Train Your Lizard Brain | Building Resilience (4 of 5)

This is the third episode of a five part miniseries on Building Resilience, you can find episode one here. Your First Sales Meeting Do you remember the first sales call you ever went on? I remember mine, it was terrifying. I was selling advertising to a carpet company, and I just remember sitting down with the store owner: I nearly had a heart attack. I sweat through my shirt. I'm guessing it was just absolutely painful to witness. And it wasn't that I wasn't trained. I knew the script, I had my materials with me, but something about it just... it was terrible. What's the most dangerous or scary thing you do? I'm guessing it's not something all that dangerous. It's certainly not defending your village from a neighboring village who's coming to kill everyone. I'm guessing you don't run from wild animals trying to kill you very often, but biologically, we still have all the systems necessary to facilitate those activities. We have this body brain mixture  that allows us to survive in those situations. I've heard it called unconscious bias and a bunch of other things, but I like the lizard brain.   You and Your Lizard Brain That lizard brain is where our unconscious biases live. It's that part of your brain that  has applications running so that when you walk up to an elevator, you don't like freak out and have to figure out how to use it. It's just processing, always in the background.  It's how we get through the day.It's how you decide if you like a person or not. It's how you figure out if it's safe to be where you are, or if something that you're going to eat is going to kill you.  I don't think we could survive as humans without that kind of lizard brain, but it does also screw up a lot of stuff in the modern world.This part of our brain is where racism lives. It's the part of our brain that makes stupid financial decisions. It's how we get taken advantage of when you go to carnivals and you can't do the actual calculation of how likely you are to get the fricking ring over the bottle to win the prizeThis part of your brain is what spam messages were invented to exploit. This is why we have so many cybersecurity problems in this country. Or I guess in this world are frigging everywhere right now. There's a great book called Thinking Fast and S low another fantastic read if you get the chance. This is the fast part of our brain, that thinks very quickly and processes a ton of information. But also makes a lot of mistakes.  Your Lizard Brain Thinks You're in Danger  So chances are the scariest thing you actually do in real life is a sales meeting. You've got to talk to strangers, you're in an unfamiliar location. You have to ask that stranger for money. And if you don't get that money, your brain, at least your lizard brain is thinking I might lose my job. And maybe my spouse will leave me, and maybe I'll get evicted or I'll lose the place where I live. I guess maybe I have to live in a national force somewhere in caves for the rest of my life, which is probably going to be short life because I'm going to get sick and die. And everyone that I know in love will starve to death. Maybe. Of course this is stupid. You know (in your conscious mind) that this isn't real, but your lizard brain does not care what your conscious mind says. It's got its own thing going. And then you add adrenaline to that and you've got a real problem. You can't think. You can't talk, and your lizard brain thinks you're going to die. Thinks you're being attacked by lions or your villages burning to the ground. It's the scariest thing that's happened to you all day, maybe all year.  You Need Some Dynamic Range It's possible to give your lizard brain a greater range to work with and to redefine in a very tactile and physical way, that a sales meeting is not a life or death situation. And the way we do that is by introducing a little bit of actual life and death.Now hear me. I'm not saying you should become a superhero o...