Susan Britton explains how your brain's anterior midcingulate cortex grows when you do hard things you resist, not when you do things you love. This brain region expansion links to better health, longevity, and what neuroscientist Andrew Huberman calls a stronger will to live.
Your comment about the confidence often comes after, um, the idea— one of my favorite neuroscience podcasts is Andrew Huberman. I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with him. And one of the things that I learned really stayed with me from his training or his teaching was this, um, part of the brain called the anterior midcingulate cortex. You don't have to memorize that. Who cares what it is? It's there. And they've studied it, and they found that it grows in people that are successful with things like, um, dieting and discipline and different kinds of, of new habits, um, that are hard to do, that, that were hard for them to do. And they found that the— this part of the brain grows when you do the, the stuff that you don't want to do. So, um, his example is like, if you love doing a whole bunch of reps until failure, that's not going to grow your mid, um, cingulate cortex. If you do stuff that you don't love doing, let's say whatever the reach out is, whatever you're resisting around putting yourself out there as a coach, if you do that piece of it, that part of your brain is going to grow. And the reason that that is important to know is that that part of the brain is associated with health. It's associated with super agers, people that have longevity, and they think that it also has something to do with our will to live. So if I, if I know of any population who have a will to live, it's coaches. They are about growing and living fully and deeply and with great intention. And so I think that's really fascinating to think about. If I do this, this is going to make me healthier and it's going to grow this part of my brain that's going to give me greater health and greater longevity and greater aliveness more than anything. And you are— I, I enjoy working with you because you are alive. You know, you're fun to work with. Coaches, if you're looking to work with whether it's clients, corporations, individuals, whomever, they are going to work with people, they are going to want to work with people that are alive.
Susan’s ICF Educator Award | The Heart Behind the Impact Katy Montgomery, PCC
