The Weekly Circle #12
Welcome to the twelfth episode of The Weekly Circle! A free Circles in Time newsletter released every Sunday.
Hey everybody,
I’ve got some exciting news! The Sample of One podcast is officially live on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher.
While getting the first few episodes out into the digital ether is gratifying, I have surprised myself with the level of joy I am getting from the episode creation process. From building the initial guiding questions, all the way through to editing the audio outputs— every step of the way feels like play.
Not many of you will know this, but in a previous life (late teens/early twenties), I used to mix and produce electronic music. As I began moving into the world of behavioural science in 2013, I was quite certain I would be hanging up my proverbial headphones.
Yet, getting into monologues and podcasting this year has slowly started to reawaken a part of me that had become slightly dormant over the past eight years. A team of neural pathways called back from early retirement.
As the auditory muscle memory returns, I am excited to see how I can start crafting something authentic and original through a combination of melody, synchrony and rich conversation.
I’m aware this will take time. But the ambition is clear, and with one conversation a week, the cadence has created a comfortable rhythm and some healthy momentum.
Episode #1: Merle van den Akker
Design the context and watch your behaviour adapt
Listen on Apple Podcasts
Listen on Spotify
Episode #2: Samuel Salzer
Putting knowledge into practice
Listen on Apple Podcasts
Listen on Spotify
As I mentioned above, I am in the early stages of a new initiative. And I have A LOT to learn. Any feedback on the content, structure or audio experience would be greatly appreciated.
The Circles in Time Programme
The third edition of the Circles in Time programme comes to an end this week. I’ve been fortunate to work with another incredible cohort of participants from around the world over the past two months.
An observation I am excited about
Out of everything I’ve learnt through running this programme, proving that it can work across different cultures and geographies, is definitely the most exciting finding. Ofcourse, the extent of the framework’s ability to accommodate individual idiosyncrasies is still an unknown and will require much more anecdata in order to understand fully. Time will tell. A promising start none-the-less.
Future editions of the programme
In the coming weeks, I will be announcing the dates for the next edition of the full programme (likely first of Feb 2021). I will also be announcing the pilot for an express variation of the programme (likely mid-November 2020) and a self-paced version of the programme (likely early 2021).
WORLD VIEWS
Here are the ideas I’ve been circling around this week.
THE WORLD AROUND US
Global South Perspectives on Covid and Behavioural Science
I was fortunate to be able to contribute to an exceptionally-well curated article on how behavioural science is being used to tackle Covid in the global south.
Neela Saldanha and Sakshi Ghai reached out to researchers and practitioners from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and South America, collected, curated and wove together a fascinating set of perspectives. The piece covered Covid-specific challenges, but also touched on more general themes that the field of applied behavioural science is grappling with at the moment (e.g. universality vs cultural variability of nudges).
Hopefully, this is the first of many more collaborations between researchers and practitioners working on the many challenges of applying behavioural science in the global south.
THE WORLD BETWEEN US
Taking Responsibility for One Another
I spent some time this week thinking about an idea that Lisa Feldman-Barrett shared in a recent podcast interview with Lex Fridman:
“We are the caretakers of one another’s nervous systems.”
She elaborates on this idea in a Nautilus article:
“We don’t keep our nervous systems balanced on our own. We are social animals. We evolved to be social animals. That means that individuals in a social species regulate each other’s nervous systems. Your brain is not only regulating your body budget; it’s also helping to regulate other people’s, and other people are helping to regulate you.”
This insight is helpful in light of Susan Pinker’s work (discussed in episode #6) on strong social bonds, as something that is as important to our long health, as any major factor.
“In fact, neglecting to keep in close contact with people who are important to you is at least as dangerous to your health as a pack-a-day cigarette habit, hypertension, or obesity.”
Consider this link between our ability to regulate one another’s nervous systems and the impact this can on long term health. What it makes obvious is that there exists a higher level of responsibility for one another’s health than what we may expect or feel comfortable dealing with.
Feldman-Barrett continues:
“I can sit here and talk to you. I can change what’s happening in your body just by merely speaking a few words. So emotion concepts, and concepts in general, evolved in part because we have to manage our relationships with each other; but as we’re doing that, we are constantly regulating each other’s nervous systems, for good or for ill.”
Practically speaking, what this means is that we need to pay much more attention to the habitual scripts that are running during a familiar interaction.
It is worth asking yourself: Am I using language, phrases and tones that are helping or hurting another’s nervous system?
It may seem like nothing but those subtle responses, given enough time and frequency, can start to get under the skin, harming or healing at a physiological level.
There are two practical takeaways here:
Become mindful and disciplined in the manner which you engage with others. Recognise that words and actions can have profound effects on the nervous systems of others, especially those close to you.
Be conscious of others conversational defaults. Do they typically respond with critical or compassionate conversational patterns? Use this as a compass for navigating your social world.
THE WORLD WITHIN US
CRISPR Creators Win Nobel Prize
The 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna for the development of their CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing tool. This is a huge achievement on so many different dimensions! I’m so excited for both of these incredible women.
You can watch Jennifer Doudna’s first reactions to winning the Nobel Prize here:
WISE WORDS
The quotes I’ve been circling around this week
ON KINDNESS
“Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.” ~ Henry James
“Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolution.” ~ Kahlil Gibran
“You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.” ~ Lao-Tzu
“A kind gesture can reach a wound that only compassion can heal.” ~ Steve Maraboli
“One of the most important things you can do on this earth is to let people know they are not alone.” ~ Shannon L. Alder
“This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.” ~ Dalai Lama
“It's a little embarrassing that after 45 years of research & study, the best advice I can give people is to be a little kinder to each other.” ~ Aldous Huxley
“He who sees a need and waits to be asked for help is as unkind as if he had refused it.” ~ Dante Alighieri
ON CURIOSITY
“Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.” ~ Samuel Johnson
“What a large volume of adventures may be grasped within the span of his little life by him who interests his heart in everything.” ~ Laurence Sterne
“Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.” ~ Samuel Johnson
“It is simply this: do not tire, never lose interest, never grow indifferent—lose your invaluable curiosity and you let yourself die. It's as simple as that.” ~ Tove Jansson
“I had discovered that learning something, no matter how complex, wasn't hard when I had a reason to want to know it.” ~ Homer Hickam
COMMUNITY UPDATE
We’ve got our fifth Sample of One conversation coming up on Thursday. This week I will be speaking with another Circles in Time community member, Jessica Exton! I will confirm the times and send out a calendar invite early in the week.
If you have any feedback on how I can improve the experience of these live sessions, please do reach out. The whole initiative is still very much in an experimental phase, and any feedback would be well appreciated.
SOMETHING TO EXPERIMENT WITH
If you’re experiencing an emotion, take a moment to consider what to call it. The more granular and precise you can get the better.
Why? If you can distinguish more granular variations of a particular emotion, your brain has a larger variety of options for making sense of the sensations given the particular context, providing you with tools for more flexible and helpful responses.
As Lisa Feldman-Barrett shared in a recent TED interview:
“People who exhibit higher emotional granularity go to the doctor less frequently, use medication less frequently, and spend fewer days hospitalized for illness. This is not magic; it’s what happens when you leverage the porous boundary between the social and the physical.”
There are other benefits too:
“People who could distinguish finely among their unpleasant feelings — those “50 shades of feeling crappy” — were 30 percent more flexible when regulating their emotions, less likely to drink excessively when stressed, and less likely to retaliate aggressively against someone who has hurt them. For people who suffer from schizophrenia, those who exhibit higher emotional granularity report better relationships with family and friends, compared to those who exhibit lower granularity, and are better able to choose the correct action in social situations.”
The takeaway here:
Learn as many new emotional concepts as you can, and then practice applying those concepts, as labels, to particular states as you move about the world. This table by the incredible, Susan David, may help in getting you started:
SOMETHING TO PART WITH
Kevin is probably right. But as someone who is often labelled as an overthinker, there is a small part of me that really enjoys this :)
Until next week,
Take care,
David
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