Your Survival Senses
What are your primary survival senses?
As a business prof of mine used to say, "it depends". Yes, it depends on your task, your priorities, your mood, and your environment. It might just depend on at what point you are in your BRAC (Basic Rest-Activity Cycle).
In my book, Unleashing Your Brilliance, I mention survival a number of times. This is because it has a lot to do with learning, and just plain day-to-day functioning.
When we were cave-dwellers, the two most prominent survival senses were sight and smell. These have been hardwired into our neurology over many millennia. How do they show up today? Read on.
Sight
To recognize an enemy (human or non), sight was essential. No other sense can pinpoint a target as well as sight. It reveals distance, direction, speed, size, and intent. If you're like most people, you will recognize a face more often than remember that person's name. That is part of this ancient hardwiring.
Smell
Hunters have always known that while stalking prey, they must stay downwind, otherwise the deer or mammoth would pick up their scent. Manufactures of perfumes and colognes know the power of scent in triggering emotions. Have you ever wondered why a smell can generate a crystal-clear memory? Want to sell your house? Have the smell of freshly-baken bread wafting from the kitchen when prospects visit. Smells are given a fast-track in neural processing. Their priority status allows them to split the input signal. Some of the information is processed slowly through the thinking part of the brain, and the other part is sped directly to the emotional part of the brain. For more on the sense of smell, check out page 34 of my book.
As a business prof of mine used to say, "it depends". Yes, it depends on your task, your priorities, your mood, and your environment. It might just depend on at what point you are in your BRAC (Basic Rest-Activity Cycle).
In my book, Unleashing Your Brilliance, I mention survival a number of times. This is because it has a lot to do with learning, and just plain day-to-day functioning.
When we were cave-dwellers, the two most prominent survival senses were sight and smell. These have been hardwired into our neurology over many millennia. How do they show up today? Read on.
Sight
To recognize an enemy (human or non), sight was essential. No other sense can pinpoint a target as well as sight. It reveals distance, direction, speed, size, and intent. If you're like most people, you will recognize a face more often than remember that person's name. That is part of this ancient hardwiring.
Smell
Hunters have always known that while stalking prey, they must stay downwind, otherwise the deer or mammoth would pick up their scent. Manufactures of perfumes and colognes know the power of scent in triggering emotions. Have you ever wondered why a smell can generate a crystal-clear memory? Want to sell your house? Have the smell of freshly-baken bread wafting from the kitchen when prospects visit. Smells are given a fast-track in neural processing. Their priority status allows them to split the input signal. Some of the information is processed slowly through the thinking part of the brain, and the other part is sped directly to the emotional part of the brain. For more on the sense of smell, check out page 34 of my book.
posted by Brian Walsh | 9:18 AM
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