Life is a journey: Leadership Trail coach speaks at Compeer Financial workshop

OTTAWA, Ill. — A person’s values and beliefs are developed from genetics, nurture and experiences.

“Our values and beliefs start forming when you’re conceived,” said Kay Kuenker, business management consultant and coach for The Leadership Trail. “What you give your thoughts to creates circuitry that starts to drive habits.”

Needs drive humans from the time they are born, Kuenker explained during a presentation at the Women’s Seminar sponsored by Compeer Financial.

“If someone needs to be included, they might have been left out when they were growing up so that drives adult behavior,” she said.

All individuals have certain personality attributes.

“Personality is about finished by the time you’re 35, but what’s beautiful is you can change it,” Kuenker said. “It just takes awareness and continuous effort.”

Every emotion triggers a chemical reaction in a person’s body.

“Stress can trigger adrenalin or cortisone and sometimes that is good if you have a deadline or you are chased by someone,” Kuenker said. “We divert oxygen from our brain, so we can flee or fight.”

No two brains are alike.

“Brains are like snowflakes your values, beliefs and experiences are different from mine,” Kuenker said. “The brain is a connection machine, so we form a mental map from the time we’re in the womb until the time we die.”

Brains consist of two parts — conscious and unconscious.

“The unconscious part is very efficient and it has huge capacity, so we try to put everything we can into that,” Kuenker said. “For example, when you start to learn how to drive a car you have to concentrate fully, but over time you get better and then you can drive home without even remembering the drive.”

People have biases as a result of their mental maps.

“It’s nearly impossible to dismantle existing wiring unless there’s a brain trauma,” Kuenker said. “What’s beautiful is it is really easy to do new habits and behaviors, but you have to be aware of the old ones first.”

Inhibition is not developed in people’s brains until they reach their mid-20s.

“Yet we make some of our most difficulty decisions of our lives when we are 17 to 25 years old,” Kuenker said. “We’re not well equipped yet, but we’re signing up for the military, we’re getting married and we’re choosing our careers.”

The brain’s job is to keep people alive.

“Subconsciously we are interpreting every situation, person and environment to determine if it will help me or hurt me,” Kuenker said. “We interpret anything outside of our comfort zone as a threat.”

A certain level of stress is beneficial because people need some amount of adrenaline.

“Some stress is good to get you to perform, but with too much stress you’re reacting and not performing well,” Kuenker said. “The trick is for you to find your sweet spot.”

Kuenker encourages everyone to know what rewards are important and also what trips their trigger.

“When you are interacting with someone that’s opposite of you, that’s where triggers are tripped,” she explained.

“Understanding your needs and reward centers and also putting thought into the person you’re interacting with can help you choose your words and behaviors to create a toward response in them,” Kuenker said.

“Every interaction that you have with a person causes a response in them either toward or away by the way you show up,” she said. “Just by the way you word your question can provide the other person certainty, autonomy, relatedness or fairness to generate an environment for a healthy conversation.”

If a person can avoid a difficult situation, that is great; however, most of the time that is not possible.

“Sometimes you can modify the situation to make you more comfortable and change your focus to something else,” Kuenker said.

“Buy yourself time by using powerful questions that generally begin with what,” she said. “Questions that begin with what are open, future focused and they seek input.”

“Life is a journey and we can always improve,” Kuenker said. “Rejoice in the strengths you have and focus on what you can do something about.”