Chapter Two The Brain Behind the Brain Your brain is pretty phenomenal. It is wired in fantastic ways to help you maneuver in your world. Yet it doesn’t come with a manual of how to optimize it so you can think, act, and feel your best. Now that you know a little more about what mindfulness is and isn’t, let’s take a look at how it actually works, Mindfulness isn’t a bunch of yogis walking around feeling good (though mindful yogis do likely walk around feeling pretty good), but it can offer you a greater sense of well-being, and help to improve your performance and your relationships. If mindfulness practices are mental training practices, you would hope that they are grounded in some sort of researched and documented scientific data. And they are. What I'll do in this chapter is share more about how our brains work. Once you understand your brain better, you might not be so hard on yourself when you have one of those days where you’re so stressed that you lash out at your little sister or blank out during a test. You might cut yourself some slack and understand how to train your mind so those moments of stressed-out reactivity happen less. It will help you be better equipped throughout the college admissions process and beyond. In this chapter, let’s address Brain 101; triggers, unconscious think- ing, and brain reactions; neuroplasticity; the impact of meditation on the brain; and the teenage brain. 3132 Chapter 2 BRAIN 101 For those of you in AP biology, the next few paragraphs might be a review. Let’s take a look at the brain and how it works. (Don’t worry about memorizing this; there is no quiz.) . Your brain was designed to keep you alive so that you can keep the species going. In so doing, it prefers to keep you in the happy place of homeostasis, such as having a 98.6°F body temperature. For a long time, it was understood that your brain has a “thinking” brain and an “emotional” brain, More recently, professor and Guggenheim Fellow Lisa Feldman Barrett has revived the argument that, in fact, your brain isn’t separated in such a way.! Instead of a “lizard” brain governed by the emotional limbic system and “reasoning” brain governed by the cerebral cortex, the many various parts of your brain play multiple roles and are deeply integrated. (Disclaimer: | am not a neuroscientist by training so this is a very basic layman’s overview.”) While scientists continue to debate which parts of the brain perform what functions, it is generally accepted that a bunch of interdependent units of the brain are associated with emotional processing. These units alert you to new information that might knock your balance off, wheth- er good (smell of pizza: yay!) or bad (smell of old sneakers: yuck!). Your mind then quickly (and usually unconsciously) assesses the situa- tion based on past experiences to give it meaning and decide how to react. For example, imagine way back in the day you ran into a hungry saber-toothed tiger; parts of your brain noticed something new and big in the way and sent a message to get your heart racing, just in case you had to act. Your brain quickly remembered how a hungry saber-toothed tiger had eaten your best friend and, well, you preferred not to get eaten. So your brain gave meaning and sense to your racing heart as a signal to experience fear and got the parts of your brain associated with motor control moving so that you could... RUN! While saber-toothed tigers no longer exist, the parts of your brain that protect you from perceived threats (like a disappointed mom—RUN)) still do. Four parts of the brain that are commonly associated with this processing? in- clude: the hypothalamus, amygdala, thalamus, and hippocampus. Let’s take a peek: First is the hypothalamus, which triggers your hormones like adren- aline and plays a role in regulating your drive, need for sleep, and hunger. It also helps to regulate your autonomic nervous system (ANS), which in turn regulates the parts of your body that you don’t really have The Brain Behind the Brain 33 a lot of control over, such as your blood flow and digestion. Two parts of your ANS work together to help you survive. When your brain perceives something to be a threat, what is known as your sympathetic nervous system kicks in to manage your body so you can escape the threat, often referred to as the fight-flight-freeze response. Several things happen physiologically: your pupils dilate (see the tiger chasing you so you can RUN); you get dry mouth (ever happen in the middle of a class presentation when you want to RUN?): you breathe more heavi- ly and your heart rate goes up (more oxygen to RUN!); and you release adrenaline (energy to RUN!). On the other hand, when you don’t per- ceive any threats, your parasympathetic nervous system regulates your body to get rest. Physiologically, your bodies slow down because you don’t have to RUN. Second is the amygdala, two little knobs that act as the brain’s 911- alarm system. When a new piece of information comes in, it tells the brain to pay attention because it might need to act so that your body maintains its balance. While it traditionally has been linked with fear, the amygdala is more a signaling device, such as helping you to make sense of other people’s facial expressions and other visual cues to see if they are a threat or not.* Third is the thalamus, two big lobes that sit behind the amygdala. The thalamus acts as a relay station, directing information you take in and relaying sensory signals to appropriate areas of the body. Fourth is the hippocampus, a curve-like structure that plays a role in converting short-term memories into long-term ones. If you’re learning a new language, for example, your hippocampus helps to convert the verbs you’re cramming for a pop quiz into your longer-term memory. If you damage this part of your brain, you may remember what you did when you were five but not remember the person you just met. These four units are connected to the executive functioning area, your prefrontal cortex (PFC). Your PFC sits right behind the forehead and is responsible for higher-order executive functioning, such as pro- cessing language and information, solving problems, making decisions, and managing your behaviors in different social settings. This area is also the last to develop in the human brain. So guess what? The young- er you are, the less developed your executive functioning area is. In other words, the younger you are, the less able you are to think before you act. While this is not an excuse for bad behavior or judgment, it might offer some explanation as to why you sometimes do things that34 Chapter 2 don’t seem to make a whole lot of sense (although I doubt your teach- ers will accept this as an excuse for not doing your homework. Sorry). Throughout your brain is also a network of neurons, Neurons are cells that are responsible for your thoughts and feelings of sensations. Each neuron is made up of three key parts: the soma (the body), the dendrites (tentacle-ish extensions that branch off from the soma that transmit signals), and the axon (the tail of the neuron). What happens in your brain is that a stimulus, let’s say the smell of pizza, stimulates the dendrite. The dendrite receives this information—the smell of pizza— and if it’s strong enough, it travels through the axons, activating them and connecting them to other neurons. Of course, there are many other parts of your brain that are impor- tant to note. Ever wonder why a certain smell evokes intense memo- ries? Perhaps the smell of books brings you back to a childhood library or the smell of butterscotch candies reminds you of your grandmother's house. Your sense of smell is processed by the olfactory bulb, which Starts at the nose and goes to the bottom of your brain. This area is connected directly to the amygdala and the hippocampus. Both of these areas are associated with sense-making and memory. So want to im- print a memory? Smell it. TRIGGERS, UNCONSCIOUS THINKING, AND BRAIN REACTIONS Our complex brain structures give us information as to why we react to things the way we do—and sometimes, overreact. Let’s take a look at the amygdala hijack, unconscious thinking, and left-right brain activity. First, your brain gets triggered—a lot. Triggers are a stimulation of some sort that evoke a response. Your brain can be triggered by stimuli happening outside of you (a speeding bus that startles you) or some- thing internal (a memory that sinks your stomach). When your amygda- la notices something that might disturb your body’s desire for equilib- rium, it goes into action and tries to send a message to your prefrontal cortex in hopes that it can make sense out of it and send a message back to your amygdala to tell it how to appropriately respond. For example, a graded paper with a red D on it might trigger your amygdala to get your heart to beat faster. If your brain interprets the racing heart as an indication that your identity as a “smart” person has been threatened, you may experience the emotion of anxiety. But if you pause, your The Brain Behind the Brain 35 brain may be able to sort out that neither your racing heart—nor the grade—is a threat. If your amygdala is happily talking to your PFC, the conversation might go something like this: Amygdala: Oh my gosh—a D! Never seen this before! | have to get the heart moving fast because our identity is being threatened, and we need to escape this threat! PFC: Take a breath, It’s not the grade we'd hoped for, but let’s take a look to see what we can learn from it. We're going to be fine. Amygdala: Whew, OK, it’s not the end of the world. Let me slow the heart rate and calm down. However, sometimes, you can get so triggered that the communica- tion channel between your amygdala and PFC gets short-circuited and your amygdala takes over. The message never gets properly communi- cated to your PFC, and you go into fight-flight-freeze mode, often known as the amygdala hijack, where you “can’t think straight.” So instead of that civil conversation between your amygdala and your PFC, the conversation might go something like this: Amygdala: Oh my gosh—a D! Never seen this before! I have to get the heart moving fast because our identity is being threatened, and we need to escape this threat! Amygdala: You're a failure, you’re never going to get into college, you’re going to end up penniless and homeless and no one will love This ever happened to you? The good news is that emotional regulation can help you reframe what is happening and open those channels of communications. Second, your mind makes all sorts of decisions without you even being conscious of them. “Of the 10 million bits of information that each of our brains process each second, only about 50 bits are devoted to deliberate thought—in other words, 0.0005%.”* Your mind doesn’t have the capacity to be conscious about every decision you make; instead, it “leaves it up to our unconscious to make the vast majority of36 Chapter 2 choices about our behaviors.”® Your decisions are usually a mixture of both logic and intuition—your gut feelings. Regardless of how many pros and cons you list, you’re influenced by your instinct as to which response “feels” right, regardless of whether you end up there or not. Third, different parts of our brains get activated depending on whether we are experiencing positive or negative emotions. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies suggest that your left and right brains engage differently with specific emotions. If you’re having a grand day, let’s say winning the 200-meter sprint or being elected class president, your left hemisphere is activated more, enhancing feel- ings of sociability and joy. If you’re having a not-so-grand day, let’s say receiving a disappointing test grade or finding out that you’ve been cut from the spring musical, it’s your right hemisphere that lights up, with accompanying feelings of isolation, fear, and depression. Given your brain structure, is there anything you can do to help your amygdala and PFC have better conversations with each other or to be more aware of your unconscious thinking? Yes. NEUROPLASTICITY Neuroplasticity is the capacity of your brain to change in its structure and function in response to experience. Just like you can build up different muscles depending on what type of exercise you do, science suggests that you can actually change the strength of information flow depending on what you pay more or less attention to. This phenomenon may help you with memory and learning, and even in recovery from brain injuries. Your brain has its biggest growth when you’re a wee little baby and when you’re a teenager, but it doesn’t just stop changing and growing (or shrinking) the rest of your life. What you pay attention to, you strengthen. Remember neurons? The spaces between neurons where specialized connections are transmitted are the synapses. With neuroplasticity, you might actually change the number of synapses you have or the structure of target cells. The brain can also build synaptic connections—the strength and flow of communication between neurons—by “sprouting” (growing) or “pruning” (losing) the number and complexity of den- drites. Where your neurons fire a lot, you might develop more synapses or neurons with longer or more complex networks of dendrites with receptors that are more sensitized to certain stimuli. Where they are not The Brain Behind the Brain 37 used, you may end up with shorter and simpler neurons with less- sensitive receptors, or you may even lose the entire neuron if it is no longer needed. Where your neurons fire, they rewire. What you don’t use, you lose. Neuroplasticity is particularly noted with people who have suffered brain injuries. If you have ever had a concussion or know someone who has, it’s not easy bouncing back. If your brain didn’t have the capacity to rewire itself, you would never recover. Moreover, if you keep your brain active and focused now, your brain may shrink less—and more slowly—as you age. IMPACT OF MEDITATION ON THE BRAIN Given the way your brain works, is there anything you can do to get it to work in your favor? Yes. Mindfulness meditation is one tool to use to focus your attention. In a meta-study of twenty studies conducted by the University of British Columbia and the Chemnitz University of Technology, researchers found at least eight different regions of the brain impacted by meditation. One area is the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), located behind the brain’s frontal lobe, which is associated with your ability to direct attention, behavior, and self-regulation. Medita- tors demonstrate a greater ability to resist distractions and regulate their emotions and impulses. Another area is where cortisol, your stress hormone, finds receptors. Mindfulness strengthens the part of the brain’s capacity for resilience to stress. Researchers have also found a correlation between mindfulness training and a thickening of the gray matter in your brain, cortical structures, associated with attention, working memory, empathy, self- reflection, and regulation.’ A 2014 study showed that an eight-week practice of mindfulness meditation, known as mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), increased the gray matter concentration in different parts of the brain associated with greater psychological well-being.’ In a study of fourteen K-12 mindfulness training programs, not only did students demonstrate benefits in attention and memory but their teach- ers who implemented the programs also benefited by being better able to handle work-related stress and having improved executive-function- ing ability. Regular mindfulness practices may boost IQ and EI. In particular, mindfulness meditation can affect the parts of your brain related to how aware you are of your body, how you regulate your38 Chapter 2 emotions, your sense of self, your capacity for complex thinking, and even your tolerance for pain. For example, meditators see changes in the frontopolar cortex—the part of the brain related to complex, high- er-order behavior—enhancing meta-awareness (your ability to notice when your awareness wanders and to bring it back); sensory cortices and insula—enhancing body awareness (your ability to notice what your body is trying to tell you about what you're feeling); hippocam- pus—enhancing capacity for the processing of memory; anterior cin- gulate cortex, midcingulate cortex, orbitofrontal cortex—enhancing your ability to regulate your emotions; and superior longitudinal fas- ciculus and corpus callosum—enhancing the communication between the two hemispheres of your brain.® In particular, mindfulness training is consistently linked with alterations in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), which helps you to self-regulate so you’re not flying off the handle. On tests of self-regulation, for example, those who regularly meditate “demonstrate superior performance . . . resisting distractions and making correct answers more often than nonmeditators,” !© Your brain also has only so much capacity to hold cognitive re- sources; it simply can’t hold all the information that is coming at it. Mindfulness has been shown to support attentional efficiency, in other words, helping your brain to more economically utilize its limited re- sources. One phenomenon, attentional control, refers to how your brain directs attention appropriately, even though there are many demands competing for your attention. Emerging studies Suggest that “mindful- ness has been associated with improved attentional stability (sustaining attention on a current target with less mind-wandering), better control of attention (selecting appropriate targets from among a field of poten- tial targets), and attentional efficiency (economical use and allocation of attentional resources).”!! It has also been associated with flexible cognition, your brain’s ability to adapt to new or novel perspectives— great news for your creativity abilities. Jonathan Kabat-Zinn’s research suggests that meditation and mind- fulness training can increase activation on the left frontal activity of the brain, associated with the capability to approach problems and situa- tions with greater resilience. '? Other studies show that meditation can reduce effects of stress on working memory capacity, which enables us to learn information and make wise decisions. "3 Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson argue that meditation can lead to new characteristics that endure beyond the practice and alter our traits, shaping “how we behave in our daily lives, not just during or The Brain Behind the Brain 39 immediately after we meditate.”'* If we are under constant stress and perceived threat, our amygdala is on constant high alert, gets enlarged, and becomes more easily triggered. Brain scans of people with years of ongoing stressful work histories reveal enlarged amygdalas and weak- ened connections with the PFC.!5 The researchers note that even your working memory—your ability to hold information that you need— requires executive functioning and is compromised. !¢ Awareness practices can help counter this. You don’t, however, need to devote years to training. In fact, stud- ies have shown that even eight weeks of mindfulness-based stress re- duction (MBSR) training can improve attention and give you greater attention to consciously select attention. Mindful meditation may also help you build resilience. Consider this: You have been given five minutes to prepare for a presentation but, before that time is up, your pen and paper are taken away. Then you have to deliver a five-minute presentation as if you were interview- ing for a job while all the judges are staring at you stone-faced. Next, you have five minutes to complete a math problem. This is known as the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST), one of the most reliable ways to trigger your brain’s stress circuits. If you’re like most people, you will struggle mightily on that math test. Studies have shown that parti pants who undergo mindful meditation training have lower levels of cortisol, or stress hormones, during the test. In other words, they were better able to regulate and balance their emotions during these difficult challenges.'? They were also able to tolerate and recover from the stress more quickly after the test was completed. Mindfulness practices may also increase your capacity to hold in- formation. Attentional blink is when “the mind’s ability to notice goes blind and attention loses sensitivity.”!8 We can get so caught up in one area that we miss what else goes on because humans are terrible at multitasking. Most of us are switching from activity to activity. On the other hand, if we build our cognitive control, we can “focus on a specific goal or task and keep it mind while resisting distractions.”'? This helps us to actually expend less effort in trying to stay focused. In other words, “the brain of a novice works hard while that of the expert expends little energy.”2° But even beginners to meditation with as little as two weeks of practice show less amygdala reactivity to stress, greater focus, less mind-wandering, and better memory.?! Certainly, long-term meditators see even greater benefits, such as lowered reactivity to stress, lower40 Chapter 2 levels of the stress hormone (cortisol) and inflammation, and stronger prefrontal circuits to manage distress. Meditators who practice compas- sion may see greater neural attunement with those who are suffering and enhanced ability to do something to help. When it comes to atten- tion, benefits include: stronger selective and sustained attention, height- ened readiness to respond to whatever arises, and decreased attentional blink, mind-wandering, self-obsessed thoughts. It can also help you shift to a slower breath rate, indicting a slowing of the metabolic rate. ”? THE TEENAGE BRAIN Before you celebrate that you can lifehack your way into hyperfocus, remember this: Your brain isn’t fully developed yet when you’re a teenager, even if you’re valedictorian. Because you do not have as much activity in your frontal lobes as adults do, you are less able to make sense of all the stimuli coming at you or to solve problems as readily. As such, some of you might not yet be ready for college-level courses (I’m sure you and your parents don’t want to hear this). Moreover, your sense of identity is still being formed so there is a constant “endeavor to define, over-define and redefine [yourself], and each other in ruthless comparison.”?5 One day you have blue hair, the next no hair. Guess what? Your teenage brain is trying to figure it out. Your brain is adaptable and moldable, and this is one of she most critical times of your life when your brain is going to make, reinforce, or get rid of neural connections. If you are chronically anxious, you risk elevated levels of stress hormones, which then have a “domino effect that hardwires pathways between the hippocampus and the amygdala in a way that might create a vicious cycle by creating a brain that becomes predisposed to be in a constant state of fight-or-flight.”4 You might think that it’s OK to have some anxiety now and that it will go away in college, but the science suggests that the greater occurrence of your anxiety, the more likely that your brain may alter into a default mode primed for chronic anxiety with a greater chance of a lifelong tendency for depression and anxiety. Goleman even posed that “how popular a child was in third grade has been shown to be a better predictor of mental-health problems at age eighteen than anything else,”?5 including 1Q scores and even psychological tests. A child who faces ostracism or bullying may suffer longer-term mental health implications. Those who are constantly fearful of failure and overly sensitive to stress may “sim- The Brain Behind the Brain 41 ply tolerate the humiliation and shame associated with what they expe- rience as repeated failures [but] with their increasingly depressive mind-sets, some contemplate suicide.”?6 By being more aware of your awareness, known as meta-awareness, you may be more able handle these internal and external triggers. Do- ing so can help you strengthen your cognitive control during a particu- larly intense period of your life. So don’t despair. It’s normal to have emotions sometimes get the best of you. There are tools you can learn to better regulate them.Chapter Three Educating My Emotions Have you ever started crying when you see other people cry? Have you ever “snapped” and said something mean to someone and then regret- ted it later? If you’ve answered “yes,” congratulations—you’re a hu- man being. Let’s take a look at the teenage brain and emotions, the competen- cies of emotional intelligence and balance, the role of the body in offering information about emotions, and the role that sleep and digital addiction play in emotional intelligence and balance. YOUR BRAIN CAN'T HELP IT You're born with a lot more neurons than you’ ll need in life. Over time, your brain goes through a process of “pruning” whereby it discards the neural connections that you don’t use. It also strengthens the ones that you do use. While this happens throughout your life, your brain goes through two major times of growth—the first is from birth to about three years of age, and the second is when you're about thirteen or fourteen years old. Remember your friend the amygdala (the brain’s 911-threat detec- tor)? The amygdala alerts your brain to information it needs to know so that it can prepare your body accordingly. Threat? Run! Reward? Cele- brate! Since, from an evolutionary and developmental perspective, the amygdala develops faster than the prefrontal cortex (PFC), this means 4344 Chapter 3 that as a teenager, your primary response to the world is often “driven by emotion, not reason.”! For example, if you get the “happy feels” from social acceptance (most of us do) or when you earn a great grade (most of us do), parts of your brain light up and say, “more please!” That may also mean that if you get a good feeling by doing something foolish, you might still go for it even if it’s not the wisest thing to do. For example, if your friends tell you to steal a shirt from the store because “it’s cool,” there may be a part of your prefrontal cortex that says, “dude, not a good idea!” But the other part of your brain that wants to be accepted says, “but these people will like you more,” so you might slip that shirt under your jacket. Or if you get an adrenaline rush from speeding on the highway, the executive decision-making part of your brain may not be as quick to kick in and so you risk your life and the lives of others around you by going 75 in a 60 mph zone. It might explain how 70 percent of the 13,000 teen deaths each year result from car crashes, unintentional juries, homicide, and suicide. It isn’t that you’re not able to distin- guish what's risky or safe. It’s that you might not be as able to make the right choice in the moment. The neurocognitive skills needed for critical and analytical think- ing—what you need to get into and thrive in college—lie in the pre- frontal cortex (PFC), which, of course, is the area which develops last.> The PFC is associated with learning and mastering modulating skills, and it doesn’t even fully develop until a person is in their mid-to-late twenties—for some, into their thirties. So if you find yourself having a hard time managing your high sensitivity to stimuli, or even keeping up with organizing your schedules, your backpack, and your room, your brain might have something to do with it. (Next time your teacher asks, “Where’s your brain?!” when you do something idiotic, you can re- spond with some accuracy that your PFC isn’t quite ripe yet.) Your desire to get the “good feels” may take precedence over your rational- ity. TEENAGE DREAM: WHY ARE YOU SO SENSITIVE? Have you ever spent an entire day or week ruminating about why that girl from English class walked by you without smiling? Was it some- thing you said? Something you wore? Has she now gone and told her friends to exclude you from the lunch table? Chances are that she didn’t Educating My Emotions 45 even notice she wasn’t smiling at you; chances are she was too worried about why you were staring at her. And off both of you go down the rabbit hole, creating stories about the other. Your identity is being formed. This process. as you know, is not casy. The teen brain is more sensitive to external and internal stimuli. You are intensely evaluating yourself by what others say. You are constantly comparing yourself to others to understand. You are self- conscious about your self-worth, your body, your voice. It’s not easy, but it’s normal. This ongoing sense-making may impact how you feel about someone else or even influence what you're guessing someone else is feeling. For example, imagine you see a classmate down the hall. If you’re holding a warm cup of coffee, you might have warmer, fuzzi- er feelings toward them and even feel more generous toward them. If, on the other hand, you’re holding an iced coffee, you’re more likely to have cooler, distant feelings toward them and perhaps feel less inclined to be generous.‘ In other words, how you react or what emotions you experience toward someone may have nothing to do with them. As much as we like to think we are logical, thinking creatures, we're strongly influenced by how we feel. Scientists continue to dis- cover new things every day about emotions and how they work in the brain. According to professor Lisa Feldman Barrett’s theory of con- structed emotions, emotions are not expressed or even recognized uni- versally. Rather, they are embedded in social and cultural realities. This theory poses that your brain is constantly trying to make sense of what’s happening externally (contextually) and internally (physio- logically) and to guess what will happen next based on previous experi- ences to help you achieve a certain goal. In so doing, you brain con- structs an emotion to let you know how to act. For example, suppose that your heart is racing. By itself, it’s a condition without meaning. It could simply be that you just raced up a flight of stairs. But let’s say you sit down for an exam. Your brain is trying to predict what to do to keep you alive and well given the context (exam) and what it senses (heart racing). If your previous experience was positive—the last time your heart raced during an exam, you were excited at knowing the answers and sailed through—your brain may construct an emotion of excitement. On the other hand, if you blanked on your answers the last lime, your brain may construct an emotion of fear. Either emotion gives meaning to the sensation of your racing heart to keep you alive and well (e.g., excitement > engage; fear > avoid).46 Chapter 3 As Barrett says, you are the “architect of your experience.” Emo- tions don’t happen to you; you create them. In other words, you have more control over your emotions than you think. Multiple parts of your brain engage to constantly construct emotions in the moment so it really is your whole brain at work. Stanford’s James Gross studies emotions and suggests that they can be both our best allies and worst enemies. In general, we tend to regulate our emotions in two ways. The first method is suppression, where we try and just pretend they aren’t happening. Have you ever needed a good cry because something really upset you or made you sad, and a well-intentioned friend or family member said, “oh, stop crying, let’s get some ice cream instead!” or perhaps you pretended that you weren’t upset and slapped on a plastic smile over the hurt like a Band-Aid over a gaping hole? When we try to minimize and pretend like this, we actually are not addressing the issue at hand. What usually happens is the opposite of what we’re hoping for because suppressing can actually diminish a person’s ability to be resil- ient, to solve problems, or to build a sense of self-efficacy and self- esteem. Instead of successfully squishing them away, we can actually stimulate our sympathetic nervous system, triggering our fight-flight- freeze response and lessening our cognitive capacity for memory. Ac- cording to research, suppression will make it harder for you to transi- tion to college with new roommates and professors and classes. Sup- pression is also associated with compromised memory and problem- solving abilities,” making exams even more difficult. For example, if you’re anxious about the upcoming SATs and you try to pretend or suppress that anxiety, you might not only be more anxious, you also may not retain information as well; consequently, you won’t do as well on the test. In other words, you might not only feel worse about the experience, your actual performance may suffer, The second way we tend to respond to our emotions is reappraisal, whereby we try to reframe our emotions and contextualize them. Stud- ies show that when we reframe, we may decrease activation of areas of the brain associated with generating emotions and, as a result, they either have a neutral or positive impact on exam performance.’ Want to do better on the SATs? Accept that anxiety and reframe your perspective on it. Instead of allowing the anxiety to cripple you, perhaps you can use it to motivate you to focus. Building your emotion- al intelligence allows you to fine-tune your emotional awareness and management to reappraise. Educating My Emotions 47 WHAT DOES THE BODY HAVE TO DO WITH IT? There is a constant feedback loop between what we experience in our bodies and what emotions we assign to these sensations considering context and previous experiences. Sometimes, we can even trick our bodies into experiencing an emotion. Try this: Hold a pencil between your upper lip and your nose. You are naturally going to frown, and if you hold that position for too long, either someone’s going to be very concerned about you and/or you might start feeling a bit angry or down. Now try this: Hold the pencil between your back teeth. You are natural- ly going to grin, and if you hold that position for a while, you might just start feeling cheerier. | Given the strong connection between your body and your emotions, the more aware you are of your body, the better you can become at managing your emotions—a key part of El. In a study known as the lowa Gambling Task, researchers gave people four decks of cards that they had to turn over one by one. They could choose from two red decks, which had little chance of winning, or two blue ones, which had better chances. One by one, participants unknowingly started favoring the blue decks, even though they weren't cognitively aware that they were doing so. It took fifty cards before participants expressed a hunch that the red cards were landmines. It took eighty cards before they could verbally articulate that idea with certainty. That is a lot of time between when the unconscious behavior got to the conscious brain. There was another twist. Participants were also hooked up to poly- graph tests to detect the uncontrollable sweat the body makes when doing something uncomfortable, like lying. On average, people’s palms started sweating by the tenth card. In other words, by the tenth card, their bodies were telling them to stay away from the red cards and, in fact, many unconsciously started to favor the blue ones. But the con- scious mind didn’t catch up until seventy more cards had been chosen.’ Your body holds a whole lot of information that your conscious brain doesn’t even know. But the more heightened awareness you have, the more able you are to manage your emotions. If someone says some- thing triggering to you, your impulse might be to react and punch them. However, if you pause, you might notice how fast your heart is beating and how hot your face feels. Knowing that you are about to blow may give you a moment to count to three, slow your breath, and cool your body temperature so that you can respond in a more effective manner.48 Chapter 3 For now, keep this in mind: The more you can bring awareness to what’s happening, the faster and better you can regulate yourself. HOW DOES MY SMARTPHONE HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT? Have you ever gotten too little sleep and the slightest thing sets you off ina bad way? Say your little sister adoringly asks you to fix her break- fast and, instead of seeing her adulation of you, you snap at her to get out of your face. Your moody reaction doesn’t mean you're a terrible human being. It means that you didn’t get enough sleep. Even tempo- rary sleep loss can lead to temporary changes in your emotional bal- ance, behavior regulation, cognition, and ability to make wise deci- sions. A 2008 published study showed that sleep loss resulted in lower EQ (emotional quotient) scores, lower intrapersonal functioning (abil- ity to have self-regard), lower interpersonal functioning (empathy to- wards others), lower stress management (ability to control impulses), and lower behavioral coping (capacity for positive thinking and ac- tion).'° In other words, when you don’t get enough sleep, you’re more of a jerk and probably a less able student. Sleep deprivation impedes your ability to pay attention to and manage your emotions. Then there is technology. You and your friends are trying to multitask; watching TV, texting while doing homework—and we now know that scientific evidence suggests that our brains are not built to multitask: No matter how well you think you are doing it, you're not. Half of teens admit that they are addicted to their mobile phones (parents aren’t much better).!! Studies show a correlation between teenagers’ addiction to technology and mental health. A longitudinal study published in 2018 of teenagers fifteen and sixteen years of age who didn’t initially demonstrate any significant ADHD symptoms showed more symptoms after twenty- four months of higher frequency of digital technology use. !2 Digital addiction also impacts relationships, safety in driving, and, of course, academics. In a 2018 survey of college students done out of San Francisco State University, researchers found that those who used their phones the most reported higher levels of depression, loneliness, isolation, and anxiety.'? You've noticed it before. You’ve walked into a lunchroom and rather than hearing people chatting, they’re all on their cell phones. The other finding the same study noted was that those Educating My Emotions 49 students who used social media the most frequently when they were in a crowd of people reported the greatest degree of loneliness. Lack of human connection impedes our ability to cultivate EI. All the pings you get on your phone and your automatic need to peek are similar to an addiction to nicotine—you get a quick flush of relief and reward, but that only leaves you wanting more. The Pavlo- vian responses our smartphones elicit from us make us beholden to an electronic device versus relying on our own agency to react and reply. For those of you stuck on Fortnite and Snapchat and other ways of “connecting,” keep this in mind—the people creating those apps you’re on usually don’t even allow their children to be online. Athena Chavar- ria, who was an executive assistant at Facebook before moving into Mark Zuckerberg’s nonprofit, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, didn’t let her children have cell phones until high school. She has been quoted as saying, “I am convinced the devil lives in our phones and is wreaking havoc on our children.”'4 This is coming from a person who works for the very company pushing you to stay on social media. Tim Cook (Apple CEO) and Bill Gates (Microsoft) limit their young family mem- bers’ social media, cell phone, and iPad use. The former CEO of Mozil- la teaches his son that such technology is done in a way to manipulate people, and it isn’t always for the positive. Digital addiction can also decrease emotional intelligence by im- mersing us in a virtual world. Many teenagers move through a “narcis- sistic bubble” where everything is about them; they ignore what others are feeling, have limited awareness of the world and people around them, and are desensitized to the plight of others. When we indulge in overusing our smartphones, we spend less time understanding our own minds and what our bodies are trying to tell us. We become more susceptible to amygdala hijacks. We may become less able to regulate our emotions or to develop the social and coping skills we need to maintain good relationships. We may not learn compassion, and we risk losing the motivation to do anything that takes us away from the comfort of a screen. Keep in mind that not all technology is bad. In a large cross-section- al study in Korea, researchers found that school performance was posi- tively associated when the internet was used for study purposes such as academic research. Unsurprisingly, the opposite was true of those who primarily used the internet for more random searches, social media, and entertainment. !550 Chapter 3 What does this all mean? By being more aware of your emotions, you can build your emotional intelligence, which is critical to your short- and long-term potential for achievement and success. It also means that you need to sleep and put that phone down—you might do better on that test, and you might also be less of a jerk to others. It can be a win-win. Chapter Four It’s Not Just About You Emotional intelligence is not a new way for you to “get in” your dream school, but it may make a difference in your future success, well-being, and happiness. It may also raise your awareness of what is important to you and why you do what you do. It may remind you that pursuing higher education is not just about earning a fancy diploma, but a worthy pursuit all its own and a pathway to becoming a more useful and contributing citizen for the betterment of society. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO MAJOR IN? You're probably getting a lot of questions: “Where do you want to go to school?” “What do you want to major in?” “What do you want to be?” While everyone around you seems to know exactly what they want to do, the “secret” part of you screams, “I have no idea!” You might be stressing out already about which medical school to attend or the investment banking job interview. You might be the one asking at the college fair, “what percentage of your graduates get into medical school?” Rein in the horses; focus on the present. For those of you who are convinced that you know what you want to study, keep in mind that in the United States only 27 percent of college graduates actually end up working in a profession that is related to what they majored in.! That means that you are extremely likely to have a career ina field that is unconnected to whatever major you choose in college. So relax and stay open-minded to the possibilities. 518 Chapter 4 The rapid change of our workforce is yet another evidence point as to why you should spend less time worrying about your major and more time understanding why you’re hoping to study in the first place. In 2013, an Oxford study estimated that by 2033, almost half (47 per- cent) of all jobs are going to be obsolete due to technological ad- vances.? Without an education to Prepare you for whatever may come, you might also become obsolete. If your goal is to become an actuary, you might believe that the only major you should focus on is account- ing. But how can you be sure that the future of actuarial work will look as it does now? You can’t be. To be truly ready for the unexpected, you need to build your El and resilience. WHY IS HIGHER EDUCATION GOOD FOR YOUR BANK ACCOUNT AND YOUR WELL-BEING? You probably know at your core that you’re not pushing yourself to get the As just to buy the university bumper sticker for bragging rights. At some level (even though it might not seem like it sometimes), your folks push you to pursue higher education because they understand that getting a good education will prepare you for a better future and help you to contribute something worthy to the world. According to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, 84 percent of Americans believe that higher education is important in order to get ahead.> The Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that with every level of education, average income rises (except for those with PhDs) and un- employment drops. In 2017, 4.6 percent of those with a high school diploma were unemployed, versus 1.5 percent of those with a profes- sional or doctorate degree. Those with a high school diploma earn an average of $712 a week compared with $1,836 for those with a profes- sional degree. Those with a bachelor’s degree earn an average of $1,173 with an unemployment rate of 2.5 percent.* Project that over your lifetime, and you’re more likely to recoup your costs and then some as opposed to going straight to full-time work after high school. If you're a college graduate, you're going to earn $1.2 million more over a lifetime of employment compared to nongraduates.* You're more likely to have job security. You're 72 percent more likely to have retirement benefits and you'll contribute more in taxes, You're far less It’s Not Just About You 53 likely to live in poverty—statistics contrast 15 percent of those with a high school diploma in this category versus 4 percent of college gradu- ates.’ A report from the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown showed that 95 percent of jobs created from 2010 to 2016 went to Americans with more than a high school education. At the same time, those with a bachelor’s degree gained 4.6 million jobs com- pared to 80,000 for high school graduates.’ Going to college means you're more likely to have a job in the future. You’re more likely to live with greater stability, which may allow you to be of greater service to others. There are also nonmonetary benefits to the pursuit of higher educa- tion. You are 44 percent more likely to enjoy better physical health.? In a study of fifteen countries, a thirty-year-old man who has a college education is expected to live eight years longer than one who does not.!° If you go to college, you’re 17 percent less likely to smoke, thus decreasing your risk of cancer.'! You're less likely to be obese, which reduces your risk of death due to various conditions associated with obesity. You’re more likely to wear your seat belt, exercise, and go to the doctor. You're 47 percent more likely to have health insurance. You're 4.9 times less likely to go to jail.'2 You’re more likely to be a strong communicator and critical thinker. You’re more likely to enjoy better mental and emotional health, and positive relationships, which might also be why you’re 21 percent more likely to be married, and 61 percent less likely to be divorced or separated. !> What about benefits right now? The College Board, responsible for your SATs, articulates that the benefits that may help you now include the realization of passions, greater meaning and purpose of work, sense of accomplishment, personal development, well-being, and happiness. WHY IS HIGHER EDUCATION GOOD FOR SOCIETY? This might also be a good time to ask yourself: Are you pursuing higher education for the sake of learning, for the corner office, or maybe for a bit of both? Or is there something more to this frenzied push for a shot at the top universities? It is easy at this point to be so caught up in the details of which school to attend (urban? rural? public? private?), which major to choose (biology? business?), or which SAT subject tests to take (French? Eng- lish?) that you forget to ask yourself why you're putting yourself54 Chapter 4 through all this stress. It might seem to you that the only thing your family, teachers, and peers care about is that you get into the “right” school. It’s almost as if your job is to get into a particular college. Your own “why” and your own motivation for higher education seem to be irrelevant in a game to grab the Ivy ring. You're not alone. Whereas 58 percent of adults identify job prospects as the primary motivator for a college degree, only 23 percent report it is for the pursuit of knowl- edge.!4 The pursuit of learning is not just about you, however. Aristotle argued that education is a moral obligation for the well-being of indi- viduals and society. John Dewey noted it is to prepare young people to live a useful life in practical ways, and “to cultivate deep-seated and effective habits of discriminating tested beliefs from mere assertions, guesses, and opinions . . . and to ingrain into the individual’s working habits methods of inquiry and reasoning appropriate to the various problems that present themselves.”!5 UNESCO presents education as “a means to empower children and adults to become active participants in the transformation of their societies.” Society benefits from the pursuit of knowledge. You don’t live in a bubble. From school shootings to government inefficiencies, there are big issues that need your and your peers’ contributions to address. These big issues require a broad and diverse representation of expertise and experience. In a Knight Foundation/Newseum Institute study, less than a quarter of those surveyed believe Americans are good at seeking out differing views.'’ Education is critical for preparing us to under- stand how to approach controversy with deliberation and critical think- ing, and for fostering our abilities to argue and debate different points of view with more fully developed communication and analytical skills, thereby enhancing the lives of everyone in society. As professor Anne Bert Dijikstra said, to create “a peaceful, strong and vibrant society, differences can only exist if there is sufficient common ground.”!§ Author Lorelle Espinosa makes the case that re- gardless of politics, “higher education can lead to a more folerant soci- ety.” '° She shares the example of Derek Black, godson to David Duke and heir to a white nationalist movement. Black was on his way to becoming the next voice of white supremacy when he went to study at New College of Florida, a liberal arts school, to study medieval Euro- pean history and German. There he met a classmate, an Orthodox Jew, who invited him to Shabbat dinner, and that was the beginning of his transformation supporting multiculturalism.2° we a It's Not Just About You THE GREATER PURPOSE OF HIGHER EDUCATION Hopefully, one of the reasons that you’re pursuing higher education is to be a contributing member of society. Many of you will write your college essays on how you want to “save the world,” with evidence from your volunteer hours. For a few of you, volunteering is done to “look good,” rather than for genuine purposes. The reality is that col- lege admissions officers can “sniff out” inauthenticity. They are trying to determine whether you sense that there is something bigger than you, and whether you are bringing meaning and purpose to their univer- sities. Father of positive psychology Martin Seligman offers insight into how having a larger sense of purpose and meaning is important to sustained well-being. Seligman argues that there are three types of “happy lives” that give us some sort of pleasure and joy. These three lives include: the “pleasant life’—having those things that give us pleasure such as a fancy car or ice cream; the “good life”’—having a sense of engagement and flow with our work and values; and the “meaningful life’—having a sense of purpose larger than ourselves and which leverages our strengths. While these lives may intersect, they may not. For example, you might one day decide to join the Peace Corps. During this time, you might not have easy access to running water, But the work you are doing is extremely meaningful to you. Those who pursue higher education are more likely to find them- selves living the good and/or meaningful life. Partly it is because, as we have learned, they have greater financial freedom to pursue what brings them meaning, and partly it is because they will have spent time with peers and professors grappling with ideas as to what might be possible. When admissions officers ask about your service or civic engage- ment, they are not counting your hours or asking you to simply check off a box. They want to learn how much you think about other people and want to make a real difference. Top colleges are not looking for the straight-A student whose primary focus for college is a fancy diploma. If they were, these institutions would be full of self-serving individuals, and you probably wouldn’t want to study at such a cutthroat, unhappy place. You likely would rather surround yourself with people who are excited about creating and innovating to help others, and who are en- thusiastic about supporting each other. Studies show that the pursuit of higher learning impacts how one sees one’s responsibility as a citizen. The Organization for Economic56 Chapter 4 Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that the more education people have, the more likely they are to vote, volunteer, and take part in community and political affairs. In twenty-seven OECD countries, 80 percent of college graduates reported a willingness to vote compared to 54 percent of those who had not completed upper secondary educa- tion.! In the 2012 U.S. presidential elections, 73 percent of college graduates voted as compared to 42 percent of high school graduates. College graduates are also twice as likely to be more knowledgeable about current political issues (45% versus 21% of high school gradu- ates)? and 3.2 times more likely to serve in a leadership role in com- munity, religious, and service organizations. 3 College graduates'are more likely to volunteer (42% versus 17% of high school graduates). They are also more likely to be employed in the nonprofit sector and 3.4 times more likely to give to charities. 25 Those who give not only tend to serve a broader community, they also seem to be happier individuals. In his book, Give and Take, Adam Grant actually found that people fall into the three main categories: those who like to give more than get; those who like to take more than they give; and those who like to give appropriately without self-sacri- fice. He found that givers were the most successful, even in the most cutthroat of environments. A giver who gives too much may compro- mise their well-being. But successful givers are able to mitigate nega- tive impact on themselves when they recognize the bigger impact they have on others. They tend to have more suppértive networks, inspire those around them, and gain the most out of negotiations due to their generosity, collaboration, and ability to motivate others.2° Research shows that caring for and helping others reduces the negative impact of stress. This may be attributed to the fact that when we care for others, we release oxytocin, the hormone behind maternal behaviors, which helps to reduce the release of cortisol. University of British Columbia researchers even found that acts of kindness helped to reduce social anxiety.?” Additionally, working with others for the betterment of society may offer you a healthy sense of humility. You may be more open to admit- ting what you don’t know and more curious and motivated to learn from others. You may more willing to forgo the perfect GPA for the pursuit of a fascinating research project. While you may very well end up as valedictorian, if all you do is focus on yourself, you may also experience great stress and not-so-great relationships. It's Not Just About You 37 When you start pursuing knowledge for the sake of learning and making a positive impact on others, you actually may end up doing better. Stanford researcher Tenelle Porter noted that the lack of intellec- tual humility stymies discovery, learning, and focus, finding that “the more intellectually humble students were more motivated to learn and more likely to use effective metacognitive strategies.” ?* In other words, those who believed themselves to be super smart actually took fewer chances to discover, had less motivation to learn, and showed less focus. Those who were more willing to appreciate how their intellectu- al life connected to something bigger than themselves actually earned higher test scores. ‘The pursuit of higher education carries with it a responsibility and opportunity not to be squandered. Some of you may have heard of Mister Rogers. He believed that those who are more generous are hap- pier, and those who are happier are healthier. In his commencement speech at Dartmouth College the year after 9/11, Mister Rogers didn’t tell the newly minted Ivy graduates they had now “made it,” but spoke instead about their larger responsibilities: I'm talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever sce or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed.29 Mister Rogers made a point that education instills a sense of greater responsibility to leverage love and justice to make the world a better place.