We all want more trust at work and at home because it smoothes the rough edges of life. You can build trust when you know how animals build it and why your limbic brain makes careful decisions about when it turns on the great oxytocin feeling of trust.
29. You have more power over your chemistry
when you understand the mammal brain.
30. A mammal is not born knowing when
to trust. It learns from experience.
31. A reptile never
learns to trust.
It leaves home
the instant it
cracks from its
shell, and if it
doesn’t leave
fast enough, a
parent eats it.
32. Reptiles keep their distance because
their colleagues bite if they get too close.
33. Mammals are born without hard-wired
skills. They must trust others to meet their
needs while their skills are building.
34. We mammals are born into a
surge of oxytocin because the chemical
causes labor contractions.
35. That oxytocin is soon metabolized, but
licking and cuddling stimulate more.
36. All the neurons active at that moment build
connections. This wires a young mammal to
trust in situations similar to its oxytocin past.
37. In adolescence, a mammal transfers its
attachment from a parent to a herd in
order to survive once its parent is gone.
38. The pathways built from early experience
have more power than we realize.
39. We are all born with billions of neurons but very
few connections between them. Neurons
connect build easily in youth, and grow with use.
40. The electricity in your brain flows like water
in a storm, finding the paths of least
resistance. It flows into the paths you have.
41. Early experience builds our cortisol
pathways as well as our oxytocin,
serotonin, and dopamine pathways.
42. In the state of nature, anyone close enough to touch
you is close enough to kill you. This is why betrayed
trust triggers so much cortisol. It wires you to feel
threatened in similar future circumstances.