If we seniors are willing to be a bumbling beginner at times we are far more likely to become a magnificent master over time. Treated as stepping stones, our mistakes can become the hallmark of inner joy and can foster mental growth as well as sustain contentment in tough times. How so?
Serotonin choices fuel inner joy and create spaces for seniors to thrive in spite of tough times. That’s how serotonin tends to fade out cortisol toxins and lower our stress or anxiety. Keep a thankfulness journal, for instance, and we seniors literally increase thickness in our cerebral cortex areas that control attention and sensation. Before stress or anxiety from perceived missteps move in and block our joy, we can choose and do serotonin actions that reconnect neurons of wellbeing and contentment. You likely already guess how in this way we successfully support new neuron pathways that will activate reward centers and equip us to look at problems with possibilities in mind. We simply catch ourselves before we ruminate too long over errors, and this awareness creates space to access inner joy and to focus on possibilities not on mistakes or fixing past problems
Our basal ganglia (one of our brain’s long term memory systems) opens wonderful windows into past memories, lessons learned from mistakes and lifelong events on one hand. Sadly that same basal ganglia also tends to shut down our ability to risk change and causes us to avoid exciting new adventures. Think of the brain’s basal ganglia as a big backpack that contains everything we ever did or experience. Fears, failures, fantasies! It holds our best advances and our worst memories or mistakes.
When we reach for an object without much effort or step up stairs without having to think about each step, we can thank our basal ganglia has built in memory for movement. The opposite is also true, when we face criticism for faring poorly within broken systems we can blame our basal ganglia stubborn resistance to change or inability to let go of guilt.
While we still have much to learn from research, science is shedding new light on how our basal ganglia can work for and against us with regard to mistake making. How so?
1). It stores remarkable memories on one hand, and plagues us with past errors on the other.
2). It provides us usable stored facts to thrive on one day and locks us into rigid ruts the next.
3). It holds invaluable traditions and yet shuts out rejuvenation insights with the next move.
4). Its routines add reliability today, and prevent peak performance possibilities tomorrow.
5). It helps us to override fear of old habits, but creates fear from standstill stagnation stored.
6). It can collaborate with our vibrant working memory in the long run, yet compete with memory in the moment.
7). It leaves us solid and predictable one day, and unable to change or improve the next.
8). It offers us lifetime friendships on one hand, yet prevents us from opening to new relationships on the other.
9). It gives enjoyment of music with one stroke, while locking out new or differently sounding genres with the next.
10). It renders us as a faithful and understanding friend on one day, yet can render us inflexible and closed-minded soon after.
11). It maintains our mastery in some skills, and prevents us from learning others we many need to prosper.
While it offers us a level of comfort from the ease of familiarity, the brain’s basal ganglia can also hinder our mental and emotional growth when we seniors crave success or relevancy.
Remove it and we might land at a meeting naked, if we get there at all. Fall prey to it’s lack of change, though, and we may find ourselves locked into dangerous ageism, racism, sexism and other mistakes acted on over time, with regret and stored without reflection.
Where are we today, in relation to our brain’s basil ganglia and our ability to walk past mistakes with useful lessons learned and hope for a finer future?
Leonard Cohen could have been thinking about the gaffes we all make and our senior brain’s response to these past blunders when he wrote, “Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” It takes a growth or open- mindset however, to see lit up advantages or feel warmed by this light.
In contrast, a fixed or closed mindset succumbs to fear too often and has us run from errors, hide our handicaps or pretend we mostly get it right. Even though we may be tempted to hide mistakes in the dark or capitulate to their tombstones of regret, our senior brains offer far better options. We can take vital lessons from mistakes and resurface, grow resilient and retry a newly minted approach to move forward and thrive from lessons learned.
Sure, we’ll likely sit for a time with the gloomy blow-back that flaws can bring. It’s normal to feel down initially when mistakes hang us up. Emily Dickinson described it as, “After great pain a formal feeling comes. The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs.“
We may not be able to control stress that hits us when errors arise, yet with a growth mindset we gain awareness of how we can control our reactions. With each of the 22 average stressors or slip-ups that hit us on an ordinary day, for example we grow aware of how to choose options between fear or calm.
Reactions to personal blunders are learned, and stockpiled in the brain’s amygdala (or storehouse for moods and emotions) and reused. Simply stated, mistakes can be managed in ways that benefit rather than bash us over blunders.
Fear driven reactions however stir up and store cortisol chemicals that shut down brainpower for the innovative answers many of us crave, to repair what breaks. Fear also blocks mental courage to go after new possibilities when mistakes remain our focus. So it is no surprise that fear causes mental and emotional reactions such as venting, if these toxins are stored in our amygdala. From that last use and storage, stress driven reactions will resurface in similar difficult situations.
With our growth mindset we seniors tend to use, develop and keep using many or all of these mental and emotional approaches toward building resilience to move beyond mistakes. To shift from regrets to renaissance seniors we shift our centers from inner critic to inner kindness.
“To keep a lamp burning we have to keep putting oil in it,” Mother Teresa said.
Our brain’s limbic system, for example equips us with a set of primitive brain parts located near the top of the brain stem. It’s the limbic system that kicks in to react emotionally so that we feel both pleasure or pain, and we react to both.
Among structures such as normal operations for breathing, reacting to cold and so on, this area also controls molecules that make us feel excited, fearful, angry or sad. It’s here we often blunder, err, lapse or slip. So how do a senior’s mistakes impact brain health and healthy emotional function?
The limbic system holds operations that transfer short term into long term memories, and then acts to retrieve them when required. See the room for inaccuracy both mentally or emotionally? Damage the limbic system and we also lose our ability to resolve some problems, fix mistakes, own up to imperfections, or create new memories as it contains our working memory.
Our brains do well to block one mistaken approach such as cynicism whenever we replace actions with another approach such as kindness with sincerity. We may not always have answers to fix our mistakes. As Maya Angelou reminds us, “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.“
To make no mistakes is not a worthy objective and not even in the power of most seniors. But from our errors and missteps the wise and noble seniors learn wisdom for their future. Cynicism, criticism, nay-saying and gossip are toxins that curtail the very innovation brainpower it takes to move forward after sustaining slips and slides along the way.
Let’s be better to ourselves and others in spite of mistakes, because we seniors need the mental chemical serotonin to succeed. Let’s make a decision to stop beating up on ourselves for mistakes and then stick to that decision. Let’s admit our mistakes quickly before cortisol takes us down. Let’s apologize if others get hurt by errors we make and the mental freedom that gives will help us to leap and dance ahead. Mistakes become capital for successful people, yet can bankrupt seniors who rewire brainpower more for failure than triumph. What mental skills move us well beyond failures?
Revisit Mistakes to Boost Brainpower
Starbucks brewed winning coffees, and drew many of us together, to brew similar successful ventures. Then, after recession struck and customers lacked the $4.00 daily fix, they nearly crashed. That’s before Howard Schultz set out to reboot Starbucks’ success.
Most seniors would agree that to capitalize on the brain’s known abilities is to create a climate for high performance minds. Most seniors also agree that care and support can transform ordinary learning into fun-filled adventures and delightful discoveries. Sadly though, science about brains and observation of failed cultures sheds light on 5 mistakes that prevent growth and persist in controversy. “The ultimate measure of a man (and humanity) is not where he (or she) stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he (or she) stands at times of challenge and controversy,” Martin Luther King maintained.
Sadly we seniors sometimes fail to –
Spot differences as a place to launch new ideas. Our seniors differ vastly in how they start, grow, and manage new learning journeys. Imagine each senior coming to any session with at least eight distinctive intelligences, for instance. Now imagine these in different proportions for each senior, and growing stronger daily in some. This mental mix should showcase the necessity of creating clear targets and facilitating multiple ways to engage all seniors. I tend to start with a quick multiple intelligence survey, and then seniors help to build practical tasks based on their differences and our growth mindset targets.
Build relevancy through fostering practical applications. For instance, seniors often come to our tables with curiosity, interests, talents and questions rarely expressed. For that reason they increasingly find talks and lectures sadly irrelevant to their lives beyond that social circle. The result? Alarming new research shows seniors giving up and shutting down in their golden years where wisdom gets buried and mistakes mostly mark their past.
Hone in on poor tone, and intervene when curmudgeonese emerges. When even a few outspoken seniors toss out poor tone – even cracks spotted in pop culture, they can work against building blocks that rely on healthy tone practices.
