“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 had been dragged into the room. Teachers tired of being told to be more resilient.
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.
I want to share 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.
The feelings came afterward... on their own terms, once the body had decided I was safe to listen to.
3. I didn't ask them to change anything.
This one took me the longest to learn.
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...
Something I'm so excited about, that comes from the heart and that I'd love to share with you...
I just released a set of fresh micro-modules inside Reach the Resistant Brain: The Science of Buy-In, Resonance, and Real Change.
These modules are two decades of bridge-building between rigorous, peer-reviewed research at places like NYU, Stanford engineering, and Northwestern, and the lived experience of executives, first responders, teachers, parents, and leaders trying to reach rooms full of people who didn't want to be reached.
They give you the
- the phrasing,
- the perspectives, and
- the mechanics underneath so much of what you're already doing well.
So you can:
- borrow my language.
- borrow my explanations.
- integrate them into how you reach the people you're trying to reach.
You don't have to spend twenty years measuring physiology to speak with this kind of clarity. You can stand on what you've earned as wisdom and what I've gathered in my own work... and use it tomorrow.
$77 Lifetime access.
With deep respect for your own resistance and what it teaches you about reaching others...
Stefanie
The modules for this course include:
Module 1 — Internal Intelligence
Module 2 — Cellular Logic: When messaging sparks actual, embodied change
Module 3 — Emanation and how to transmit the wisdom you've earned
Module 4 — Brain Economics: The habenula, prediction failure, and the math all brains are running.
Module 5 — The Inadequacy Signal
Module 6 — Attention: How the brain decides what gets through its filters.
Module 7 — Trust as an internal signal
Module 8 — Follow-Through: What makes a new pattern hold
Module 9 — Three Movements, One System: Bringing It Home
*If you're enrolled in Science of Buy-In, you have automatic access to these new micro-modules. Just log in to your course. The new modules are waiting for you.
