About 300 people gathered on an autumn Saturday afternoon in the Casa del Lector auditorium in Matadero Madrid to listen to the neuroscientist Mariano Sigman.
This is what the consultancy Thinking Heads, specialized in the positioning and influence of leaders and organizations, has promoted through its first format of conferences focused on the general public. And he has done it with the help of the Argentine popularizer of international prestige, Mariano Sigman, after the worldwide success of his book “The Power of Words.”

In the capacity there were adults, children, families, couples, groups of friends, Spaniards, Argentines and people of different types and origins. All united under the common denominator of listen to Sigman and interact with him. And through a dynamic talk with the public, with some experiments and games, Sigman always seeks to generate a unique and enriching experience.

During his intervention, which lasted one and a half hours, Mariano Sigman addressed the relationship between language and the brain, exploring how words have the power to improve our cognitive abilities and our daily lives. Because according to him, “There is no greater factory of ideas than dialogue. The exchange of opinions not only transforms our reality, but also allows us to develop and evolve.”

For this event, Thinking Heads has provided a conference format related to a more mainstream audience. This type of events, adapted and generated for a specific need, where hypersegmentation is key, is part of the consulting firm’s new direction that thus incorporates a ideation service and interaction with cultural agents through its new line of business.

“After 20 years leading the market, our objective is to complete our service offering with aspects linked to ideation, content or dissemination and impact, thus generating an ecosystem capable of generating influence. A portfolio that the market is receiving positively, both companies, institutions and leaders”commented Daniel Romero-Abreu, President and Founder of Thinking Heads.

Learning in four acts

With the “Milonga de Jacinto Chiclana”, by Jorge Luis Borges and Astor Piazzolla, as a common thread, Mariano Sigman divided his intervention into what he called “four acts” to convey the main idea that “words have the ability to populate our imagination”. Thus, each of the acts responds to a verse of the aforementioned poem. And in all of them, the neuroscientist transmitted simple but highly relevant learnings for the lives of those attending.

I see it high and clear

Sigman began by doing the first of the experiments in his talk, showing the following image and asking the audience the question: “Who is Kiki and who is Bouba?”

In this way, he wanted to convey that Humans have a way of converting shapes into sounds. So, except for a couple of outsiders who raised their hands, the vast majority of the public agreed that the shape on the left would be Kiki and the shape on the right would be Bouba.

This was followed by the three faces experiment and the question: “Who would you leave in charge of a suitcase with the most important memories of your life?”

There was also almost absolute unanimity among those attending. “The one in the middle gives us more confidence. The first one is a good person, but maybe a bit stupid. And the third one may not want to give you your suitcase back,” Sigman joked to anticipate one of the many learnings he left during his talk: “This also happens to us with ourselves. “We create our own narrative of stereotypes, describing a reality that sets limits for us.”

To try to break them, and also to put the sense of proprioception -which allows us to perceive the location, movement and action of the parts of the body, encompassing a set of sensations such as the perception of the position of the joints and their movement, muscle strength, and effort- Mariano Sigman challenged the audience to choose an unknown opponent to cast a Chinese pulse, but with your eyes closed.

After a few seconds of laughter and unexpected fun, the communicator was forceful when defining the result of the experience: “The beautiful thing is that you find things you thought you wouldn’t find.”. And he emphasized that, normally, “We miss opportunities. We judge people very quickly, intuition sometimes fails us. Competition loses us and prejudice stops us. We draw very hasty conclusions that we blindly trust.”

With a restrained soul

Under the premise that Conversation is the last human aspirationSigman focused this part of his talk on remembering what this art has traditionally represented: “In a conversation, people meet to conclude ideas. And the opinion after talking to someone is better than before having spoken.” Thus, in the space of ideas, a barter occurs and “one can see reality through the eyes of others.”

At this point in the conference the name of Michel Eyquem de Montaignea French philosopher, writer, humanist and moralist of the Renaissance, author of the Essays and creator of the literary genre known in the Modern Age as rehearsal. It has been described as the most classic of the modern and the most modern of the classics. and Sigman wanted to reference it to remind us that the essay comes from French essaywhat does it mean “attempt”.
And so, he encouraged the attendees to try it, to talk to discover yourself and discover with other unknown people who they are. Through his compilation with “99 questions to discover who you are” that was distributed to the public, Sigman introduced the exercise of reflecting in a group on quite introspective questions such as the following:

• Where are you too lenient and where are you too hard on yourself?
• Share a lie you told in your childhood
• Is there something you would really like to learn? What prevents you from learning it?
• What was your first experience with death?
• What do you think are the most important turning points in your life?

Able not to raise his voice

At the halfway point of Mariano Sigman’s presentation, the neuroscientist emphasized that understand the purpose of a conversation “It is key to not argue unnecessarily.” Keep silent in conversations, he said, “It is an essential gesture of love.”

But getting there depends on mental capacity that everyone has to control their own narratives. “It is enough for them to tell us not to think about a pink elephant so that we cannot think about anything else”. This is what Sigman defines as pranoia, something that is also reflected in fear, jealousy… “There is no way to say that I don’t want to think about something without actually thinking about it.”. And it also happens in a positive way, so he invited the public to be a little more forgiving when thoughts like “calm down”, “be happy” or “have a good time” come to our mind, because at the end of the day, this They are imperative like not thinking about a pink elephant.

And with the example of the roller coaster as a background, Sigman defined it as “that place where one turns fear into pleasure” to encourage attendees to resignify emotions.

And risk your life

Dopamine, motivation and uncertainty.
These three words are, for Mariano Sigman, the key to human drives. And it is that “Uncertainty is what truly sets us in motion to discover how something ends.” It is a kind of link between the self of the present and the self of the future. “We activate dopamine just by knowing that something good is going to come in the future” and, therefore, the dopamine molecule is at the core of why we have these drives.

Thus, constantly, the self of the present signs contracts with the self of the future, “but we are not very empathetic with that future self,” Sigman warned. And from here came another of the great lessons to conclude the afternoon: “When we can give meaning to the journey, we are more empathetic with that future self.”