Have you ever been in a situation where hours or days after you’ve engaged in a hard or uncomfortable discussion, argument, fight or disagreement, you find yourself replaying this heated debate. You beat yourself up about things that you ‘should have’, ‘could have’ or ‘would have’ said? This reality is frustrating & feels disempowering because most times to yourself you seem incompetent or dull-witted or like a hopeless failure. It’s happened to me time & again & I’ve promised myself that I would be sharper & more vigilant the next time round. All this to say that I wasn’t looking for a way to be vindictive, snarky, sarcastic or even rude. No, I was soughting a way to resolve conflict. If your objective is to be mean spirited then this is not the blogpost you should be engaging with. We want harmony not revenge on this side of the fence. So, best to check your motives first.

Anyway, down the line comes a similar scenario & what do I do?… I fall prey to the same debilitating situation & the cycle continues. After years of putting myself through the wringer I finally asked myself why this kept happening. I humbled myself & admitted that I’m not some superwoman needless of varied coping strategies or tools or training in this regard. Coz believe me, I used to think that my brain, my body & my great self-awareness would prompt me when these situations arose & I would just automatically snap onto the new reactive response in the way that I had ‘envisioned’. 🙄 (MY AUDACITY, THE GALL, THE IMMATURITY LOL). How overly ambitious or even arrogant of me to think that I didn’t need to do what every other person needed to when adopting a new skill, … which is to take advice, be taught & practice. My arrogance hampered my forward motion here. It’s like thinking that I could transform into a professional gymnast after watching the Olga Korbut flip on YouTube ONCE! 

All this talk about automatically spewing the appropriate response in the heat of the moment sounds fascinating & even appetising, but what does this look like practically? What does changing an auto-response or responding in a self-empowering manner look like? Allow me to introduce you to a hack that I’ve discovered & one that has changed my life.

We’ve all been caught off guard in conversational exchanges a couple of times & then scrambled to counter-argue out of the need to protect ourselves. The hard conversation or the disagreement came out of nowhere. There was no preface, there were no grey clouds warning of rain, so there was no time to limber up, or to don the mouth guard before the fight. Now we’re left naked on stage, fully exposed & kinda embarrassed. A phrase I’ve used for a very long time is; “STAY READY” instead of always GETTING READY. But that’s so much easier said than done & knowing what to stay ready for is another conversation altogether. But, as with everything else, this takes practice. You’re about to grasp a new concept & learn a new skill & that takes time, failing & starting again. I’ve dubbed this term ‘CONSCIOUSNESS QUICKENING’

This little secret originated from the phenomenon of how a magnet works. Mentally snapping the positive pole of the new response to the & negative pole of the old one at an increasing speed each time, is the key take away. The old response would eventually be automatically replaced with time & rehearsal. It is common knowledge, that like a magnet, if you’re pushing the same two poles eg: negative to negative toward each other that the poles would undeniably repel. It is worth mentioning that with conversational situations this same principle resonates. The poles will repel if you insist on forcing the same methods to the same exchanges. IOW – You’ll end up with the same disparaging results. This concept was also developed to be compared to the practical application of tying a ribbon around the index finger for memory recall or simply put, a mental thumb tack. Think of ‘Consciousness Quickening’ as that little red ribbon in a neuroscience-sense. In everyday life, once you’ve tied that ribbon around your finger, you’ll be reminded about that loaf of sourdough bread you’ve been wanting to try from that new little bakery up the road but kept forgetting to stop for on your way home from work.

The ribbon-around-the-index-finger technique…

…comes from a time many, many years ago, when people tied strips of cloth around painful parts of the body. It was believed to be a method to keep the ‘spirit of life’ in those spots of discomfort & in turn cure said spots by keeping the pain from spreading to other vicinities & restricting it to that one focal area. IOW, the string on the finger was designed to “retain” the thought in place to be remembered later. The science behind this concept is that the nerves responsible for your sense of touch allocated in the index finger, are the ones quickest connected to your hippocampus, the region in your brain in charge of memory. The fabric & tangibility of the ribbon constantly activates those nerves & keeps the hippocampus in alpha mode (highly active). When you’re in the motion of tying the ribbon around the index while at the same time associating the thing you’re trying to remember with this action, you are actively creating a neural pathway to the brain. This pathway now, almost exclusively functions as a conduit for that memory.

Goodness, I wish it were that simple for intangible, emotionally charged “objects” ie: emotional responses or communicative reactions. I am well aware that submitting a new response to the command of a ribbon tied to my index finger feels fanatical at best, but I found that creating visual representations of the example in question helps with logical sense making. Visual analogies drive the point home a lot clearer for me, & so I have realised that I learn best through analogies, drawings & scenario depictions. I’m hoping you’re wired the same way, or else all of this vivid explanations would be pretty futile.

‘Consciousness Quickening’— Defined

Let’s break it down. CQ – isn’t a standard term in mainstream psychology or neuroscience but it is indeed a powerful phrase to keep top of mind. Consciousness is your awareness or wakefulness of yourself & your surroundings. The term quickening is defined as the hastening or the acceleration of something. “Her heartbeat quickened at the sound of his voice.” It is also defined as the stimulation of something. “His curiosity quickened.” I believe that consciousness can be quickened. Oftentimes we feel that we are at the mercy of our thoughts & reactions, that we are who we are & that our brain chemistry is immutable, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. We teach our brains; our brains do not teach us. We are not powerless in this endeavour & we are not helpless either, but I think that we have become unconsciously brainwashed to believe that we are not in control & that we are indeed subjugated to the fate which our subconscious creates for us. So, we become slaves to our brains.

Neuroplasticity—What is it & why is it important to understand?

From the jump, it is the brains’ ability to change & adapt physically, chemically & functionally. The brain is able to form new connections, re-organize itself after injury & strengthen or weaken existing pathways. It is ultimately plastic in its material composition. It can literally, NOT figuratively, LITERALLY change in size, shape etc. When we learn a new skill it’s changing, when we suffer brain injury, the other parts of our brain take charge indicating functional adaptability, when we start a meditative practice, we rewire negative thought patterns & even when we wish to form new habits & break old ones we are changing our brains. SO, WE ARE MORE THAN CAPABLE OF ALTERING AUTO-RESPONSES, IF WE WANT TO, OF COURSE! The willingness is the starting point.

So if you want to & are ready to…this is how I would do it & maybe this method could assist you if you are indeed a mindful individual yourself on a mission to step into the best version of yourself. Let’s dive into the 4Rs.

1. Recall the incident—Do this, by calming yourself completely & sitting with the thought. I’d even go as far as to suggest closing your eyes & almost entering a meditative state. Feel the emotions involved, see the setting, embody all the sensations as they appear.
2. Replay the interaction as it was—Everything that enfolded, play it back as best you can. The entire encounter, the things they did or said, the things you did or said. Your posture, facial reactions & paralanguage. REPEAT THIS PART AS MANY TIMES AS NEEDED until you hit the trigger-point & see, & feel it clearly. (This is normally the point where I say “I should have said this … when they said that at that point” etc.) Why is this important? Because this is technically the bone of contention & the response you’d like to alter in your future delivery. This is where neuroplasticity starts to kick into action.
3. Rephrase your existing response—Now, replay the incident but replace your old response with the new one. Do not forget to maintain everything concomitant with the existing interaction. DO THIS AS MANY TIMES AS NEEDED until the response feels natural & not forced.
4. Repeat this exercise with other similar events FIRST before attempted to move on to different, unrelated, unpleasant interactions—What I mean here is; work on mastering one area at a time. Maybe think about it as categorising the events of similarity so as to box them for better evaluation later. It speaks to your order as well. We do not want to become flustered with chaos. Do not be hasty, do not pressure yourself. You are a work in progress, not a machine operating purely from prompts & switches.

Consciousness Quickening is the accelerated awakening of self-awareness, where deeper clarity, insight, & presence begin to emerge more rapidly in a person’s inner life. You have more power than you know. Start wielding that weapon & fight fair!