Dr Paul Brown, Faculty Professor at Monarch Business School in

Switzerland, explained this to me. He had noticed that these ten behaviours not only work; they work every time.

He said that the reason for this dependable quality of thinking is that generative attention, uncorrupted and sustained, calms the brain’s amygdala, the emotional ‘control centre’ of the brain, producing hormones like serotonin and oxytocin. These hormones then ‘bathe’ the cortex, the cognitive ‘control centre’ of the brain, allowing a perfect interplay between these ‘approach’ hormones and cognition. And because the listener’s attention doesn’t waver, and we know it Wont, the amygdala stays calm, and thought-disturbing hormones like cortisol and adrenaline stay at bay.

And consider this, too: praise, appreciation, expressions of respect – all

develop human thinking. They unwrap confidence and let it saturate talent and will and buds of ability. You know this. Every time someone mentions a quality they admire in you, you do even better at just about everything for a while. And you feel good. And you think better.

And that’s the point. That good-feeling phenomenon is a good-thinking

phenomenon. So says the chemistry at least. Appreciate someone and, as with attention, the hormones in their brain change. Oxytocin, serotonin and dopamine dash around their cortex; and before they know it, they think better and better. We have noticed this repeatedly in all of our work.

So what’s the problem? Why don’t we do it more? It’s not that difficult. We can just notice what is good and say it. That’s it.

In fact, the next time you are with a human being, anywhere at all, notice

something you respect about them, or like about them, or just think is a plus for that moment, and tell them. Even strangers. Their day will change, and when they start to think about something, they’ll be better at it.

Most important is that feelings are so interwoven with thinking that to allow one and not the other is to diminish both. We can listen to words and we can listen to tears. It is all the same thing. I know that at the moment the world of brain talk is full of the separation of these two systems. But that will pass soon enough, just as almost all efforts at human compartmentalization have. Life is enough, just as almost all efforts at human compartmentalization have. Life is everything all at once. Even space is stuff that hugs us. Life is one lavish act of touching. Thinking and feeling are no exceptions. So we can rejoice.

And when someone is thinking along and starts to cry, let’s just be glad they felt psychologically safe enough with us to do that. And then watch the fresh thinking that follows. And the bright eyes that say so.

Nowadays, many of us are knowledge workers, and we use our brains to do the heavy lifting. The brain is a very energy-hungry organ. Of the roughly two thousand calories we consume a day, five hundred go to running our brains. That’s astonishing: the brain represents only about 2 percent of our body weight, and yet it takes up 25 percent of the energy we consume every day. It’s no wonder that the way we invest our attention is critical to whether or not we feel high or low energy.

2: Why Relationships Matter

“These feelings, big and small, are connected to biological processes. Just as our brain responds to the presence of food in our bellies by rewarding us with pleasure sensations, so does it respond to positive contact with others. The brain effectively says to us: Yes, more of this, please. Positive interaction tells our bodies that we are safe, reducing our physical arousal and increasing our sense of well-being. By contrast, negative experiences and interactions create a sense that we are in danger and stimulate us to produce stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones are part of a cascade of physical reactions that raise alertness and help us respond to situations of critical importance—the “fight or flight” response. They are a big part of what gives us that feeling of stress.