The law of nature is to form patterns of behavior that repeat at all scales and show self-similarities at all levels. These fractal behaviors are not always visible to the eye. Like an iceberg, what you see on the surface hides much more underneath.
In a recent post, Ineke Kanhai advised that never judge a book by its cover…
I responded by saying “what the book cover “covers” underneath it.
Human behavior is a book whose cover may not reveal its content.
It amazes me that the way snowflakes build fractals from one freezing drop of water. The resulting ice crystal rearranges in predetermined spaces to form a six-sided snowflake.
Our brains do the same as snowflakes do. A recent Dartmouth study shows that brain networks organize in a similar way: patterns of brain interactions are mirrored simultaneously at different scales. When people engage in complex thoughts, their networks seem to spontaneously organize into fractal-like patterns. When those thoughts are disrupted, the fractal patterns become scrambled and lose their integrity.
This is the fractal arrangement and fractal bonding that Harvey Lloyd referred to in a recent comment. The recent research findings in how brain fractals form are consistent with Harvey’s thinking.
Like snowflakes that allow bonding, sites to attract new snowflakes and grow team bonding could be the same.
Laura Donnelly was alert in her comment in which she wrote, “There is so much that we can interfere with when our conscious brain jumps out of its sphere and tries to tell the body how to breathe or move. However, when the emotions run amuck or the body goes on hyper-alert (for real or imagined reasons) the conscious mind/brain can call for a pause and even just a fractional pause is enough to interrupt the habitual pattern and creates space for a micro healing and a new choice.
It all starts with observation, awareness, and curiosity”.
The Seeds of Behavior
It seems that our behaviors grow in a fashion similar to the growth of snowflakes. We need a basic emotion to act as a nucleus with extended arms upon which further and similar behaviors anchor to.
This idea received attention. For example, if somebody is overly generous. We see a repeated pattern of behavior in this persons’ tendency to give excessive praise and generous donations to friends and even strangers. This behavior repeats at all scales.
One reason for such behavior is compensating for the feeling of lack of self-worth. It is emotions leading to actions. The feeling of the need for compensation results in over-giving. Patterns form and extend from the arms of one basic emotion.
Like our brains and cellular structures so our behaviors grow to form behavioral patterns that we may trackback to simple interacting emotions acting as the growth sites for habits to branch out into what becomes visible to the eye with the root causes hidden underneath.
Think in terms of behavioral patterns always.
