Stephen Shapiro explains how an overactive dorsolateral prefrontal cortex suppresses creativity and performance. He recommends quieting it through hot tubs, showers, naps, or meditation to let insights emerge, and suggests keeping a notepad nearby to capture them.
Chapters
Good morning, everyone. It's Steve Shapiro. You may be wondering why I'm in a hot tub this morning. Well, it's to make a point. I want to talk about the brain a little bit. So there's a part of the brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and it's a pretty useful part of the brain because its purpose in life is to basically judge things, assess things and analyze things, and make a lot of the decisions that we make. And as innovators and in life, if we didn't have this part of the brain, we would be in pretty big trouble. The unfortunate thing about it is when it is activated and alive, it basically crowds out and crushes other parts of the brain. And so our ability to be creative, for example, is diminished as that's activated. And athletes also happen to know that if they start thinking too much during anything they're doing, they'll literally choke, which chokes the neural pathways to the cerebellum, which is where they store the movements of any practice thing that they've done. If they're a golfer and they practice a putt a thousand times, as soon as they start activating the prefrontal cortex, they choke because they choke those pathways to these predators reprogram things. So there are things we can solve through judgment, and there's things that can't be solved through analysis. And for the things that can't be solved through analysis, which is a lot of things like creativity and insight, well, these are the things that we need to quiet the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. How do we do that? Well, there's a lot of different ways. And I know that all of you from experience know there are certain things that work well for you. So, for example, some people love yoga or meditation. Other people get a lot of great insights in the shower. In fact, I have a waterproof pad of paper in my shower so that I can write things down if I happen to get a great insight. Maybe it's while you're waking up or falling asleep. So it's always good to have a pad of paper by your bedside table. For me personally, I get my best insights in a hot tub. You don't hear the bubbles right now because I turned them off so that I could at least record this and you could hear me properly. But there's something for me about sitting in bubbling hot water, especially first thing in the morning, six o' clock in the morning, to start my day. It really just sort of grounds me and gets me very level set. And it helps me be in a much better place for the rest of the day. And ask yourself if you're struggling to come up with a solution to something, or if you just can't seem to get that insider breakthrough you're looking for, don't work harder because that's just going to activate that prefrontal cortex more. Instead, try to find ways of quieting your brain. Find a place where you can go do whatever works for you. Might be a hot tub, might be a nap, might be yoga, could be meditation. Whatever it is that works for you, give that a try. And I promise you that you're going to start seeing things you haven't seen before. Quiet your mind and listen to that quiet mind, and all of a sudden, some of these insights will come to you. So. So maybe I'll see you in a hot tub sometime soon. We'd have some pretty amazing conversations, as I always do when I'm in a hot tub. So have a great day. Start it off the right way. And until next time, this is Steve Shapiro.
