“The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.”
— William James, Principles of Psychology (1890)
For more than twenty years, I've worked with people who would never call themselves "into personal growth."
Executives, first responders, skeptical parents. Teenagers who really didn't want to be 'getting help'. Celebrities who had been pitched every version of self-improvement on the market.
These were the hearts and minds I was trying to reach... to help them see what was possible in their life, and how to have more mastery over their lived experiences.
And I was doing that while measuring their physiology - in real time and as before-after snapshots.
- Heart rhythms on a monitor.
- Brainwave patterns moving across a screen.
- Self-report measures and behavioral observations.
That data was telling me and the teams I was working with, whether what we were doing was making a difference, or bouncing off.
Here are three things I didn't do when it seemed like someone was closing the door to receiving support.
- I didn't try to convince them.
The moment you start persuading a resistant brain, you've likely already triggered more self-protection mechanisms.
So I did less of trying to convince them of what they ‘needed to do’.. and started describing what was actually happening underneath. I named the mechanism, and let the information do its own work.
2. I didn't lead with feelings.
"How does that make you feel" is a sentence that closes doors for a lot of people.
Feelings matter enormously.
But for someone whose system is already on guard, emotional language can read as intrusion.
So, again, I led with mechanism instead.
I told them what the systems and networks of the brain do, and gave them a biological explanation for what they were already experiencing.
3. I didn't ask them to change anything.
This one took me trial and error over the years to really understand.
The minute you imply someone needs to be different in any way, their nervous system gets the ‘assignment’ to defend who they currently are.
So instead of prescribing, I described.
I helped people see, in plain language, what their own physiology was doing.
And over and over again, what I watched was that people often moved on their own and started asking questions once they had clear information that wasn't subjective, abstract or seemed like 'soft skills', and more like mechanisms and biology.
Reflection:
What can you do this week to describe, rather than prescribe?
(Just as a starting point, an experiment...)
And if you want to get much better at doing exactly this...
Teach the Nervous System™ gives you the neuroscience and language to help people understand what is happening inside their nervous system — without reducing their experience to labels, vague emotional language or “soft skills.”
It’s designed especially for coaches, leaders, educators and practitioners who want to make nervous system regulation more precise, credible and usable with the people they serve.
Map it. Name it. Shift it.
P.S. Tomorrow, I’m opening something I haven't offered in this form before.
It's for the people who have spent years helping other regulate and access new possibilities... and are ready to reveal the neuroscience underneath the wisdom they share.
So more people can understand the depth of their work.
More tomorrow 🙂
