ACTUALIZING THE EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONS

Given the executive functions in your brain (Neurons #48), you have both the capacity and the potential to be your own best executive making executive decisions about what to think, believe, decide, say, and do. How great is that? This capacity lies in your prefrontal cortex— because it is there that you have executive functions. These powerful functions is also why— without training— you can completely ruin your potentials. Without training, you can so misuse your executive functions that you will end up creating a living hell for yourself. Conversely, with training, your potentials open up and the sky is the limit.

What are these executive functions? Here is a basic list of the key functions— executive functions by which you can become fully human/ fully alive as you actualize your highest potentials as a human being. It’s by the executive functions that you are able to be human in the highest and best sense.

1) Response inhibition and emotional control

2) Reflecting and meta-cognition

3) Working memory

4) Task initiation

5) Sustained attention: attending, staying focused

6) Intentionality and planning

7) Organizing: Prioritizing, organizing, sequencing.

8) Time management

9) Flexibility in adapting, dealing with change

10) Goal-directed persistence

11) Stress tolerance

12) Social intelligence in communicating, empathy, expressiveness.

1) Response inhibition. This refers to the ability to hold yourself back from doing what other parts of your brain may be mobilize to do. Here you can notice your emotions without acting on them. Here you can ignore distractions and stay focused. Here you can exercise self-control. It includes emotional restraint as the ability to self-regulate your emotions, drives, and choices. You can over-ride your impatience, pride, and need for instant gratification. You can monitor yourself and assume responsibility.

2) Reflecting. This refers to the ability to think before you act. You can take a moment to pause, to be silent and just notice what is without jumping to conclusions. Reflecting means you can think things through and deliberate about what information is most important. Here you can use your meta-cognition for abstract thinking— thinking in terms of concepts, beliefs, understandings. With your reflexivity you recognize hidden frames and reframe.

3) Working memory. This refers to the ability to keep information in your mind and to retrieve it at will. You can not only remember, you can consciously recall what you want to retrieve. While your working memory is short, just a few seconds, you can develop it so that it can hold in mind something for thirty minutes or a day. Memory is your ability for information retention so that you can then have access to it as needed which then allows you to build on your knowledge base.

4) Task initiation and decision. This refers to the ability to start a task and stay focused on it unto completion. You can concentrate on a task and stay focused. This is the ability to evaluate a decision, to weigh pros and cons, to prioritize the importance of values, and to make a final judgment. Now you can be the executive of the decisions, beliefs, understandings and policies that you set for yourself.

5) Sustained attention. The ability to focus your attention on a task, to ignore distractions, and to maintain your intention is what we call concentration. Unlike animals and small children who live in a world of attentions, you can live in the world of intentions— and by your intentions direct your attentions do serve them.

6) Intentionality and planning. This refers to the ability to set intentions and decide and then involves structure and/or format a plan to fulfill your intention. The ability to make a good guess about what will or could happen. It is the ability to think strategically about how to achieve an objective, to consider consequences and to think a few steps ahead.

7) Organizing. This is the ability to order and sequence the activities that make up a plan. It is the ability to track what you’re doing and how you are doing it, in other words, self-monitoring. By organizing things in your mind (and on paper), you are not dependent on how information comes to you, you can re-sequence things and create more useful organizations or strategies.

8) Time management. This is the ability to balance “now” (today) and “then” (the future). When you can do that, you can prioritize long-term over short-term values. You can be aware of your own mortality and “number your days” accordingly. You can choose to live in the now and you can choose to step out of the now to learn from the past and to anticipate the future.

9) Flexibility. This is the ability to flexibly shift your thinking and your strategy as needed in a given context. It is the ability to be nimble rather than rigid. It is the ability to shift perspective, adopt multiple perspectives, and contextualize things. This facilitates the executive ability to stay relevant and appropriate in any context and to make changes in real time.

10) Goal-directed persistence. This is the ability to define an objective and to solve any and all problems that arise to block that achievement. It is the ability to sustain a goal for the long-term and to bounce back from set-backs (resilience). It is the ability to persist.

11) Stress tolerance. This is the ability to embrace uncertainty and the ambiguous, to use humor to lighten up, to calm yourself when under pressure, to restrain yourself from reactivity. This is the ability to turn stresses and challenges into eustress.

12) Social intelligence. This is the ability to communicate empathy and care to others in order to create a connection and bonding with significant others. It is the ability to express yourself and your presence, your understandings and to receive feedback from others. It is the ability to create a social support system for yourself and others.

Now, obviously, before you can actualize these executive functions, you have to know them. After that comes the step of developing them as fully as possible. That’s where teaching, coaching, and training comes in. As you can tell, these involve what we call emotional intelligence, social intelligence, and practical wisdom.

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