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the other. So it's often in charge.

Neurologists studying brain disorders have discovered remarkable behaviors. In one case,

a woman suffered from severe short-term memory loss. Anything more than five minutes

old never happened. Every morning, she woke up with no recollection of anything less

than a year or two ago. She knew her name and her distant past, but nothing recent.

(Similar to the plot of the great movie Memento.)

Each day, she'd visit her doctor. He would shake her hand, reintroduce himself, and they

would start over. One day, in a fairly unethical experiment, he put a thumbtack in his

hand. When they shook hands, she was pinched. It hurt. He explained to her what he had

done, and of course, an hour later she had forgotten all about it.

The next day, though, when the doctor extended his hand, she flinched. How did she

know about the thumbtack? Her short-term memory was clearly gone. She wasn't faking.

And yet, she remembered enough to avoid the pain.

This was her amygdala at work. It has its own memory, its own survival system in place.

The lizard brain stands by, jumping into action whenever basic survival needs are at

stake. And when it is aroused, the other part of our brain stands little chance, particularly

if we haven't trained it for these events.

And so, the conflict. The conflict between what feels good now and what we ought to do.

This explains how someone with throat cancer can persist in smoking, or how an obese

person who clearly knows better can persist in eating "just one more doughnut." In the

face of greed or fear from the amygdala, an untrained person surrenders.

Sales resistance? Why is it that some salespeople put in years of training, hours of effort,

thousands of dollars in travel expenses and then leave without the sale, while others push

through to reach the last (profitable) part and walk out with the order? That's the two

brains again, the amygdala fleeing the moment that it feels threatened.

Weak managers? Why is it that so many bosses shy away from useful criticism or

substantive leadership? Why is it so easy to hide behind an office door or a title instead of

looking people in the eye and making a difference? Same answer. The amygdala resists

looking people in the eye, because doing so is threatening and exposes it to risk.

Deadlines? Surely you know someone who is late all the time. Someone who can't deliver

anything of value unless they've stalled so much they've created an urgency, an

emergency that requires mind-blowing effort and adrenaline to deliver. This is not

efficient or reliable behavior, and yet they persist. The reason is simple: they can't push

through the common fear of completion unless they can create a greater fear of total

failure. The lizard brain is impulsive, but for these people, it's also capable of choosing

the greater risk and avoiding it.

In fact, if we go down the list of behaviors that are highly valued because of their

scarcity, almost all of them are related to bringing a conscious and generous mind to the

work, instead of indulging our lizard brain's reflexes of fear, revenge, and conquest.

(Eye Contact and the Lizard Brain)

The Rotterdam Zoo now distributes special eyeglasses for visitors to the gorilla area.

The glasses are sort of like the 3D glasses from the movies, except that they don't change

what you see. They change what the gorilla sees. They have a picture painted on them of

your eyes looking to the side.

This way, when you are near the gorillas, it doesn't look like you're making eye contact

with them. Which is threatening. Which freaks the gorillas out and has led to attacks.

Eye contact, all by itself, is enough to throw your lizard brain into a tizzy. Imagine how

scary it must be to set out to do something that will get you noticed, or perhaps even

criticized.

There's a reason that the number-one fear reported by most people is public speaking.

Public speaking is one of the worst things the lizard brain