Elevating Operators. Sharpening Leaders. Strategic frameworks for thriving in finance, leadership, and life.
Category: Human+
Welcome to Human+
Sharpening the Mind, Strengthening the Self
Human+ is about building a prepared mind—a mind that not only weathers adversity but thrives in it. Science shows that chance favors the prepared mind, and at Human+, we focus on cultivating the traits, habits, and behaviors that empower you to handle whatever life throws your way.
At its core, Human+ is also about breaking free from hedonic adaptation—the tendency to take once-exciting changes for granted, leaving us in a cycle of chasing happiness. Understanding this phenomenon helps us reshape our expectations, sustain fulfillment, and foster a mindset that thrives beyond temporary highs.
How We Build a Prepared Mind ✅
🔹 Resilience through Intentional Growth – Train your mind to embrace challenges as stepping stones to progress.
🔹 Mastery of Adaptive Behaviors – Build habits that create lasting fulfillment, not fleeting pleasure.
🔹 Conscious Control Over Perspective – Learn to reframe setbacks and see opportunities where others see obstacles.
Empower Your Prepared Mind 🏆
✅ Redefine Success Beyond the Temporary – True fulfillment comes from depth, not novelty. Move beyond the hedonic treadmill by anchoring happiness in meaningful pursuits rather than fleeting rewards.
✅ Optimize for Long-Term Satisfaction – Build systems that reinforce progress and purpose, rather than chasing the next quick dopamine hit.
✅ Leverage Adaptation for Growth – Hedonic adaptation is unavoidable, but your response to it is a choice. Use it to drive self-improvement rather than discontent.
Live Resilient. Think Ahead. Thrive Endlessly.
Human+ is a commitment to adaptability, personal growth, and sustained fulfillment. By sharpening our minds and training ourselves to resist the effects of hedonic adaptation, we set ourselves up not just to succeed, but to find meaning in the process.
Let’s build minds that are ready for opportunity, resilient in the face of change, and unshaken by the shifting tides of temporary satisfaction.
"Change might not be fast and it isn't always easy. But with time and effort, almost any habit can be reshaped."
--- Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit (2012)
Summary
At the center of the Habit Loop sits the Craving Brain which looks for simple cues and clearly defined rewards. A typical habit emerges when the brain finds a way to save effort, and habits are powerful because they create neurological cravings. When a habit emerges, the brain stops fully participating in decision-making. Although you never can really extinguish bad habits, you can change a habit by keeping the old cue and reward but changing the routine.
Three-Step Loop
A cue triggers the brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use
The routine is physical or mental or emotional
The reward helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future
How To Change a Habit
By focusing on the keystone habit, you can fix a myriad of other habits in the process. You must work to identify cues and choose new routines in order to change your habits. But for habits to permanently change, people must believe that change is feasible.
In closing, to modify a habit, you must decide to change it. You must consciously accept the hard work of identifying the cues and rewards that drive the habits’ routines and find alternatives. You must know you have control and be self-conscious enough to use it.
The real power of habit is the insight that your habits are what you choose them to be. It is important to note that no matter how strong our willpower is, we are guaranteed to fall back into our old ways once in a while
An integrated brain is the foundation of resilience and well-adjusted children. The Whole-Brain Child by Daniel J. Sigel and Tina Payne Bryson breaks down 12 simple and easy-to-master strategies that will help you respond more effectively to difficult situations with your child, and build a foundation for strong social, emotional and mental health.
You should read this book to better understand how to turn the everyday “survival” moments as parents into thrive moments, where the important and meaningful work and connecting of parenting can take place.
Never forget that we parents can provide the kinds of experiences for our children that will help them develop a resilient and well-integrated brain!
Stamped from the Beginning chronicles the development of racist ideas, and the ongoing failure of American society to root out these ideas. Throughout time, racist ideas about Black people have perpetuated racial discrimination against Black people, and have led the consumers of racist ideas to believe there is something inherently wrong with Black people.
Ibram X. Kendi focuses his efforts on emphasizing that the policies and the history of oppression and racial discrimination of Black people have made opportunities for Black people scarce. And it is truly this scarcity of Black opportunities that is inferior – not Black people.
It’s clear that racism and discrimination are still highly pervasive in today’s world. And while there are multiple angles to the current problem of race, I want to spend this post unpacking the long-term economic implications of the consistent scarcity of opportunities faced by Black people. The end of slavery for many Black Americans was just the beginning of a larger quest for economic and democratic equality.
But First … What’s A Good Definition of Racism and Racist Ideas?
Any concept that regards one racial group as inferior or superior to another racial group in any way is a good definition for racism as illustrated in this book. And historically, there have been two kinds of racist camps in the World:
The best way to separate the Segregationists from the Assimilationists is to think of their racist ideas as a spectrum. The Segregationists regard Black people as biologically distinct and inferior to White people while the Assimilationists encourage Black people to adopt White cultural traits and/or physical ideas.
Assimilationists read Darwin as saying Black people could one day evolve into White civilization; Segregationists read Darwin as saying Black people were bound for extinction. Both camps are racist because they each regard White people (on racial group) as superior to Black people (other racial group).
In stark contrast to the Segregationists and Assimilationists stand the Anti-Racists; people who think there is nothing wrong with Black people and think that Black people as a whole are an equal racial group to all. Anti-Racists are truly committed to racial equality and focused on interrogating and shedding our world’s racist ideas.
In American history specifically, there have been four major fathers of Segregationist and Assimilationist ideas and one major mother of Anti-Racist ideas. While far from exhaustive, the graphic below depicts each individual:
Why Do These Delineations Matter?
The delineations between Segregationist, Assimilationist, and Anti-Racists matter simply because the issue of the 21st century is “the problem of the color line” that is a result of the racist ideas that have been perpetuated by Segregationist and Assimilationists alike. As multiple series of separate but unequal laws were instituted, nearly ever aspect of southern life from water fountains, to businesses, to transportation were segregated. These separate and inferior Black facilities and opportunities fed White people and Black people alike the segregationist idea of Black people being fundamentally separate and inferior people. It is these racist ideas that have led to policies that have on average rendered Black Americans second-class status socially, economically, and politically.
So, although official segregation is dead, we as an American society still face a real “problem of the color line.” The laws against color can be removed, but that will leave the poverty that is historical and institutionalized consequence of color. For some three centuries now, the communal experiences of the slaves and their descendants has been adversely shaped by social, economic, and political institutions of our ignoble past[1]. And the true American tragedy is our current reluctance to engage in conversations to fix the results of this ignoble past. As nearly two average American lifetimes (79 years) have passed since the end of slavery, America’s national sin is now the responsibility of the third and fourth generations to fix[2].
Slavery Fueled the Growth of the American Economy; Cotton Fueled America’s Growth as a Global Player
The first slaves arrived from West Africa in 1619 and by 1776 slavery was everywhere and legal in all 13 newly created states. But it wasn’t until the rise of cotton during the 19th century that the US went from a colonial and primarily agricultural economy to the second largest industrial power in the world. Cotton created an interconnected global market that linked the industrial textile mills of the Northern states and England with the cotton plantations of the American South. And slave labor fueled it all.
As the following chart shows, cotton-based slavery became America’s first big business:
As cotton production grew exponentially (roughly 400% over 60 years), so did the number of the enslaved (roughly to 4 million people by 1860). The bodies of the enslaved served as America’s largest financial asset and became the force needed to maintain America’s most exported commodity[3]. More than just cotton, this new US economy accelerated worldwide commercial markets in the 19th century, creating demand for innovative contracts, novel financial products, and modern forms of insurance and credit[4].
Cotton profits propelled the United States into a position as one of the leading economies in the world, and made the South its most prosperous region. Unquestionably, cotton-based slavery transformed the American economy.
The Myth of the Antiracist North and the Racist South
When current day citizens look back at the atrocities of slavery, they often pin these atrocities on the South, and the South alone. Doing so, downplays the true capitalistic nature of cotton-based slavery. Because cotton was the number one export from the US during the 19th century, there was a very tight relationship between slavery in the South and the economic and industrial expansions that happened in the North and other parts of the Western worlds. Put very simply, the slavery economy of the US South was deeply tied financially to the North, to Britain, and the rest of the modern Western Worlds.
The benefits of cotton produced by enslaved workers extended to industries beyond the South. In the North and Great Britain, cotton mills hummed, while financial and shipping industries also saw gains. Banks in New York and London provided capital to new and expanding plantations for purchasing both land and enslaved workers[5]. Everyone in power benefited from the system of slavery except of course the millions of enslaved.
Today’s racial wealth gap is perhaps the most glaring legacy of American slavery and the violent economic discrimination and dispossessions that followed[6]. And failure to provide the formerly enslaved with the land grants of 40 acres originally promised through Sherman’s order only accelerated this wealth gap.
Today’s Racial Wealth Gap Began in the Past
Since the Civil War, Black people have faced social, economic, and political headwinds that provided limited opportunities for Black people to accumulate wealth. Even post-Reconstruction, Black people faced law and public policy that was disadvantageous to their cause. Through the first half of the 20th century, the federal government actively excluded Black people from government wealth-building programs like the New Deal.
Between 1944 and 1971, federal spending for former soldiers totaled over $95 billion. Combined with the New Deal and suburban housing construction, the GI Bill gave birth to the White middle class and winded the economic gap between the races. But as our nation tends to do with programs like these, Black veterans faced discrimination that reduced or denied their benefits under the New Deal welfare programs.
The continuous scarcity of Black wealth building opportunities is one of the biggest reasons why the wealth gap started in the past and continues on today. In many ways, the opportunity to accumulate wealth is contingent on the wealth positions of one’s parents and grandparents. As the stats below will show, the descendants of slaves suffer from a scarcity of opportunities that will have lasting adverse impacts on Black wealth as a whole.
The following are some stats on the disparities in wealth between Black and White households.
White Americans have 7x the wealth of Black Americans on average
Median family wealth for white people is $171,000. Median family wealth for black people is $17,600
White households earned a median income of $69,823 in 2019 versus $43,862 for Black households
Black people make up nearly 13% of the US population by hold less than 3% of the nation’s total wealth
Black households have on average $4,400 in home equity, compared with $67,800 for white households.
The gap in homeownership rates in 2019 between Black and white households—about 41% for Black Americans versus 73% for whites—was the widest in a quarter-century, according to census data.
Mutual Obligation to Fix the Devastating Legacy of Slavery and Discrimination
There is no silver bullet to correct the inequalities that are 400 years in the making and deeply ingrained in our systems, institutions, and laws, Richard Neal (D., Mass.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, wrote in a recent report on health and economic equity[7]. While we cannot change the past, we as Americans must not also be indifferent to the current suffering that is linked directly to that same past.
Our history has in fact dealt Black Americans a bad hand; one of inherited poverty and a devastating legacy of discrimination. Collectively, we as a people must work together to address this nation’s unfinished racial opportunity.
Not tackling the question of past discrimination is akin to asking Black people to enter the 100-yeard dash forty yards behind the starting line. And when Black people lose the dashes and the racial disparities of our country persist, racists blamed the supposed slowness of Black people, not the head start of accumulated White privilege.
What the survivors of slavery endured in the cotton fields has everything to do with the wealth of the US today and the disproportions of the wealth between While people in the US on average and the wealth of Black people in the US on average. Continuing to turn a blind eye to this fact is our nation’s continual sin.
[1] Loury, Glenn C. (1998, March 1). An American Tragedy: The legacy of slavery lingers in our cities’ ghettos. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/articles/an-american-tragedy-the-legacy-of-slavery-lingers-in-our-cities-ghettos/
[2] Desmond, Matthew. (2019, August 14). In order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/slavery-capitalism.html
[3] Lockhart, P.R. (2019, August 16). How slavery became America’s first big business. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/8/16/20806069/slavery-economy-capitalism-violence-cotton-edward-baptist
[4] Baradaran, Mehrsa. (2019, August 14). Cotton and the Global Market. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/slavery-capitalism.html
[5] Timmons, Greg (2018, March 6). How slavery Became the Economic Engine of the South. Retrieved from https://www.history.com/news/slavery-profitable-southern-economy
[6] Lee, Trymaine (2019, August 14) A vast wealth gap, driven by segregation, redlining, evictions, and exclusion, separates black and white America. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/racial-wealth-gap.html
[7] Tergesen, Anne and Gillers, Heather. (2021, February 22). U.S. Retirement Crisis Hits Black Americans Hard. Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-retirement-crisis-hits-black-americans-hard-11613989981?mod=djem10point
[8] Kendi, Ibram X. (2016). Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. Bold Type Books.
Do you believe that ability is fixed and needs to be proven? Or do you believe that ability can be developed through learning? Most of us would agree with the second statement. Yet in Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol Dweck proves time and time again we humans often live in a fixed mindset (statement one), and often do so without even knowing it.
At the heart of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, is a detailed walkthrough of two types of views you can adopt for yourself: (1) the fixed mindset and (2) the growth-mindset. Under the fixed mindset, you believe your qualities and that of others is cared in stone and this creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over. Under the growth-mindset, you believe that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts, your strategies, and ultimately through learning. Each mindset can have profound affects on the way you lead your life and view life in general. The following blog post will unpack some of the things I learned through reading this book.
Inside the Mindsets
When you think of yourself under the eye of each mindset, you quickly realize that there are two meanings to everything the happens in life. Better said, there are two ways of seeing every interaction or happening… Two sides of the same coin. The following chart details the differences in mindsets across a few domains of life:
While far from exhaustive, the two lists above show pretty clearly that the fixed-mindset is limiting by its very nature. Yet Carol Dweck shows in her book that time and time again we have a hard time avoiding the fixed-mindset even though we understand that it hampers our ability to live our best life.
Don’t Buy Talent, Buy The Growth-Mindset
Sports has a funny way of helping us see things clearly (and often times less clearly [insert smiley face). When we think about the greatest athletes of all time in each of their domains, we don’t believe they got to their greatest heights by talent alone.
From Michael Jordan to Tiger Woods to Babe Ruth and back to Wilma Rudolph, we intellectually understand that talent + relentless hard work is the ultimate recipe for their success. Yet in our day to day lives, we shun this idea, oftentimes without even realizing. Malcolm Gladwell suggests that this happens because people prize natural endowment over earned ability. As much as our culture talks about individual effort and self-improvement, deep down, he argues, we revere the naturals.
The fixed-mindset can trick us into believing that natural talent should not need effort. In fact, those with the fixed-mindset even go as far as to think that effort in general is for the others, the less endowed. Carried away with their superiority, “these naturals” with the fixed-mindset never ask for help and never learn how to work hard nor cope with setbacks. This way of thinking can contribute to very negative outcomes Take a look at the following two images with quotes from two of the world’s greatest champions in sports:
Both Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan, two of the greatest athletes of all-time, clearly exhibit the growth-mindset. They stand out because of their commitment and effort to honing their craft. And this is the key to their overall success. People with the growth mindset think it’s nice to have talent, but that’s just the starting point.
Long-Term Corporate Health Needs Growth-Mindset Leadership
Evidence shows time and again, leaders with the fixed-mindset over the long-term lead organizations astray. From Lee Iacocca to Albert Dunlap, back to Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, and over to Steve Cash and Jerry Levin, these fixed-mindset leaders fostered cultures of big egos, blind heroism, and entitlement, which eroded their company cultures and destroyed their chances at long-term sustainable corporate health.
Fixed-mindset leaders want to be the only big fish so they stifle others to make them feel a cut above the rest. These leaders foster environments full of negative assessments, stereotypes, and often prejudices that put their employees in the fixed-mindset ultimately holding them back from success. Instead of learning, growing, and moving the company forward, everyone within is more worried about being judged. This is why fixed-mindset leadership is so detrimental for long-term corporate health.
In contrast to these fixed-mindset heroes, stand growth-mindset leaders in action like Jack Welch, Lou Gerstner, and Anne Mulcahy that focused all their efforts in establishing cultures focused on learning, growth, and collaboration, not individual brilliance. Organizations steeped in the growth-mindset embody a zest for teaching and learning, an openness to giving and receiving feedback, and an ability to confront and surmount obstacles.
Working Towards a Growth-Mindset
Whether you are a parent, business leader, coach, spouse, or athlete, working towards the growth-mindset will have meaningful impact in your life. But how do we actually instill these principles in our lives? And how do we maintain the growth-mindset once “we get there?”
Moving towards a growth-mindset takes plenty of time and effort to achieve and maintain so it’s important to first understand this right at the outset. The growth-mindset starts with believing that all people can develop their abilities. This belief in people’s ability to grow and learn is the heart of the growth-mindset. Changing one’s mindset towards the growth-mindset also starts with a deep appreciation for hard work, trying new strategies, and consistently seeking input from others.
When you face setbacks, the growth-mindset is about responding with interest and treating these setbacks as opportunities for learning. In short, moving from a fixed-mindset to the growth-mindset is all about embracing all the things that have felt threatening: challenge, struggle, criticism, and setbacks.
Changing your mindset isn’t about picking up a few pointers here and there. It’s about seeing things in a new way. Embracing the growth-mindset is a way of life that will change you from a judge-and-be-judged framework to a learn-and-help-learn framework. It’s a journey that takes time but as Carol Dweck proves time and time again in her book, it’s a journey that is well worth taking.
In summary, the growth mindset looks a bit like this:
“Knowing who we are is hard. It’s hard. Eliminate who you are not, first, and you’re going to find yourself where you need to be… The race is never over, the journey has no port. The adventure never ends, because we are always on the way.” [1]
Regardless of how enlightened we think we are, we all struggle to better understand ourselves. And this struggle leads to a lot of personal discontent in our lives. Recently, I was given a copy of The Only Astrology Book You’ll Ever Need by a good friend of mine who is way more in touch with the occult than I am.
Historically, my only interactions with the subject of astrology were usually in the form of modern day horoscope columns in mainstream magazines and newspapers. From these columns, I understood that I was a hardworking Virgo but I never really thought much more than that. In reality, astrology has way more to offer than a weekly horoscope from Cosmopolitan.
Astrology is defined as a pseudoscience that claims to divine information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the movements and relative positions of celestial objects (usually the planets and stars). When you break that down more simply, at its core, astrology offers you a different compass or lens into who you are. If you are willing to do the work to find and analyze your Birth Chart, astrology can help you find some deeper insights into who you are.
Looking to the Heavens from Earth
Because each entity in our solar system moves at a different speed and rate, and in a separate path or orbit, the combination of the placement of the planets are almost endless. At the moment of your birth, the Sun, Moon, and planets were in a particular arrangement in the heavens. This exact arrangement will not be repeated for 4.32 million years!
Astrology analyzes how the Sun, Moon, and planets in their specific arrangements interact with one another to shape the various aspects in your life, ultimately helping to answer questions about yourself. Since astrology takes an Earth-centric view of the cosmos, the 10 celestial bodies (planets) of astrology are the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. And each planet represents a different set of characteristics and qualities which rule over different parts of our lives. The following picture depicts the 10 celestial bodies of astrology and the characteristics each governs/rules over:
Every single person has the same 10 planets in their astrological birth chart, but each with varying power and influence. And each planet expresses themselves uniquely based on the zodiac sign they were located in at the time of your birth.
A Personal Look at My Birth Chart
Using Cafe Astrology.com, I created my Birth Chart. I then used Joanna Martine Woolfolk’s book on astrology to analyze my personality traits based on the position of each astrological body at the time of my birth:
I guess I am more than just a hardworking Virgo!
As you can see from the above, I am so much more than a hard-working Virgo. There were definitely aspects of my personality that surprised me, and others that confirmed what I already knew about myself. But all in all, spending some time analyzing myself through the lens of astrology helped me understand a lot of factors that have interacted to shape my life, for good and for bad!
In Closing
Roughly 30% of Americans believe in the merits of astrology as a whole. I, like most people, doubted the validity of the practice given the rise of pop astrology and horoscopes in mainstream magazines and newspapers. But having spent some time reading The Only Astrology Book You’ll Ever Need, and analyzing my Birth Chart, I can definitely say that there is way more to astrology than I realized before.
People might say that astrology suffers from the confirmation bias as we seek to confirm pre-existing theories or beliefs about self. Though they may be a hint of truth to that, it’s hard to deny the point that there are influences beyond our controls. Whichever higher power you place your faith in, the constant drive to understand self is a ceaseless human desire.
The ultimate reason astrology exists is to answer questions about the self. I have learned that there are so many more dimensions of my being. I hope that after reading this post you will open up to a new way of looking at yourself. Invest some time with astrology and see what you will learn about yourself.
We all know someone in our lives that seems to catch all of the ‘lucky” breaks. No matter what happens in their lives, the sun seems to always shine on them. But the truth is, luck isn’t as unpredictable as we often make it out to be. Luck is a combination of your preparation, your attitude, an opportunity, and your action. The following from Ben Sherwood’s The Survivors Club and I hope it will help you bring more luck into your life.
Develop a Lucky State of Mind
In Closing
Lucky people are far less random than one would think. In reality how you approach this world and your state of mind determines how much luck you achieve/receive. Unlucky events happen to people and purely random things do sometimes occur. But, the luckiest of us all find a way to see ourselves through these events. Remember, 90% of your life is determined by the way you think.
Between the uncertainty caused by the current social and political climates, and the global pandemic, 2020 has gotten off to a challenging start to say the least. And while I am not a bonafide doomsday prepper, I do like to take proactive steps towards ensuring my personal safety. In this vein, Ben Sherwood’s The Survivors Club was either a recommendation from a friend or one that I came across as a “must read”. Having recently finished it I have learned some new frameworks and tools for survival. When it comes to surviving there is a whole lot that you can’t control, but there too is a surprising amount that you can control. The Rule of 3 is an easy but great mental reminder of the limits the human body can be pushed to.
The Rule of 3
In Closing
Emblazon the number 3 in your mind. The order of the rules will help you remember your survival priorities as you strive to manage your needs during your most stressful time. Never forget the Rule of 3. This magic number will keep your priorities clear and help you stay alive!
Between the uncertainty caused by the current social and political climates, and the global pandemic, 2020 has gotten off to a challenging start to say the least. And while I am not a bonafide doomsday prepper, I do like to take proactive steps towards ensuring my personal safety. In this vein, Ben Sherwood’s The Survivors Club was either a recommendation from a friend or one that I came across as a “must read”. Having recently finished it I have learned some new frameworks and tools for survival. When it comes to surviving there is a whole lot that you can’t control, but there too is a surprising amount that you can control. In the following write up, I will unpack some of the cool things I learned about surviving a plane crash.
In A Plane Crash You Have 90 Seconds to Save Your Life
In Closing
The statistics of surviving a plane crash are in your favor with close to 96% of passengers in airplane accidents surviving. While there is no one seat that is the best, on average, sitting within five rows of an exit increases your chances of survival exponentially. Listen and pay attention to your flight attendants when they go over the safety protocols, and remember that waiting for instructions during and emergency can lead to negative outcomes. In the end, crash survival comes down to a simple question: How committed are you? Don’t panic but be proactive in your survival.
Google the phrase “differences between men and women” and you will get close to 572 million results. It’s a topic that is as old as time, but Louann Brizendine’s Female Brain focuses these differences squarely on our brains. From birth, “boy-behavior” and “girl-behavior” is hardwired into the brain, thus making us much more predictable than we think.
The Female Brain was written in 2007 during the rising tide of behavioral and neuroscientific research, and is a fascinating read for anyone interested in better understanding some of the whys behind female and male behavior. In the following write up, I will unpack some of the gender specific behavioral differences that are driven by the “simple” biological differences between the female and male brain.
Blame it on Testosterone, Estrogen, and Progesterone
As Louann Brizendine details in the Female Brain, there are no neutral unisex brains. Hormones make our brains uniquely female and male. The specific three hormones that drive most of the brain differences between the sexes are: (1) Testosterone (2) Estrogen (3) Progesterone. The deeper science between these three hormones aren’t relevant for this post but what is relevant is the specific role each of these hormones plays in the development of the female and male brain.
The rising tides of estrogen and progesterone assure that all female-specific brain circuits become more sensitive to emotional nuance such as approval or disapproval and acceptance or rejection. Female brains are programmed to prioritize connecting, bonding and keeping the peace. In direct contrast, testosterone has been shown to decrease the communication-specific brain circuits in the male brain, often leading men to seek out conflict and decreased socialization. Literally, the differences in the sexes come down to the hormone levels in females and males which determine the parts of our brains that are primed for different types of behaviors.
The Female and Male Brains
Over the millions of years that humans have walked on this Earth, female and male brains have evolved along some of the following lines:
The amygdala is the brain’s center for fear, anger, and aggression and it’s physically larger in men.
The prefrontal cortex is the brain’s center for planning, decision-making, problem solving, and self-control and it’s relatively larger in women.
Most neural connections in the male brain run between the front and back parts of the same brain hemisphere, which accounts for the better spatial skills and motor (muscle) control in men
Many more neural connections go from side to side across the left and right hemispheres of the female brain. This accounts for women’s better verbal skills and intuitive abilities.
The male brain has larger centers for aggression and action and is wired for pursuits that require solitary work. The male brain is finely tuned to sense threats, connect through sex, react quickly, and respond directly to spoken cues of others.
The female brain has larger centers for nurturing, communicating and forming social bonds, and is wired for pursuits that require interaction with others. The female brain is finely tuned to read faces, hear emotion in tones of voice, and respond to unspoken cues of others.
In Closing It’s not that men and women are from two different planets as John Gray wrote in 1992. It’s more simply that women and men have different brain realities caused by differences in testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone. These hormonal differences give women the edge when it comes to connecting emotionally, observing fully, and communicating effectively, and thus are ultimately better at sustaining deeper relationships with others. So the next time you have a communication disagreement with someone of the other sex or have a challenging time understanding their point of view, remember to give yourself a bit of grace because “boy-behaviors” and “girl-behaviors” are simply hardwired into our brains at birth.
