Instinct: Conversation with Rebecca Heiss

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      Dr. Rebecca Heiss helps clients break out of the ruts of their ancestral brain pathways and engage their conscious brains to take action and override their self-sabotaging instincts. She is dedicated to helping others become self-aware and overcome their instinctual limitations – the ancient, often subconscious fears that hold people back from their optimal performance and happiest lives. Her research has been designated “transformative” by the National Science Foundation and it is waking up audiences around the world.

In this conversation, Rebecca talks about her new book, Instinct.

Geetesh: Rebecca, please tell us more about your new book, Instinct. What inspired you to write this book, and what according to you, is the biggest takeaway for readers?

Rebecca: As a biologist who found herself stumbling into a role as a professional speaker, I wanted to illuminate how much our biology affects our daily lives. Whether we find ourselves getting stressed out in the traffic jam (or on stage speaking to 1000s of strangers), protesting for racial equity, shopping on Amazon, or making massive decisions in the boardroom, our instincts are deeply affecting our behaviors in ways in which, most of us, are completely unaware.

I was inspired to write this book after a tragedy in my own life forced me to take a closer look at how many of my own choices (from my career to my marriage) had been made by following a biological instinct for safety rather than making a more conscious choice. Turns out, that our biology doesn’t care if we’re happy…but I do! For 200,000+ years our instincts are what kept us alive, but today they are preventing us from fully living. I wanted more for myself and I wanted to share my insights on interventions in our instincts with others.

Geetesh: You delve into scientific facts often in Instinct. Let us look at a particular section of communicators: presenters. What can they learn from your book to make their message resonate with their audience?

Rebecca: Almost every one of the instincts I talk about in this book might apply to how presenters can tweak their messaging to resonate better with their audiences, but I think the most relevant instinct to explore if we are trying to be more effective communicators is our instinct for information gathering.

For our ancestors, more information was always better (after all, this was WAY before the internet). Today that manifests in hours of scrolling social media or delivering rambling lectures because our brain rewards us for the simple act of collecting and transmitting information – even if that information isn’t relevant or useful.

The trick here for a lot of presenters is that they want to give their audiences all the information they know (but that’s the wrong instinct!). Our brains simply aren’t built to take in nearly the amount of information they are craving. When presenters keep their points simple, repeat and reinforce them with images, and whenever possible, use a story to illustrate the point, their audiences can more easily digest the material.

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post or content are those of the authors or the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.