Build and Condition Your Brain

If you were offered a pill that could do the following for your brain...

• Increase the growth of brain cells in your memory centre (hippocampus)
• Improve blood flow and nutrition to your whole brain
• Enhance your ability to learn and remember
• Improve your daily mood
• Delay the onset of symptoms of Alzheimer’s

...would you take the pill?

Most of us would say "yes". But you don’t have to take a pill to get these benefits. All you have to do is exercise regularly and you can have all of the advantages above and more. In fact, the more you exercise, the more advantages you can accumulate. The easiest way to get more power from your brain is to take part in aerobic exercise for 20 to 30 minutes preferably daily, but at least 3 times a week.

Aerobic exercise is where you move the big muscles in your legs, hips, and your arms, as when you walk briskly, run, or swim, or use one of the cardio machines at your gym. This movement increases your heart rate and the depth of your breathing. This gets more oxygen into your blood which fires up the recovery process in your muscles and your brain neurons. As Dr. John Ratey explains in his book Spark: The revolutionary science of exercise and the brain:

“It turns out that moving our muscles produces proteins that travel through the bloodstream and into the brain, where they play pivotal roles in the mechanisms of our highest thought processes.”

In fact, Dr. Ratey has been quoted as referring to one of these proteins as “Miracle-Gro for the brain”.

If you need some more motivation, take a look at the YouTube video, 23 and 1/2 Hours by Dr. Mike Evans.

An easy way to start an exercise program is to start counting the number of steps you walk per day. You will need a pedometer, or you might want to go high tech and get a fitbit, which will track steps, distance, calories burned and even stairs climbed.

Here is what my friend Jeannette Folin says about using a fitbit.

“Being self-employed, I always thought my time was best spent working on generating income, not exercising. But after using the fitbit to track my daily exercise, I quickly discovered that I was billing 10-15% more hours during the weeks when I got at least 45 minutes of exercise a day. And now I realize that the exercise was boosting my physical AND mental energy levels.” 

When you have some hard intellectual work to do or some important decisions to make, take 10 minutes first to climb the stairs in your building or take a brisk walk around the block. Then come back to your desk and reap the benefits of your re-charged brain for the next hour.

Disputing Your Irrational Thoughts

That *** makes me so mad!!

It feels as if ***'s behaviour instantaneously makes us angry, but really it is our own thinking that is making us that way. When we tell our subconscious, "*** should listen to me," when clearly *** is not listening to you, your subconscious will get very angry or anxious because it believes exactly what you're telling it.

But in your conscious mind, you know that other people don't often do what you think they should or shouldn't. It would be nice (but a little crazy) if everybody behaved exactly as you think they should.

In fact, you don't even behave as you think you should behave sometimes.

How often have you told yourself you should or shouldn’t do something, and then just ignored your own advice? It’s more rational to recognize that, although you would rather other people behave as you’d prefer, getting angry and frustrated about it is like getting angry with the weather. The following chart outlines popular Irrational Thoughts and the corresponding Rational Disputes that will give you more power.

You can use the chart below to reduce your stress about a situation that has caused you trouble in the past and that you anticipate may happen again.

Imagine you are in the middle of the situation again, for example – missing a deadline with your boss. Enter that as A, the Activating Event. Then, continue to imagine yourself in the middle of the situation, and record the different strong, unpleasant feelings under C, Consequences. Choose one of the strongest, most unpleasant feelings. Visualize yourself in the middle of the situation, feeling that feeling, and record the exact words you were probably saying to yourself at the time. For example,” My boss will be really angry with me.” Record your words under B. Then say to yourself, “If she is really angry with me, that means _____” and record the words that next come to mind. If _____, that means _____ - until you find yourself writing down an irrational thought (as described above). Then choose a Dispute that makes sense to you and record it under D, Dispute. Whenever you start getting uncomfortable about the issue, say the Dispute firmly to yourself as often as you need to until you feel strong enough to handle it differently.

The next time that situation arises, and you begin to feel those strong, uncomfortable feelings, say the Dispute to yourself several times and notice how your feelings change.

As you practice Rational Thinking, you will find that you can turn difficult situations into interesting challenges and even opportunities for growth. Listen to your thoughts, identify when they’re becoming irrational, and figure out a rational dispute.

photo by peretzp/Flickr

Am I at Risk for Alzheimer’s?

Joan and Shirley don’t know each other, but they’d enjoyed similar careers. Each was a well-respected accountant who became Chief Financial Officer of her organization. After years of demanding work, each retired about seven years ago.

Joan followed her passion for fly fishing and now has her own TV program. She’s having a ball.

Shirley watches TV all day. She needs constant care in a nursing home. Shirley has Alzheimer’s.

So why is Joan living the good life and Shirley doesn’t know what life she is living? There’s evidence that it might be, in part, because Joan took care of her brain and Shirley didn’t even realize she needed to.

In her forties, Joan noticed she was gaining weight and slowing down. About the same time, her older brother had a mild heart attack and took early retirement. That was enough for Joan. She installed a machine in her family room and exercised every morning. As she was developing an interest in fly fishing at the time, she started watching instructional videos while exercising. She used the same approach to learn Spanish as she prepared for fishing trips to Costa Rica and Argentina. Combining exercising with learning worked well for Joan.

Shirley also gained weight in her forties, but she was too busy to exercise. In her fifties, her doctor warned that her blood pressure was elevated and she should change her lifestyle. Shirley tried, but her job required regular travel and entertaining, so exercising and adjusting her diet was difficult. About five years before she retired, her new boss turned out to be a bully. Shirley stood up to him, but the stress took a toll and she developed full-blown high blood pressure.

When Joan had found herself in a particularly stressful period at work, she recruited a coach to help tackle her problems with less stress. At retirement, Joan started walking 30 minutes a day and weight lifting three times a week. She started thinking about the benefits of fly fishing. She decided to encourage more women, especially those recovering from cancer, to take up the sport. Gradually her interest built into a weekly TV program and a reputation as an expert.

Watch this YouTube video by Dr. Helena Popovic called "A Daughter’s Determination to Defeat Dementia". It will give you loads of valuable information that Shirley needed, but never received.

By the time Shirley retired, her doctor was encouraging her to lose 20 pounds and get her blood pressure under control. She tried for a while, and then decided it was time to see the world. Over the next two years, she visited Australia, Africa, and Europe. But it was difficult to exercise regularly and she gained another 10 pounds. One day in Italy, she tripped on cobblestones and broke an ankle. When she got home her ankle had to be operated on and the bone pinned. It took six months to heal. She kept meaning to exercise more. She even joined a gym. But during her convalescence she had gained more pounds and was uncomfortable about her appearance. She abandoned the gym.

In their early forties, Joan and Shirley had equal risk factors for Alzheimer’s. But, as they grew older, Shirley’s risk factors increased while Joan’s stayed level.

Resolve that during 2014, you will reduce your risk factors for Alzheimer’s by:

• Taking a brisk walk, swim, run, or stair climb every other day
• Reducing your risks of hypertension or diabetes, by reaching your goal weight
• Learning something that engages and challenges you weekly, if not daily

It was well over 2,000 years ago when China’s Yellow Emperor wrote,

"Maintaining order rather than correcting disorder is the ultimate principle of wisdom. To cure a disease after it has manifest is like digging a well when one feels thirsty, or forging a weapon when the war has already begun."

You might want to read Halina St. James’ article after she met Dr. Popovic at the Global Speakers Summit in Vancouver last December.

photo by kaotso/Flickr

Scarcity: Why Having so Much Means so Little

How is it that we can be so smart in many ways, and yet some of us can't manage our time? How come others are smart in different ways, but still find themselves maxed out on their credit cards? A new book helps us understand why the poor stay poor, and the busy stay busy.

In their book, Scarcity, Harvard economist Sendhil Mullainathan and Princeton psychologist Eldar Shafir paint an alarming picture of how completely scarcity - whether money or time or some other asset - colonizes our minds and destabilizes our decision-making.

Mullainathan and Shafir show that scarcity creates a similar psychology for everyone struggling to manage with less than they need. Busy people fail to manage their time efficiently for the same reasons the poor and those maxed out on credit cards fail to manage their money. The dynamics of scarcity reveal why dieters find it hard to resist temptation, and why students and busy executives mismanage their time.

Once we start thinking in terms of scarcity and the strategies it imposes, the problems of modern life come into sharper focus. Chronically busy people, suffering from a scarcity of time, demonstrate impaired abilities and make self-defeating choices, such as unproductive multi-tasking or neglecting family for work. Lonely people, suffering from a scarcity of social contact, become hyper-focused on their loneliness, prompting behaviours that render it worse.

Mullainathan and Shafir have written a book that provides a new way of understanding why the poor stay poor and the busy stay busy. And it reveals not only how scarcity leads us astray but also how individuals and organizations can better manage scarcity for greater satisfaction and success.

Richard Thaler and UCLA Economist Shlomo Benartzi have worked together for years on finding the crucial steps to help people save for the future. You might enjoy Benartze’s TED talk “Saving for Tomorrow, Tomorrow.”

Wired for Easy Answers

Good decisions take time.

Daniel Kahneman demonstrates that we have two systems of thinking:

System 1 is what he calls 'thinking fast'. It represents intuition, and engages us three seconds at a time. It tirelessly provides us with quick impressions, intentions, and feelings. It is also called the Experiencing Self.

System 2 is 'thinking slow'. It represents reason, self-control, and intelligence. It is also called the Remembering Self. But the Remembering Self only remembers a tiny fraction of what happened, although it thinks it remembers almost everything.

The Remembering Self is also reluctant to put much effort into thinking and will only do so when it has to. For example, if I ask you to tell me the answer to 2+2 you would give me the answer easily. But if I asked you to tell me the answer to 271 x 37 you would resist - unless you could reach for your calculator.

Of course, we are working with both 'selves' simultaneously. But both compete for our attention and the Experiencing Self often wins, even though the Remembering Self is more rational and cautious. The big problem for the Remembering Self is that it has to work harder to stay on task and quickly forgets most of what the Experiencing Self has been experiencing.

Watch Daniel Kahneman for more of an explanation.

When System 2 thinking gets tired, the brain goes with System 1. So when you have an important decision to make, you will get a better result if you allow time for careful, step-by-step thinking, and don’t let yourself be swayed by your fears and hopes of the moment. Ask critical friends or colleagues for their honest input and sleep on the decision for at least one night.

If you are a manager or a technical expert, you tend to be convinced very easily that you know best, that you have very good intuition about your particular field. But this depends on whether the domain you work in is inherently predictable and whether you have had sufficient experience to learn the regularities.

In today’s fast changing world, those conditions are very difficult to maintain. To keep your expertise up-to-date, you need to be able to listen without pre-judgment to many different resources, especially front line employees and customers.

This information about our Experiencing Self and Remembering Self ties in directly with the insights from my April newsletter on Willpower. The fact that our willpower can be easily depleted and then we are more subject to immediate temptations, sounds a lot like the collaboration/struggle between thinking fast and thinking slow.

It also explains why it is so difficult sometimes to concentrate, as discussed in my December 2012 newsletter.

Focusing our pre-frontal cortex on important tasks takes effort. When we do concentrate our attention, extra blood rich in oxygen and glucose flows to the relevant neurons, helping us concentrate even more.

However, our cave-dweller past can upset our plans. We are hard-wired to switch our attention to bright lights or colours, loud noise or movement, or even a moment of fear. It's one of our many survival mechanisms. In an office, it could be the ping of an email or a flashing light on your phone or a worrying thought. Once your attention has been distracted, it takes real effort to re-focus.

To teach our brains to focus more predictably, we need to set up conditions which reduce distractions.

originally published June 2013 Newsletter