The problem high achievers face
I’m lucky to work with very smart and capable people in my coaching and training practice (whether they would agree with me on this is another matter).
When my clients realise they’re getting in their own way, there’s a feeling that dominates: frustration. It makes sense, because in many areas of our lives we solve problems by a) using our intelligence and b) working harder. In fact many of us were taught that ‘working harder’ is always the answer.
“This is so silly”. I often hear: “I know I’m capable, why am I letting this get in the way?” This kind of language shows how much we misunderstand what drives our thoughts, feelings and behaviour.
I hope this blog will deepen your understanding how your brain works, shift your perspective away from working harder and towards understanding yourself better.
Frustration blocks progress
“I’m SO frustrated”, says ‘Lisa’, a client of mine who manages a demanding team at work whilst juggling singe motherhood with her two sons. “There’s a million and one things I know I need to be doing, but my heads just all over the place and so I end up doing nothing at all because I’m so overwhelmed. That’s just me, my head isn’t straight”.
Lisa is a highly intelligent, self-aware, capable woman and she has everything she needs to feel calmer and make better decisions. She’s feeling stuck and overwhelmed in the first instance, but what makes this worse is the frustration and self-criticism she feeds herself. She believes she should magically be able to “do better”.
Where do we start? By learning the basics about how the human brain works. This knowledge is the first step to loosen the frustration and judgement Lisa is directing at herself for feeling the way she is.
The High Road vs The Low Road
The High Road vs The Low Road analogy is a huge over-simplification of how the brain works (sorry neuroscientists), but it does the job of helping us understand ourselves better. I love the saying “you can’t leave a place you’ve never been”; once you realise which road you’re on, it’s much easier to navigate to a place of feeling calmer and more centred.
The High Road
When we are thinking along the High Road, we are engaging the pre-frontal cortex portion of the brain. The High Road excels in rational planning, decision-making and weighing up different perspectives. It’s the CEO of the brain and it does a marvellous job.
The High Road is where we do our best thinking and decision making because we can read our colleagues or clients more accurately and we can weigh up the possible consequences of a difficult decision.
The Low Road
The Low Road, involves largely unconscious thinking patterns in the brain. The Low Road includes the brain’s alarm system (the Amygdala) which governs our fight, flight and freeze response. The Low Road is mainly concerned with survival and is continuously scanning the environment for threat – it would rather we would mistakenly spot the snake or spider 100 times rather than miss it and risk death.
The disadvantage of the low road is that it is a path of protection, not growth. It is not concerned with higher ideals such as fulfilment or happiness and prefers the ‘safe’ option. What the low road deems ‘safe’ depends on the person, but it can look like:
- Overworking and overpreparing (fight response)
- Procrastination (freeze response)
- Avoiding meetings, opportunities to be visible or difficult conversations (flight response)
- Defensiveness or micromanaging others (fight response)
- Lack of boundaries, overcompensating or rescuing others (fawn response/fight response)
When we spend too much time on the Low Road, we’re more likely to:
- Default to inflexible, black and white thinking (e.g. it must be this or that, it can’t be both)
- Read other people less accurately – becoming more defensive or paranoid than we need to.
- Judge ourselves too harshly and speak to ourselves unkindly.
- Feel more isolated.
- Struggle to think clearly or creatively.
- Experience exhaustion and an inability to ‘think straight’.
- Feel overwhelmed, negative, anxious and less able to cope with setbacks.
Now, before we come down too hard on the Low Road, we need to give credit where it’s due. The Low Road has ensured our survival as a species and it’s still incredibly useful when we need to respond quickly to threat or danger.
The challenge we have is that a) Low Road is faster than the High Road and b) the High Road uses a lot more energy than the Low Road so there is a tendency for the Low Road to kick in harder and more frequently than is is helpful when we want to work and live at our best.
Taming the Low Road
When Lisa and I worked together, our focus was on taming the Low Road part of her brain by teaching her tools and techniques to bring the High Road back ‘online’.
By learning about the High Road vs the Low Road, Lisa understood that her moments of procrastination and overwhelm weren’t a personality flaw. Lisa realised this pattern was not unique to her and in fact it was an experience that connects her to anyone else who has a human brain. Lisa had historically been quite self-critical, but she found she could offer herself a lot more compassion and understanding which, in turn, meant she could access her High Road more easily.
The great thing about learning about the Low Road is that when we know we’re on it, we can find our way back to the High Road much more easily, rather than worrying that something is ‘wrong’.
The way back onto the High Road isn’t working harder or ticking off our ‘to-do’ list. Instead, it’s much more powerful to take pauses, step away and learn reliable ways to calm and regulate your nervous system instead.
What about you?
Did you recognise some of the Low Road patterns in you or those you work with?
If you would like support either for you or your team to access High Road thinking, especially during challenging times, please email me on info@sallyheady.co.uk and we can discuss how I can help.