What holding the hand of someone in an MRI has to do with connection, and you

I’d had a major health incident.  

Major.

My heart had stopped for 3 and a half minutes.

As part of my recovery, the docs had to figure out just what the heck had happened.

Which is why I found myself inside a very noisy, very scary MRI machine.  For a long one and a half hours.

Cut to today.  My healthy heart and I know that there are lots of things that affect our perspective.  For good and for bad.

Stress narrows our perspective.

When we’re stressed we breathe more shallowly, which makes us edgy, cantankerous and liable to make poor decisions.

When we’re scared, centres in the brain fire and freak out, telling us to be afraid, very afraid.

In a particular study where folks went into an MRI and also got mild shocks (who thinks up these studies?!) their fear centres fired enormously. Not surprising.

One little change was made for the second round.

Next round, the person in the MRI had their hand held by someone they loved.

And what happened to those fear centres?

Pretty much nothing. Nada.  They were quiet.

So what does this have to do with you and me?

We humans are wired for connection.

We need to belong.

And sometimes that face of belonging can take some weird turns, when it comes to minimal group identity.

But mostly we just need to search out connection and belonging.

Connect with yourself first, like figuring out what advice you’d give to your younger self. 

And seek out connections with others, regardless of whether you need your hand held in an MRI machine. Furthermore, your brain will thank you for it.  And your overall perspective and worldview will too.

Now go on and learn, learn some more, and lead

Learn

• Connect with yourself and figure out what advice you’d give to your younger self. 

Laugh

• Whether you have or haven’t been inside an MRI check out this funny clip where an attempt at connection is made (emphasis on attempt)

Lead

• Look for options to connect with others.  Make the call you’ve been putting off.  Write a gratitude note to someone.

P.S. Curious to know more about your own worldview and perspective?  Check out my free Life Lense®  online assessment.