The hinders of building confidence – The psychology of ‘proof of done’
We’ll use the Triune Brain Model (Paul D. MacLean) to describe the brain-body dynamics and understand the hindering mechanisms we need to tackle.
The layers of the Triune Brain Model:
- The cognitive layer – your thoughts, creativity, strategy
- The limbic layer – your emotions, beliefs, behavioural patterns
- The basal layer – your basic operation, survival function
A. The cognitive layer
This is the most widely recognized layer of the brain and is often used as a synonym for the entire brain. However, the cognitive layer is only a portion of the brain. This layer is used in analytical processes, building a career, solving everyday problems, memorizing information, and communicating verbally.
Our thinking process (often referred to as cognitive capabilities) and creativity is located in this layer. Both are very important in grappling arts as that is basically a game of body chess. Theoretically, the smarter and more creative you can be with your responses, the more successful you will be. But the truth is that due to its late appearance during evolution, this part of the brain is the weakest and have the least impact on one’s tournament success.
Thoughts vs emotions
Thoughts fade, emotions fester.
Thoughts are electrical signals in the brain, flashing up and travelling through the nervous system before reaching the muscles. When you form a thought, such as ‘I’m not afraid,’ it becomes a signal that circulates around the nervous cells. This path has little to no impact on the organs’ operation.
Emotions, on the other hand, belong to the Limbic layer and represent chemical mixtures. When triggered, they travel via internal signal-transduction pathways, changing the chemical composition of the blood and the operation of the organs reached. They have a lingering and often a snowballing effect on our physiology.
Thoughts can only have that sort of systematic impact if they can trigger a memory with a stored emotion. In other words, thought has to evoke emotions to have physiological impact. One might keep repeating ‘I’m not afraid’ a hundred times without any effect. But if that phrase is capable of calling back memories that trigger soothing emotions, a physiological change will occur.
Thoughts as puppet master
Thoughts create their long-term impact via tagging the experiences we have in life as good or bad (and a million different shades in between), and with that they define the emotions linked to that experience. Most, if not all, our experiences get a tag of one kind or another from the cognitive layer.
The series of these tags writes the overall story, our history, and with that, our future potential.
How we tag is usually copied from our nurturing environment. If, for example, scoring a silver was taught as worthless (even through the subtle grim on a parent’s face), our future self will tag similar situations with shame and annoyance, losing sight of any gain coming from that situation. The consequences are severe. When the silver medal is tagged as shameful, the emotions associated with it will be negative. That launches a chemical mixture that blocks vital bodily functions when the idea of getting a silver medal comes up next time. This results in the well-known scenario of standing in front of the mat in the final, trying not to worry about losing in order to prevent inhibition. But the energy consumed in trying to suppress the ongoing changes has already reduced the likelihood of winning.
This might shed some light on why emotional control is a long-term strategy rather than an on-the-spot quick fix. Trying to suppress emotions that are already present is the least effective method of self-regulation for the aforementioned reasons. The long-term strategies are discussed in Chapter 4.
In the long-term, the tendency of regular negative tagging has a lot to do with not being able to build confidence, because only very few events will be stored as ‘proof of done’ regardless of the actual number of occurrences. If tournament outcomes are ignored due to silver medals, none of the fights (with their success moments) will be included in the ‘proof of done’ history. The effort put in does not affect the next tournament, making it equally difficult as the previous one.
Taking it further, if all participation that does not result in a medal is tagged as ‘failure’ or if winning is downgraded by tags such as ‘it was easy’ ‘I was lucky’, ‘anyone could do that’ (often referred to as achievement disposition), than no matter how much proof is delivered to the brain, no confidence is developed.
Tagging (often referred to as cognitive appraisal) is mainly copied during the early ages; and in the vast majority of cases, these tags, such as ‘anyone could do that’, are how achievements in general were tagged by the adult figures who were around during that time. To build confidence, we need to review these tagging patterns as adults to gain control over the narrative we write. Solutions ranges from using achievement inventory (link in the Further Reading section), simple narration control practices (offered in Chapter 7.), complete cognitive reappraisal programs (link in the Further Reading section).
Next: The limbic layer – the supreme leader
