Russ Schoen

Yesterday I had one of those ~ if it can go wrong, it will days. Particularly stressed out, I went to aikido (which sparked a whole series of ideas that I will share tomorrow) and then went home and turned on the tv. Now, I am a rare watcher of TV, but in the interest of trying something new, I tuned into Boston Legal. In my opinion, it was one of, if not the best written show I have seen on TV in years. The characters, the dialogue and the humor made it a much watch show for me. Innovative? Yes. Lessons to take away? Don’t want to overanalyze but I will say upon reflection:

Before Aikido and watching Boston Legal yesterday, huge stress, not much creative thinking going on for me.

After Aikido and watching Boston Legal, much more relaxed and an upshift in my thinking with many more creative ideas starting flowing.

In some of our innovation workshops, I introduce a model of the brain known as the triune brain. The jist is that if we take a very simplistic look at the brain, we can say that humans have a neo-cortex which is where creative thinking and problem solving capabilities reside, a limbic system which controls our emotions and a brain stem which controls are autonomic functions like breathing. When humans are heavily stressed, they usually are NOT able to access the full potential of the neo-cortex. So in order to access this part of the brain, people need to become self-aware of their stress levels and then take deliberate action to reduce those levels and upshift into the neo-cortex (which I now dub the innovation zone). I did it yesterday with aikido and Boston Legal! Sometimes I upshift by listening to music, getting together with friends or going for a walk.

Question for you to think about: When you are under stress, what can you do to upshift?