Helping Leaders Own Who They Are

“We have the power to choose moment by moment who and how we want to be in the world”

~Jill Bolte Taylor

Watch Jill Bolte Taylor’s “My Stroke of Insight” HERE!

My fascination for the human mind, how we “tick”, and what we understand (or don’t) about the brain has begun to lead me on a journey of discoveries about our capabilities, as human beings. I believe we are extraordinary creatures. Humans have an ability to reflect, and imagine, and project themselves, and conceptualise and remember, that goes way beyond the features and competence of our lymbic brain. We have an additional sense of consciousness. Something which makes us unique and which leads us to live an existence of constant contradiction. How can we be, as a species, so caring and loving at times, nurturing our family and the people we love, and alternatively behaving in such a terribly destructive way in other occasions, protecting someone or promoting something? We have a capacity for grandeur and magnanimity, and a capacity for horror.

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor, in her TED talk, shares her experience not only as a professional but also as a prime witness of the incredible power of the human brain. Beyond what we can harness consciously. I truly believe we are more than we think we are. I would go even further, and claim we are more than we can possibly think we are. We cannot express it with semantics: words fall short to describe a subjective human experience. Words are a fatal distortion, they can express and describe but never truly account for an internal state, feeling, emotion, experience. That’s ok, we can live with words. We need them actually, to define our universe and its boundaries. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that we are more than they mean.