When you are afraid, you start going into fight or flight mode. Your body starts prioritising what is needed for immediate survival - screw routine body functions, if you don't make it past the next few moments there won't be a routine to return to. You stop digesting food. Cell repair slows or stops. You stop producing saliva, which is why your mouth goes dry when you're nervous just before making a speech or going into a difficult conversation. Your heart rate and breathing increase to ensure better blood flow. A cocktail of hormones like epinephrine and oxytocin are cued up and produced, which amplifies your body's ability to act (and remarkably, in the case of oxytocin, reminds you to seek help).
Don't be mistaken about what happens when you feel fear. Your body is readying itself to help you face what you fear in the way it knows how.
What causes us to feel fear?
1) Fear occurs to us unconsciously. Do you pause to think, hey, very angry looking snake! Maybe I should be scared. Of course not, it would be too late! Fear becomes much clearer when we examine what happens inside your brain. When you are afraid, the fear/anger/aggression/anxiety centre of your brain - the amygdalas (get used to this name, it's gonna keep popping up) lights up. And we've covered all the changes that happen in your body: your blood pressure, your hormones, your heart-rate. But remember how amygdala is like a train interchange with direct routes to different parts of your brain? There is a direct neural link between our amygdala and your pre-frontal cortex, the rational thinking part of your brain. And if we look closely enough or we think things through, sometimes we realise, argh! it's not an angry snake, it's just a prank toy that your annoying friend had thrown at you. Or if you've handled angry snakes enough times, your amygdala does not light as much. Your blood pressure and your heart rate do not increase as much, you realise what you need to do is to stay calm and slowly back away.
Finally, notice how fear, anger, aggression, and anxiety are processed by the same part of the brain, the amygdala. This is no coincidence. These 4 emotions are closely tied to one another; aggression maybe triggered because one is nervous, angry, or fearful. Being fearful may cause one to react angrily, as a self-defense mechanism. Fear, like all our emotions, happens to us. Mostly, we can't control how it originates. But we can control how it develops by understanding what exactly is causing fear and by choosing the response that dispels it
2) We fear what we are unconfident or uncertain about. Think back on your ancestors doing something they weren't confident or certain off - hunting a massive animal without a weapon, or eating a berry they've never seen before. Doing so would mean a very high chance of seriously harming themselves. Today, after many cycles of evolution, we have been wired based on these experiences.
Think about it. Are you ever fearful of something you've done before, and are good? Brushing your teeth, putting on your clothes, indulging in your favourite hobby (whatever it is)? Of course not. You know you can perform these functions easily. You are confident.
But many of us would have felt fearful and anxious the first time we ventured into something new: using a pair of chopsticks, riding a bicycle, swimming, going on a first date. We were uncertain about these functions, and we were not confident about performing them. However, once we have demonstrated to ourselves that we are able to perform these tasks, we are no longer afraid. The same applies to more challenging tasks. Some of us struggle with: public speaking, starting a business, having a very difficult conversation with the CEO... You are uncertain and unconfident if you can succeed. But once you have proven to yourself you are able to do it, even for the more challenging tasks, you are no longer afraid. People might start off feeling scared about public speaking, but after speech 3797, you're pro The catch, of course, is that sometimes, we are too scared to start.
Even if we were certain of something OR confident about something, many of us will still feel some amount of fear. We might be theoretically certain how we should use a pair of chopsticks, but if we have never succeeded in using them properly, we remain unconfident and will still feel nervous if we had to use them, especially when others are observing. You might also be confident about
3) we fear what is painful. Boxer. climbing 100 flights of stairs or doing 100 burpees. But pain is not just physical but mental. Failure is painful. Being judged is painful.
This is why you procrastinate. You either fear what you have to do bevause you don't know how to do it (you don't fear brushing your teeth for example), or you fear doing something becaue you know it will be effortful
4) we fear what we cannot control
Learn more about your amygdala, the amygdala hijack, the thalamus, the pre-frontal cortex, and how your brain works here.
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Summary:
- Fear and anxiety (and anger + aggression) are always
Creativity- at a deeper level
Think of our lives and the number of different networks we're a part of. There is our immediate family, who are different from work family. We have different groups of friends - from school, from our hobbies, from some shared experience. These networks can expand or contract - you might have a new child or welcome a new member to your group of friends, or you might lose some members who drift away.
All these networks influence us as a person in different ways; the networks closest to us, and/or the ones we spend the most time with tend to influence us the most.
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It is also true vice versa. We influence the networks we are a part of (just as everyone else in that network does). We can bring ideas from one network you are a part of to another. We might also bring bad habits or bad practices from one group to another. This is a critical point for creativity, as you will see in a bit.
As it turns out, our neural networks function in a similar way to our people networks. As we learnt - we have a lot of neurons each connected to thousands of other neurons (we should be familiar with the name by now - synapses).
Here we have a simple hypothetical network. We see that:
- Neuron A is connected to neurons 1, 2, and 3.
- Neuron B is connected to neurons 2, 3, and 4.
- Neuron C is connected to neurons 3, 4, and 5.
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In other words, Neuron 3 is affected by information from Neurons A, B, and C. In contrast, Neuron 1 here simply contains information from Neuron A.
This becomes easier when we look at an example. Say you've just visited Japan on holiday. (I highly recommend visiting Japan on holiday btw, it is such an attractive country in so many ways). Ok, I digress. Say you've just visited Japan on holiday, and you went to 3 stunning bridges:
The 3 alphabet Neurons in our previous diagram maps onto the 3 bridges visited, and the memories you had of each bridge.
In turn, these 3 bridges are connected to other neural networks - represented by Neurons 1 to 5. For example:
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Neuron 1 contains information of all the walking bridges you know of in Japan (the other two bridges are non-walking, and hence are not associated with Neuron 1).
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All 3 bridges contribute to Neuron 3 - beautiful bridges in Japan.
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From there, Neuron 1 and Neuron 3 go on to activate other neural networks, shown in the 2 diagrams below.
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Neuron 1 might activate a neural network of other walking bridges. It might then lead you to think of:
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Materials used to construct other walking bridges. Kintaikyo is a wooden bridge built on stone foundations. It might lead you to recall stone bridges, for example, Mostar Bridge in Herzegovina.
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Shape of other walking bridges. The funky arches of Kintaikyo came about because it was repeatedly damaged from previous incidents of flooding. Are there other weird-shape walking bridges? What were the reasons for their design?
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Neuron 3 captures memories and information on beautiful bridges. You might then think of:
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Other beautiful bridges around the world, e.g. the Golden Gate Bridge, the London Bridge etc, which lead to other associations
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Beautiful structures in Japan, bridges, but also shrines and temples and Tori gates. And you might then realise many structures in Japan are red in colour. This could then lead on to further associations of the colour red in Japanese culture, and the colour red in other cultures.
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That one neural network can subsequently activate others is what helps us to develop associations between subjects, to understand symbols, metaphors, and analogy. We are able to understand:
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Why someone who kills another person is sometimes hero, while other times a villain
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Why a cup of coffee brings to mind the idea of a break
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When a piece of cloth is simply a piece of cloth and other times it is a flag that represents a nation
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Irony:
"Hit me", says the masochist.
"No", replied the sadist.
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Ok after much bridging, after arching across bridges and pagodas and culture and what not, let's come back to creativity.
Creativity is about the associations we make. Specifically, creativity is the ability to make wider, more liberal associations. Remember our analogy of the different networks we belong to, and how we are able to take ideas from different networks of people and bring it to another? This works in the same way in our heads, where neurons in one network are able to form novel, unique, and broader associations with neurons in another network.
Instead of seeing a bridge as just a structure for people to get across obstacles, check out creative interpretations of bridges:
Can you exercise your creativity now? Imagine if you were
- government official looking to encourage exercise and activity
- urban planner looking to create common spaces for people in the neighbourhood to bond over.
- in the tourism business
- In the hospitality business
Can you think of how bridges can be used in all these different situations?
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The neurological understanding of creativity is important for us. Creativity is not some abstract concept. It is not a mysterious gift that some possess and others don't. It is simply neurons forming wider, broader associations in more neural networks. And it is something we can work on.
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How can we do this? Find out more in the second part of this series - How can we be more creative.