Acting Brain Vs. Thinking Brain

This week students discussed the acting brain and the thinking brain through the lens of a story where a young girl uses her “acting brain” (aka “lizard brain) to get out of the way of a car, but then has trouble switching back to the “thinking brain” while interacting with her dad. In addition, we discussed how stress, hunger, fatigue, fight or flight, stage fright, etc. can place us more in our “acting brain.” 

Then we looked for strategies to hit a reset button within ourselves. We browsed some mindfulness activities (my personal favorite being the “5-4-3-2-1” strategy of pausing to notice the environment using the five senses - five things you can see, four things you can hear, three things you can feel, etc.). Another useful idea is HALT - Am I hungry, angry, lonely, or tired?

Here is a Ted Talk by Amy Cuddy about changing your body language to change your mind.

We also started a lively discussion about the Zones of Regulation in order to balance the acting and the thinking brain. A brief overview with free pdfs can be found here.

Growth Contracts

Lastly, we discussed the idea of growth contracts related to behavior using the book When Gifted Kids Don’t Have All the Answers. In other words, sometimes we can shift our mood/behaviors with quick changes in our environment, while other times we need a concrete plan.

  1. What is something I want to change about myself or my life? I’d like….

  2. Steps I could take to reach my goal:

  3. Resources that could help me along the way (including people/books/websites):

  4. Possible problems that may arise:

  5. How will I know when things are better? I’ll know things are better when…

  6. How close to my goal did I come?

  7. Did I achieve as much as I hoped and expected?

  8. Did I achieve less than I hoped or expected?

More about growth contracts and corresponding questions can be found here on pg. 119-124:


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