How unexpected rolemodels make us human
[Music]
it’s 2002
and i’m four years into my first real
job
it feels like it’s the absolute
antithesis to
everything that i think i am one
cold gray winter’s morning i’m hurrying
along by the river thames
rushing to get on the tube with
thousands of other bleary-eyed commuters
i’ve just come back from the mountains
wide open spaces bright blue skies
hanging out with my brother and laughing
endlessly with friends
it makes the drudgery of the dirty city
and prospect of a 12-hour day staring at
a screen
feel even heavier my thoughts are racing
this is what life is all about is this
as good as it gets
i’m in a top job with a top employer
but i hate it it feels like it’s
smothering who i really
am and then it dawns on me
who have i become have you ever felt
like that
that you weren’t in the right place to
fulfill your potential
or even worse where you are is making
you someone you’re not
i didn’t always feel like this let me
paint you a picture
a one that i treasure it’s a bright
early summer’s day
and i’m sat on a picnic blanket with my
grandfather’s fedora drooped over my
tiny two-year-old head
and his thick rim glasses sat quicker on
my nose
he’s looking back at me my tiny little
hat
perched on top of his head my mom said i
put it there to make him smile that it
was the first time he’d laugh since my
nana had died
my whole family said i had a knack for
knowing what people
felt and needed and yet here i am today
and every day at work
feeling like that’s the last thing i’m
doing for anyone
including myself
it’s comforting to think of myself as
wise enough
at that age to know how to relieve my
grandfather’s grief
but what i’ve come to realize is i was
probably just doing what every little
human does
and mirroring his behavior that’s what
made him laugh
and that’s what made my whole family
think i had some special gift for
empathy
which was then encouraged and
unconsciously repeated and refined
research shows that neurons in a baby’s
brain fire in response to a smile from
their caregiver
they then smile back creating a virtuous
cycle to and fro
it’s believed that this is how empathy
develops and how many of our other
behaviors
develop through an iterative process
we all have great potential for empathy
which forms the foundation for emotional
wisdom
not only allowing us to understand
ourselves
but also to infer what other people are
thinking
it’s what makes us uniquely human
but it can only be developed through
interacting with others
all know nurture plays a role but we
don’t always fully appreciate the
gravity and depth that this effect has
on us
let me give you a startling example of
someone who didn’t have
our start in life oksana malaya
was born in a small rundown village in
ukraine in 1983.
both of her parents were alcoholics and
one night
too drunk to realize they left
three-year-old oksana outside
looking for warmth she curled up with
stray dogs that roamed the area
no one came to look for her and she
stayed
living as a member of the pack for the
next five years
when eventually she was found at the age
of eight she’d become what’s known as a
feral
child she couldn’t talk
she walked on all fours she barked like
a dog
and scavenged through rubbish for food
this is a stark demonstration of
how the systems in our brain need a
model
in our environment to not only stimulate
but also perpetuate development
my empathy was developed thanks to my
parents encouragement
and perhaps unsurprisingly by the time i
was a teenager my aspiration
was to become a psychologist but when it
came time to entering the world of work
i found myself unwittingly pulled along
by what my peers were doing
i was at a good university i had good
grades
what seemed like the natural thing to do
was to go and work in finance or
management consultancy
indeed from the ages of 18 to 29 in a
period
known as emerging adulthood we do
unconsciously look to our peers to shape
our decisions
our brain continues to develop until our
late twenties
but social norms have a massive impact
on us throughout life
and here i am today on that gray day
heading for a job that doesn’t make me
feel like me
as i’m walking i realized that i chose
the wrong people to mirror when i left
university
it wasn’t that they were people i didn’t
like or respect
it’s just they weren’t the right people
to take me in the direction i wanted to
go
so i left my job i went back to
university
and studied a postgraduate in
occupational psychology
and then began learning from fellow
psychologists
as you can see one of the things that’s
really captured my attention
is how much we are shaped and learned
from those around us
i call this mirror thinking
but it’s not just for big life decisions
like which job we take
nor is it just for the behaviors that we
iteratively build over the course of
years
it’s happening all of the time
for example we evolved to catch others
moods
article published in the british medical
journal
which followed nearly 5 000 people
over the course of six years looking at
the spread of happiness
showed that if someone is happy it has a
positive impact on their friends
their friends and even their friends
friends
and the authors believe that this
extends to things like depression
anxiety eating habits drinking even
exercise
and we tend to be under the illusion
that
we’re conscious of how these things are
shaping us
but most of the time we’re not research
shows
that we’re only actually conscious of
about five percent of our cognitive
activity
meaning that the large percentage of our
decision making happens without our
conscious awareness
so you see little behaviors absorbed
from others
without us realizing add up to habits
and lasting behaviors that become part
of who we are
altering our beliefs and nudging our
values
who’s shaping you
through my work i’ve had the great
privilege of hearing hundreds of
people’s stories
many amongst the most successful in
their field
and one thing i’ve realized and seen
is how much these people have been
shaped by
relatives or parents early on in life
perhaps more than they
realize until they reflect on it
but another thing i’ve realized is
how much these people have consciously
chosen the people they want to mirror
when they’ve become adults
take for example one lady let’s call her
charlotte
who is the ceo of a multinational
company
and when i profiled her it was clear
that she’d been looking to her
peers and seniors from day one on the
job picking up on the nuances of
behaviour that she thought was
successful and resonated with her
and how for example more senior
colleagues negotiated with clients or
led
other people and she
gradually like a detective picked up on
the things that
would work for her and chose to counter
mirror the things that she thought
wouldn’t
and now she’s successfully running the
company
so you see it’s really worth thinking
about
whether we choose and how we choose
habits and beliefs and behaviors
that are going to be helpful to us or
unhelpful
but the problem is the modern world
is getting in the way of this natural
mechanism
first because we are less connected
communities are becoming more dispersed
which means we simply don’t have
the opportunities to connect which lies
at the heart of mirroring
it means we’re not nurturing what it
means to be human
second because of our accelerated pace
of life
let me ask you some questions i’m
currently asking myself
do you make time to have in-depth
meaningful conversations
do you curiously consider the other
person’s viewpoints
do you consciously explore how they see
the world
or are your exchanges rushed as you
jump on to the next thing
third our rapid development in science
and technology
we are creating solutions at an
incredible rate take for example the
development of a successful vaccine for
covert 19
but we are creating problems at an even
greater rate
as technology insinuates itself between
all of our
interactions shifting beliefs behaviors
and attitudes one study
carried out in canada looking at 18 to
22 year olds
over the course of five years showed
that increases in texting
resulted in decreases in moral
reflectiveness
a decrease in the motivation for social
justice and equality
and a decrease in the belief of the
importance of
integrity and this extends further
we’re seeing it in all ways of life
political divide
hate crime extremism poor mental health
climate change they’re all underpinned
by disruption of this natural mechanism
people always ask what happened to oxana
and sadly she’s an example of where
we’re all headed
she’s made great strides she’s now able
to talk
and she lives in a home for the mentally
disabled
psychologist lynn fry went to meet her
as an adult and she describes her
interaction
saying that her conversation
is odd she speaks like it’s an order
there’s no rhythm or music or cadence to
her speech she has the cognitive ability
of a six-year-old and what fry describes
as a dangerously low boredom threshold
why because she grew up
mirroring feral dogs instead of humans
irrevocably damaging her ability to read
the nuances of human interaction in a
way that we would consider normal
so you see it’s really worth asking
ourselves who
and what we are mirroring and
are we mirroring enough to remain human
my brain your brain they aren’t static
they’re continually adapting and
changing in response to the interactions
we have
and the emotions we experience both
within ourselves
and in others our brain
is like a muscle that needs exercise
how much exercise are you giving your
brain
how many hours a day do you spend lost
in your computer screen
rather than looking at the faces of the
people around you
when you wake up in the morning what’s
the first thing you do
is it grab for your phone or have
an in-depth conversation with someone in
your family
every glance at a screen is a glance
away from the opportunity to grow
a neural network one is like nutrients
for your brain
the other like junk food if you want to
improve your emotional wisdom
you need to stop scrolling and look up
and out at the faces of the people
around you
and who is in your social ecosystem
remember that 95 percent of our
cognitive ability
is unconscious with that precious five
percent
it’s really important to choose the
right inputs to take you in the
direction that you want to go
i invite you to join me in some of the
steps i’ve begun taking
give yourself the space to connect with
the people in your life
at your work who you buy coffee from
that will stimulate your emotional
development
think about who you are mirroring in all
areas of life
from career work personal growth
to parenting family and health
these role models may seem unexpected
a child or someone in the local shop
they don’t have to be perfect
it’s looking at different aspects of
different people that you admire
and thinking about how you would like to
take that on into your own behavior
and i urge you to think about how
you are shaping others
you don’t realize how many people are
mirroring you
don’t miss the opportunity to have a
profoundly positive impact
we all shape the world that we live in
what role do you want to play in that
nowhere is that more important than when
it comes to our children
it’s not easy i struggle with it every
day but are we giving them enough
space are we slowing down and spending
time with them
or are we letting them stare at screens
instagram facebook twitter none of them
feed their neural networks and establish
the
enable the nuances of human interaction
to be effectively captured
they also involve false role models
whose main intent is often self-interest
they’re not looking to grow your child’s
development they don’t believe in your
child
they don’t connect with them
are we leaving our children out in the
cold
with the feral dogs of technology
and starving them of the stimulus they
need to properly develop
we need to connect with our children and
to help them
find role models that will enable them
to fulfill their potential
if we want to not only survive but
thrive as a species
we need to use the natural mechanism of
role modelling
to fulfill our potential
if we get this right we’ll have better
leaders
better run companies better run
countries
if we get closer to our children we’ll
improve our family’s well-being
and their prospects for the future
if you more intentionally mirror helpful
behaviors in others
you will make yourself happier and more
likely to fulfill your potential
if we all more consciously connect and
role model what we want to see in the
world
we have the opportunity to uplift the
whole of society
and it’s actually quite easy look up
look out look into the faces of the
people
around you that
is where you will find your best self