Page 71 - Getting to the Heart of High Performance
P. 71
sciously analyze the situation at hand, other parts of the
brain move at hyperspeed to deal with the circumstances.
Mirror neurons—your brain cells for social reconnaissance—
start firing away. Their job has three parts: sense what the
other person is about to do, tune in to that person’s feelings,
then prepare you to imitate that person’s movement and be
empathetic. All this happens subliminally, outside the reach
of your conscious awareness.
The mirror neurons go flat out, making their hair-trigger
emotional assessment and priming you for matching behav-
ior. Like a sixth sense, they operate in a purely spontaneous
manner. You’re not in charge of this activity at all. It’s as
automatic as your heartbeat.
Before you can consciously figure out how you want to
behave, much less have enough time to actually do
whatever you might decide, signals from the other per-
son begin shaping your behavior. Your mirror neurons
do their detective work and, in a flash, prompt you to
Your Hot-Wired Emotional Brain 55
