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