I love this science! For many years, I have known that when I am facing a frightening or stressful situation, forcing a smile helps me to relax. What science has discovered is that smiling also has specific effects on the way your brain deals with errors.
A very thorough (and completely humorless) study involving people holding pens in their mouths in various positions showed that those who held the pen in a "smile" position had very different responses to making mistakes. Basically, they didn't care much. They felt good, happy, at peace with the world. They were high on dopamine, the reward system of the brain.
Is unconcern about errors a good thing? It is when you're facing a creative hurdle. One of the difficulties of creativity is tolerating the risk of failure. Your brain's danger alerts may lead you to quit before you solve a problem if (as is likely) the path to a solution involves makng mistakes before you reach your goal.
Inhibition around making mistakes is important when you're driving, taking a test, or balancing your checkbook. So don't knock it. But when you're free-associating, opening your mind to intuition, or playing with an idea, errors don't matter. In that early phase of the creative process (the "open phase"), all ideas are equal. Making judgements comes later, during the "closed" phase. Then, error detection is very helpful. Feel free to frown, purse your lips, or be stone-faced.
When you're coming up with ideas, though, force a smile. It doesn't matter how you're really feeling, the smile will clear the way for your brain's creative capacity. You can say the letter "e", or hold a pencil in the right position between your teeth, whatever works for you (that should make you giggle). Just smile!
A very thorough (and completely humorless) study involving people holding pens in their mouths in various positions showed that those who held the pen in a "smile" position had very different responses to making mistakes. Basically, they didn't care much. They felt good, happy, at peace with the world. They were high on dopamine, the reward system of the brain.Inhibition around making mistakes is important when you're driving, taking a test, or balancing your checkbook. So don't knock it. But when you're free-associating, opening your mind to intuition, or playing with an idea, errors don't matter. In that early phase of the creative process (the "open phase"), all ideas are equal. Making judgements comes later, during the "closed" phase. Then, error detection is very helpful. Feel free to frown, purse your lips, or be stone-faced.
When you're coming up with ideas, though, force a smile. It doesn't matter how you're really feeling, the smile will clear the way for your brain's creative capacity. You can say the letter "e", or hold a pencil in the right position between your teeth, whatever works for you (that should make you giggle). Just smile!
No comments:
Post a Comment