me to resist and think that I would fail to deliver my engagement.

There are people who have laughed at it, thinking I will never accomplish and that I have just been motivated by the emotion and feeling. However, I was really serious. Of course, the thought of these people who have doubted it was somehow logical. They believed that it could take such a long period of time for me to fulfill the promise. In their mind, this long period could cause me to forget or ignore it. I made the promise in 2001, and fulfilled it on 28th July 2012.

The truth is that it took a long period of time. I completed my secondary studies in 2002. But I didn’t immediately go to university. I was admitted to the former National University of Rwanda in 2007 and graduated on 27th January2012. I obtained a job on 17th 2012 from Search For Common Ground I served till 2020. The promise I’d formulated remained so intense in me that I’d sworn that it would feature among my key priorities as soon as I got a stable job. That’s why I assured that I gave him his cow while I’d not even spent a year since I obtained the job. He organized a big celebration ceremony. He invited his relatives, and friends and I equally invited mine and we considerably celebrated this big event at his home.

That was an instance to prove how amazingly strong emotions and feelings are. I am perfectly convinced you also have your own similar examples or situations both on you and your acquaintances.

Impact of negative emotions on performance and mood and better way to handle them

At the very beginning, I have highlighted that negative emotions don’t only hinder your performance but also negatively affect your mood when you don’t appropriately handle them. Hagemann points out that regulating your negative emotions is critical to peak performance, and that inhibiting the negative emotions that you feel, rational and emotional systems in you compete with each other. Hagemann recommends you to recognize and ‘label’ how you feel, to regain cognitive control, instead of suppressing your emotions and feelings.

To understand this recommendation, let’s us use the example of a situation which has happened between the Russia President, Vladmir Vladmirovich Putin, and a rat. According to cite G Zero [https://www.gzeromedia.com ], the way Vladimir Putin?tells ?it, one of his great teachers in life was a rat.

Business Insider [ https://www.businessinsider.com ] says that Putin revealed this information in a book of interviews published when he first became Russia's president in 2000. This media organization underlines that this represents a story of Putin’s early scares, “A rat he had cornered had nowhere to go and jumped out at him.”

New York Post [ https://nypost.com ] sheds more light on the story. It says that, as a youngster growing up in the 1960s, Putin was living with his family in a communal apartment in what was then Leningrad. “Several other families, including Putin’s, shared these living quarters, with no bath, often no hot water and a stinking toilet. To get to his apartment?on the fifth floor, young Putin had to run up the flight of stairs, infested by hungry rats. Armed with a stick, Putin at first fended off the filthy creatures and ran away from them, before he eventually decided to observe their behavior.”

“Putin spent hours studying these hordes of rats. Once, as?he revealed in his official autobiography?“First Person ,” a “huge rat” he chased into a corner with a stick had nowhere else to go, so it turned around and attacked him. That frightened the future spymaster, and he was lucky to run away fast enough to elude his adversary.”

G Zero echoes, stating “As a boy in Leningrad, he once chased a particularly fat one down the hallway of his apartment building. Cornered, the squealing creature turned on young Putin and tried to bite him. Terrified, the boy fled into his parents’ apartment, slamming the door in the rat’s face. The lesson, Putin recalls, was clear: never put someone’s back against the wall?— because you don’t know what they’ll do when desperate.”

As regard to emotions and feelings, let’s consider them a cornered rat. In fact, Putin then possessed two possibilities before him. The first one was to kill the rat. This was impossible for him. The 2nd one was to flee the rat and let it escape; which he really did. With regard to emotions and feelings, we have no possibility to kill them. We only have to let them go.

For us to permit the emotions and feelings run away, without leaving us big negative consequences, we need to be consciously aware of them. This matches Hagemann’ s advice “To regain cognitive control, recognize and ‘label’ how you feel.” If you feel the emotion, don’t wrestle with it, trying to control or strangle, repress it. Instead take time, to be aware of how you are feeling because of the emotion. If you’re angry and that you really are conscious of it, you will feel the urge pushing or requesting you to take action. For example, it will encourage you to fight with a person who has angered you, or conduct another negative action against them. Or, it will advise you not to suddenly react but keep it in your heart, so that you can retaliate at the proper future moment.

It’s this awareness that will allow you to deal successfully with this emotion and subsequent feeling as well as corresponding behavior or urge. Otherwise, responding negatto negative emotion and feeling-driven urge is destructive. It can cause you to commit a scandalous situation. For example, there is a professional psychologist who has told me that who told me she was once so uncontrollably angry that she beat another person severely. “I have regretted it ??excessively, but I can’t be defeated by such emotions to that degree anymore.” The reason she won’t repeat it is that she has learned to be emotion-conscious. Before, she found herself beat the person under the unconscious urge. This represents a typical example demonstrating how negative emotions hamper a person’s mood, when they don’t know how to properly manage them.

The proper management of negative emotions doesn’t consist in suffocating them but recognizing them, as a way to let them disappear. When you try to regulate them, you create the similar situation of Putin versus rat. The emotions and feelings being subdued will attempt to defend themselves. That’s why emotional and rational systems will compete, as Hagemann suggests it. But, taking time to explore how they are currently affecting you will enable you to prepare the favorable environment for them to leave. I’ve always employed this technique/exercise while I’m experience a negative emotion or stressful situation. At the initial stage of the exercise, invaded by a negative emotion like extreme unhappiness, I was instantly interested to be aware of how I was feeling.

I most of the time felt a headache, when this emotion happened in me. So, instead of rushing to struggle against the emotion, I’ve learned to pass time to feel all negative effects of the emotion, including the headache, on me. As I was experiencing this situation, I felt a certain burden being removed from me to the ground. Currently, when a negative emotion comes to my mind, I go through this journey of experiencing how I am feeling. Then, it fades away. It’s the same even while I’m feeling pain on a certain part of the body. I don’t perform any efforts to curb the pain. I instead attempt to feel it. It also dissipates gradually.

3 of Hagemann’s takeaways

2nd takeaway lesson- “Peak performance is not about entering a stress state.?Peak performance means that you find the environment that gets you in a position, and in a situation, where you can really perform at your best,” Hagemann said. “We don’t have the idea of a stressed out top performer. Instead, the peak performer is someone whose emotions are under control and as such they can think optimally. We are talking about an easygoing situation where you feel that everything is easy for you to do. The best possible situation in this context is experiencing flow, where everything seems to go very smoothly and you are very creative and everything is coming to your mind easily”.

3rd takeaway lesson- “Lean towards rewards, not threats.?Every company has a “reward” circle and a “threat” circle. In a “threat” state, you get a rush of cortisol in your bloodstream. That makes your muscles stronger, but it can cut off your cognitive thinking if it is strong enough,” Hagemann said. “In “reward” circles, people feel good and perform better. Creating a climate of appreciation in companies is the best thing you can do,” he said. This is very strongly supported by the research that Google did recently.”

4th takeaway lesson- “Create a psychologically safe workplace. “In the end, there is one thing that determines the highest performance, and that is psychological safety,” Hagemann said. “If the team knows it is psychologically safe — which [includes] the reward cycle, the climate of appreciation, being respected and accepted — there is a high predictability for high performance.”

In a few words, peak performance will emanate from positive mind, not negative or stressed mind. The positive mind suggests optimistic mind. That’s why the most successful people are those who have optimistic mindset. Optimism about an aspect will inspire you to develop positive mind on that aspect. This corresponds to what Hagemann states in the words “The peak performer is someone whose emotions are under control and as such they can think optimally. We are talking about an easygoing situation where you feel that everything is easy for you to do. The best possible situation in this context is experiencing flow, where everything seems to go very smoothly and you are very creative and everything is coming to your mind easily.” An optimistic person won’t panic. They will instead merely hope that things will go perfectly. That’s why you’re advised to help your mind return to the normal situation, when it is overwhelmed by a negative emotion.

It’s for the same purpose that organizations are recommended to establish the psychologically safe and rewarding environment, to ensure the staff enjoy the positive mind.

By Jean Baptiste Ndabananiye

ADEPE Deputy-Program Manager, with a demonstrated history/experience of women's empowerment, project/program management, peace-building/conflict transformation, training, public awareness campaigns, governance and budget transparency, advocacy, documentation, the broadcast media industry, and community justice, among others. He is skilled in English and French, Project& Program Management, Media Production, Peace-building, Leadership, Advocacy, and Kinyarwanda- English-French Translation, among others. Strong management, media and communication professional with a Bachelor's and Master's focused in Journalism& Communication and MBA-Project Management respectively from University of Rwanda and Mount Kenya University.