DR. JUSTIN JAMES KENNEDY, A GLOBALLY RECOGNIZED PROFESSOR OF NEUROSCIENCE, EXECUTIVE COACHING PSYCHOLOGIST AND SPEAKER. THE CO-FOUNDER OF N3 EXECUTIVE COACHING, WHICH APPLIES NEUROSCIENCE TO EXECUTIVE COACHING IN THE CORPORATE SPACE, WAS IN A COMA AFTER
A MAJOR MOTORCYCLE ACCIDENT. AS HIS THERAPISTS EXPLAINED, HIS EMOTIONS WERE KEY TO HIM BEING ABLE TO WALK AGAIN. WE BRING YOU EXTRACTS FROM HIS LATEST SERIES, BRAIN REBOOT BASED ON HIS BOOK – A CHANGE OF MIND WILL CHANGE YOUR BRAIN.
“When I meet people, I often ask them,
“What’s the biggest behaviour change you have ever made?” When I met Justin, he shared the biggest change in recovering from a coma was not learning to walk and talk again but feeling happy. His journey is remarkable,” Dr. Marshall Goldsmith YOUR BRAIN IS RIGGED TO BE TRIGGERED.
This chapter explains how the brain is designed to be triggered by an irrational emotion and a set of beliefs. When I was recovering from a coma, I had many reasons to simply take it easy and not push myself to recover. Emerging out of a coma is one thing but getting my brain to be fully functional was quite another. My journey ended up being a “rocky road” between Dublin and New York. Here’s the personal journey on what I did to get more control over my self-belief triggers that limited my behavioral change and full recovery… This crash was serious. It caused a subdural hemorrhage, which swelled my brain with blood, bits of roadside tar, and helmet bits. It caused my eyes to roll and my mouth to foam, and I was in shock… I was rushed off to hospital and then it was established after extensive surgery, I was physically stabilized but still in a coma without any sign of becoming conscious. It would take many more operations to get all my functions back in place after recovering from the coma… The right side of my body was paralyzed, and I had no strength or balance.
Skull bone had perforated my brain, and I was induced into a coma again. This chapter has taken much longer to write than the others, because I have been remembering and defaulting back into the same state of mind. The very emotional noise and loss of memory that I have been trying to write about has been my experience now. Getting my emotional brain out of the way has been a lot more difficult than I expected. My procrastination and self-deception now are more like the state of an individual with PTSD than the behavior of being a published neuroscience academic. My traumatic stress seems inappropriately delayed. The trauma I
have been writing about happened over a decade and a half ago, yet still my emotional state is overwhelming and my thinking foggy. Writing this piece in the book, about being in a coma and the recovery process, has been emotionally all-consuming, and I have been procrastinating, putting it off with the most banal excuses. The story has hauled out a very old emotional state that I thought I had long ago put to bed. The anxiety and distress I felt then are the same neural triggers that have been debilitating me from writing this section now. I needed to hold the emotional triggers, feelings, and perceptions in my awareness for a while longer and let my quiet state of calm emerge gently. It worked! I now feel calmer and more in control, emotionally and in terms of my behavior.
This is probably the most important insight I have had through the writing: my personal journey is not over. I need to see myself as continuously emotionally vulnerable and humble. I am able to notice, give myself the space to step out, and not become embroiled in emotions and feelings with destructive behavioral consequences. I can do things that prevent cognitive overload. I had decided that I would not give up. No temptation would let me be the victim any longer, but I needed much support. More than I wanted. One fine day still in hospital, my occupational therapist showed me a mirror…I was in a pit of emotional distress… THE ENVIRONMENT INSIDE THE BRAIN Do brain cells act like muscles? You can keep your brain fit, improve your memory, and other functions, but you need to exercise it. Learning new skills or doing mental tasks makes the connections between cells stronger. Staying curious can help your brain stay sharp as you age. Certain exercises can also improve brain power… The more you challenge your brain to learn new stuff, such as playing a musical instrument, how to code, or speak a second language, the more brain cells you will grow. When you discover more about how precisely your brain is triggered into action when you practice and learn new things, your brain will grow—like mine—but
in different regions. With practice and this book, you will learn how your brain improves, depending on how you use it. It’s all about your behaviour, not intentions or feelings. It’s about how you plan to show up and take action. Please remember that your brain has only one emotional trigger, but many feelings follow. Let’s look at these triggers of performance in the next chapter.
To know more, visit www.professorkennedy.com