On Lizards & Lions

This is the transcript of a talk I gave to Northampton School For Girls on International Women's Day. It was a 30 minute talk, so for that reason is longer than my usual posts! Before I began I asked each of them to write down the positive things that made them unique. Their core values, strengths, abilities, personality traits. (I also talked a bit about the business I work for. Because this is a personal blog I've taken that part out.)

So. What am I going to talk to you about?  I was going to talk to you about International Women’s Day. I was going to talk about how today should have been my birthday, which would have made my feminist mother proud, except I came two days early instead. I could have talked about how that was a good metaphor for my impatience and the ways in which we can unwittingly confound our parents’ expectations.

I was going to talk to you about all the things that my mother’s generation achieved for women, and all the things we still need to achieve for women. About female presidential candidates, female jedis and female executives. But, you know what, the internet is full of that stuff – go and google it.

The internet is also full of people giving teenage girls advice – look at this:

Only landlords and new parents need advice more than you guys, apparently. What you should do, how you should be. When I was preparing for today I asked my facebook friends what I should talk to you about. It would have been easier to ask what not to say – the dangers of social media, the importance of having a plan, being fearless, making mistakes, not making mistakes, the dangers of older men, cyber bullying, peer pressure, saying sorry, not saying sorry, how to dress, how not to dress, sexting, doing the right thing.

What even is the right thing???

The world is queuing up to give you guys advice:

Even teenage guys are giving teenage girls advice! What’s that about? Who’s giving them advice??? I am not jumping on that advice bandwagon. This talk is not advice, it’s information. Do with it what you will.

I do want to share with you something that I wish I knew at your age. It’s something that Scientists didn’t actually know when I was your age, and that I only started learning about last year so this is not one of those ‘adults have been telling teenagers this since time began and teenagers never listened’ things. They literally didn’t know this stuff to be scientific fact 23 years ago.  It’s something that makes a huge difference – to you, to your happiness and success, to the happiness and success of the people you surround yourself with and, if I’m going to make these kind of bold claims, to the world.

I’m going to attempt to summarise a year’s worth of my limited learning, and decades of research into about 25 minutes. I’m not a scientist so I may not present all of it in entirely scientifically robust ways. Wish me luck, try to stay awake.

This is me at your age – in 6^th Form. I look happy don’t I? Yes, that’s a scrunchie around my wrist. Apparently I grew up in an era where embarrassing pictures would stay hidden because we didn’t have social media then. This photo appeared on Facebook last year.

I wish someone had talked to me about my brain when I was this girl. I mean I got talked to about my brain a lot – after all there were adults trying to cram as much as possible into it, measure it, assess it and label it at every turn. My brain was a big focus. How much could it retain? What did it know? What was it better at – arts or science? Could it regurgitate what I knew on demand? Under exam conditions? Did my brain perform better than other teenage brains? Would it get me into a good university? My brain was getting a significant amount of attention at this time.

But no one was talking to me about how it really worked. About why I was feeling scared, anxious, angry, worried, ugly, unheard a lot of the time. I didn’t mention that? I thought I had it covered when I produced photographic evidence that I too was once a teenage girl. Because that’s a pretty normal way for a teenager to feel.

And I had it easy. I didn’t have a device in my hand with 24/7 access to photo-shopped, edited images of other people not looking ugly, or feeling anxious or scared.  Or one that gave other scared anxious people the ability to send me messages designed to make me feel worse and them feel better any time they liked. My brain didn’t have the constant, never-ending chatter fighting for my attention that your brains do today.

Still, I wish I knew then what I know now about my brain. What science now knows about our brains.

I wish I knew then that the human brain is a direct and ever evolving, product of it’s environment – every word that’s spoken to you, every image that you see. What you read, what you hear, what you tell yourself. That where you direct your attention is where your brain builds it’s own information superhighways. Like did you know that when scientists got two groups of people together and asked them both to look at this picture...

...one group counting the sad faces, the other counting the happy faces – that the group that focused on the happy faces were happier themselves. They had lower Cortisol, which is the stress hormone and more Serotonin and Oxytocin which are the happy hormones.  Cortisol, by the way, is a bit like alcohol – it is fine in short bursts, useful even. Gives you superhuman strength, helps you run from predators. But in large, persistent doses, it is a poison.  It stops you breathing properly, thins your hair, dulls your skin, tenses your muscles, limits your ability to think. Poison.

The people in these experiments weren’t looking at different pictures, they were just putting their focus on different things. The ones focused on good felt good. The ones focused on sad felt sad. Not only did it change their mood, but over time it could change their brain chemistry and their physiology. Just by focusing on the good stuff.

I wish I had known then that if you want to become really good at something you just have to tell your brain that thing over and over and over. Want to be really good at finding fault with yourself? Go looking for it every day. Look in the mirror, tell yourself you are fat, pick fault with your outfit, tell yourself you aren’t smart enough, or ambitious enough, that you haven’t achieved enough. Want to really embed it? Let other people tell your brain that thing over and over too. Just like the smiley face experiment, if you only hear the stuff you are doing wrong, pretty soon your brain will believe that doing wrong is all you do. Your brain chemistry and brain pathways will change to reflect that, as will your physiology. If your brain believes it, that’s how you will be.  The voices you listen to have power. That voice in your head has power.

Here’s a little bit about why: The human brain evolved from the brains of our pre-historic ancestors, who were basically reptiles. Those guys were really only concerned with staying alive – their brains were constantly on the alert for stuff that might eat them, or squish them.  They did fight, flight or freeze really well, not an awful lot more. The problem here is that their brains became the foundation of our brains – the strongest part of our brains. The last bit to die and often the first bit to react. And that lizard bit of the brain is on constant look-out for danger. It is pre-programmed to spot the sad faces first. Spotting danger is useful occasionally – especially if you are about to get eaten or squished. Of course we don’t have the kind of danger today that the pre-historic lizards did – very few things will eat you or squish you.  So our brains get busy seeing threats in other ways… 

This stuff is poison.

This way that our brains work is a glitch – an evolutionary bug. But it’s real. And it’s not always helping us.  If we are designed to be on high alert for threats then we run the risk of believing that this is reality. That we aren’t pretty enough, we aren’t smart enough, thin enough, ambitious enough or good enough.  But there’s more: every time we see someone else criticised for her appearance, told she has to work harder, told she isn’t good enough, attractive enough, clever enough or popular enough, we may as well be saying it to ourselves. Because the other thing about the human brain is that it picks up on that predatory threat environment and applies it to itself. She’s being pilloried for being fat? I better not get fat. She’s the most powerful woman in the world, a Harvard Law Graduate and still gets internet memes slating her looks?  What’s the point in working hard to get to uni?

So. We have work to do here. Because, unchecked, our lizard brains will drive us crazy.

There is an antidote to lizard brain. It’s the bit of our brain that evolved next – when we moved out of the water, and onto the land. I’m going to call it ‘lion brain’, because it’s the bit that we grew when we became mammals (I know, right now there’s a biology teacher shaking their head because we didn’t evolve from lions but I like ‘lion brain’ better than ‘monkey brain’, so sue me).

Lions – and all mammals - differ from reptiles in that they give birth to infant young that need caring for. Lions live in packs, depending on each other.  Mammals feel pleasure, joy, excitement and they need other mammals to thrive. 

Lions live in prides – just that word feels different to the lizards doesn’t it? It speaks to cohesion, and love. Mammals have the ability to care, to nurture. In fact, mammals need caring and nurturing to survive. Without love, nurturing, caring, mammals suffer. With it, they thrive.

Why am I talking about this? Kindness and nurturing are scientifically proven to make you healthier, to build better brains. Studies on children raised without kindness, love or nurturing show that their brains don’t develop as well as those that have that kindness daily. It’s a nonsense by the way that the way to develop success and resilience is to be harder on ourselves, harsher to ourselves. It’s just not true.  When you are harder on yourself, when other people are hard on you, your lizard brain wakes up. Your lizard brain reduces your action options to fight, flight or freeze. It produces Cortisol. Cortisol makes you stupid. How is any of this making you perform better?

To improve our resilience, our happiness, and ultimately our success in life, humans need kindness, love and nurturing. And I’m not only talking about other people showing kindness and love towards you – although that helps. The way to be healthier, happier, more resilient is to be kinder to ourselves, prouder of ourselves. Like the lions. Do you ever get the impression that a lion doesn’t love itself? Ever look at a lion and think ‘they look a bit insecure’? Lions don’t do that.

Research has proven that people who remind themselves of what makes them special – their values, their core, positive, uniqueness – have lower Cortisol. Because of this, they perform better – even if the thing they are performing in seemingly has nothing to do with what makes them special. This is because they have put their lizards back under their rock – they are thinking with lion brain. People who are clear about what makes them special and unique – who exhibit pride in themselves – have healthier brains, and perform better. 

That uniqueness isn’t something that’s dictated by other people. You decide what it is. It’s not something your teachers decide, or your parents get to vote on, or your friends tell you to be. Although the ones who love you can probably help you see what it is that makes you special. You need to work out what that is. Creativity? Tenacity? Empathy? An ability to make people laugh? Just knowing what makes you special, and holding fast to the fact that you are perfect just as you are actually makes you stronger, healthier and more likely to succeed.

Using your lion brain doesn’t mean you don’t get scared, but that you have courage. Part of that courage is standing true to what makes you you and loving yourself for it. Your lion brain knows that you live in a pack so for one to survive, we all have to thrive, so your focus isn’t on doing other lions down, but on living secure in your own skin. Using your lion brain means that you know that there is strength and courage in being kind – to yourself, to those around you. Using your lion brain means having a really clear vision of who you are and why you are special, and holding on to that amongst the noise and chatter that goes on around you.

Using your lion brain isn’t easy because the lizard was there first, and lizards are slippery suckers, but you can decide that this is the part of you you want to nurture. You can decide this any time you like. And once you’ve decided, because lion brain is not about being your own worst critic, its OK to slip back and visit the lizard every so often. Just don't go and live there. 

So I want you to take out the piece of paper I asked you to write on at the start now. Look at it. Is it really the thing that makes you, you? If not, tear it up, start again. Keep doing that until you have the right thing written down – you don’t have to share it. That’s the anchor to your lion brain. Keep it close by and look at it regularly – daily if you need to. Before you have a big job to do – an exam, an interview, a big date – re-read what you have written. 

Remind yourself that the stuff you have to be proud of already exists. It was already there before we had this talk. You do not have to listen to anybody else – like I said, everyone has an opinion. You are already a lioness. Remember that.

Thanks for having me.