Escaping the Present-Day Saber Tooth Tiger

I know you are probably thinking I’ve lost the plot or I’m time tripping.  There are no present-day saber tooth tigers, you exclaim!

Well, it’s true.  There are no physical present-day saber tooth tigers but there are loads of figurative present-day saber tooth tigers.  Our minds do not find any difference between physical and psychological or social threats.  There is the same “threat” response in the brain.

Our present-day saber tooth tigers are all those psychological and social threats that happen during your every-day life.  A threat can be anything that was not planned or predicted.

A few examples

• A scheduling diary malfunction with one of your best customers
• You’re not invited to an important business meeting and no explanation is provided
• You’re worried about your financial situation
• The teacher tells you that your child is not coping at school
• You perceive that you are not fitting into your social group because you don’t have everything they appear to have in their lives.
• Your computer crashes and you have an important deadline in 2 hours

It would be unfortunate if all of these happened in a day.  Phew!!

I’m sure you could easily write your own daily list.

Also, for women with children and careers, you have the added threats from your biological imperative to ensure your children survive and thrive.

Further, last week, I challenged you to be self-leaders with a “be-nice” filter.  The threats are mounting, and the stress levels are going up and up.  I hear you.

So, how do we escape the present-day saber tooth tiger?  My answer is “not easily”.

With the ancient saber tooth tiger, we probably survived by being physically fit and running and climbing the nearest tree.  For the present-day tiger, many of the situations I described, you probably would like to run and hide in a tree but unfortunately it is not an option.

Our present-day saber tooth tiger requires us to be mentally and emotionally fit as well as physically fit so that we can deal with the psychological and social threats without running away or worse not controlling our emotions and committing social suicide.

The latest developed part of our brain, our pre-frontal cortex is tiny.  Three (3) business cards thick, in fact.  It is expected to perform our executive functions of

• Differentiating among conflicting thoughts,
• Determining good and bad, better and best, same and different,
• Understanding the future consequences of current activities,
• Working towards our defined future goals,
• Predicting outcomes and expectations from our current actions, and
• Controlling our emotions so that we fit into our social group

Neuroscientists are working to understand how we can be mentally fit.  They do know some techniques which I’m going to share with you in this article and over the next few weeks.

The first of these is called “The Healthy Mind Platter” which is from a Neuroleadership Journal by David Rock, Daniel J Siegel, Steven A.Y. Poelmans and Jessica Payne.

The platter consists of – Sleep Time, Physical Time, Focus Time, Time In, Down Time, Play Time and Connecting Time.  I will address each of these over the next few weeks.

This week I wanted to start with forgiveness and, in particular, forgiveness of ourselves.

The reason I wanted to start here is because we are our own harshest critics.  Also, the images fed to us each day from social and mainstream media create these expectations that can feed our own threat responses.

In 2003, psychologist Kristin D Neff, published an academic paper about self-compassion.  This is now seen as a wonderful tool to help with being mentally and emotionally resilient.

At its most basic level, self-compassion is about treating yourself with the same kindness and understanding that you would a friend.  Developing self-compassion allows you to recognise and accept your own feelings rather than constantly challenging yourself that you are not good enough and you just need to “do better”. 

Neff discerned three indispensable elements of self-compassion:

1. Kindness to yourself in difficult situations,
2. Paying attention to your suffering in a mindful, non-obsessive way, and
3. Recognising that your suffering is part of our common human experience ie realising you are not alone.

I would also recommend that you find a good venting partner that you can share your frustrations and voice your own self-compassion.  A good venting partner is preferably not your life partner.  They need to be someone that you can share your secrets and they will hold them sacred as well as be empathetic to your personal situation.

We know from the neuroscience that voicing our emotions calms our limbic system threat response.

For the men reading this newsletter please note you are included in this recommendation.

So, I know I challenged you over the last couple of weeks.  Today and over the next few weeks, I will share some of the current neuroscience and my own wisdom that will help you take up these challenges with your usual gusto. 

I’m hoping these techniques will help you to maybe escape your present-day saber tooth tiger and if not, I hope you remember to forgive yourself.  There is always another day.

Remember all of this and much, much more is provided in my Women’s Empowerment and Leadership Program.  The next program is on 5th and 6th April.