How to get ahead of the game in any business.
I was talking to a friend who used to be a trader and he described the experience of “being in the flow” when he was having his best days trading. Another friend who was a keen sportsman said “is this like being in the zone”. Another, a notorious philanderer, suggested it was when you were “at the top of your game”. What each description had in common was that it was hard to pin down exactly what they were talking about, but at the same time we all know what we are talking about.
This is neural state.
Your neural state is not your emotions. It is not your feelings. It is not something to do with stress. It is more fundamental than that, but we only know of it by metaphor in language. For example we use expressions like “heart warming”. We don’t know that this experience corresponds perfectly with the actual biophysiological phenomenon of activation in the ventral Vegas nerve which goes into the heart. We don’t need to know. We just know.
We talk of a “gut feeling”. The nervous system’s brain is the gut. It has more connections there than in the actual brain. What if you could hack into your “gut feeling”? Imagine mixing that information with the normal cognitive explicit metrics you use in your business. This is what neural measurement does.
NeuralSolution can measure the nervous system and quantify these experiences which we only have metaphorical language for. These neural states are the hardwiring behind our behaviour. Whatever the nervous system tells us to do, we do. It has been developing this relationship for over 500 million years. By comparison our cognitive functions are very, very recent. We can’t override our neural impulse. If you’ve ever had an anxiety attack and decided not to, then you know what I mean!
Neural measurement gives an accurate read out of neural state and this can then be correlated with behaviour. This correlation can then be used to make explicitly desired outcomes either more predictable or more frequent. In the case of predictions, we might tell a client who is more likely to buy from them so that they can spend their sales time more efficiently. In the case of a trader in financial markets, we can give live feedback to the trader, plus provide interventions, to help them to remain “in the flow” where they make the most money.
The nervous system is the boss of behaviour. If you can co-opt it to your own purpose, you can influence your customers’ behaviour. What you do with that is your business. I’m going to help people to get well in my own clinic by giving them bio-feedback on the state of their nervous system. How do you want to change your world?
About the Author
Benjamin Fry, NeuralSolution CEO, is the founder of Khiron House and the not-for-profit Get Stable. Both are innovative companies in the UK working in mental and behavioural health. He studied Physics and Philosophy at Oxford, has an MBA from Oxford Said and a MA in Psychotherapy and Counselling. He is also a published author and experienced television presenter