IVolv

13/09/2020

Exploring hope and belief as they relate to Tenacity, Reasoning and Leadership

12/09/2020

How do you see success right now?

11/07/2020

https://this.deakin.edu.au/self-improvement/does-mindfulness-work

Dr Melissa Weinberg from Deakin University explores the evidence and theoretical reasons behind mindfulness and why it could be helpful for some people.

07/06/2020

27/03/2020

Health and resilience

We awaken to a new world with an enhanced awareness of each other and the way in which we see and interact; not through the social and planetary understanding of climatic change and our ever-growing part in our continued existence, but in the way in which our global neighbourhood has so rapidly been slapped in the face by a viral pandemic.

How do we remain resilient in ways other than the perpetual exhausting of resources from our supermarkets? In part, the answer is simple; by creating an opportunity to concentrate on our health.

Psychological resilience through health can be viewed through three key lenses – exercise, sleep and nutrition; restoring natural equilibrium heart rate + breathing + immune system. This equilibrium is negatively affected by the ‘stress hormones’, adrenaline and cortisol.

Consider the ‘smart brain’, which includes the prefrontal cortex and the ‘impulsive brain’, including the amygdala. The fear responses and short-term thinking driven from the impulsive brain are reduced as activation of the ‘smart brain’ lessens the impact of the ‘impulsive brain’, calming through constructive emotions that can protect health and speed up recovery.

Additionally, this increases the level of dopamine, helping to become more adaptable in approaches, learning from past situations and responses. Habits have a physical effect on our resilience and well-being. The neural structure called the Hippocampus regulates a chemical called Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), driving the creation of new neural pathways, allowing to access memories and change habits. The three core factors that positively affect BDNF levels and in turn brain health are exercise, sleep and nutrition.

Trouble sleeping? Lack of sleep increases cortisol, a stress hormone, and reduced BDNF, making it harder to deal with adversity and maintain goals. It’s not just the quantity of sleep (7-9 hours for example), it is additionally the quality of your sleep.

Exercise helps resilience by keeping you sharp and motivated. Not just related to physical aspects, exercise is important for wellbeing and brain health and indeed mental fitness. Short term benefits include enabling us think faster and more accurately. The endorphins released help with stress and increases BDNF; the brain grows smarter. Long term benefits include protection against diseases and improving neural network efficiency. This increases brain size and connectivity.

Nutrition is not only good for your body, but also provides a positive impact on your brain and mental health. Ingestion of sugary foods releases serotonin, in turn releasing Dopamine and motivating you to eat more. This causes energy to quickly rise then crash, making it difficult to deal with challenges; reducing BDNF and making us less able to learn. Key points are to reduce sugar intake, eat consciously and in moderation. Drink more water, eat more vegetables and whole foods and prepare meals at home.

06/02/2020

Hope and Belief

The words hope and belief mean many things; and based upon individual experience can be profound indeed. Hope speaks to our desires of realistic optimistic expectation for positive outcomes; Tenacity. Belief is an attitude of both faith, acceptance of truth and also of our ability to explore those facets; Reasoning.

Tenacity is about the ability to persevere through difficulty and quickly getting back on track. Whether it is an illness or a setback at work, this indicates a measure of hardiness that helps us to keep going, keep trying and to bounce back quickly. During these situations, it is important to have a realistic sense of the limits of control and maintain accurate expectations of what we can achieve. This helps us to not expect too much of ourselves, but still know ourselves well enough to recognise the strength to be able to push forward and endure.

Our motivation is critical for all areas of life – from work, to hobbies, to relationships, to family and children. Interestingly, research shows that persistence (motivation to continue) is more important for success than intelligence. Realistic optimism is about being hopeful, persevering and acknowledging difficulties that will need to be overcome.

As with many things, balance intervenes; we must avoid being too overly optimistic, as this may tend to impact motivation; and conversely, we must avoid the over-analysis of pessimism, which may also impact motivation. The key may lie in a realistic sense of hope, of accurately analysing and managing our mistakes.

Avoid self-judgement and focus on learning.

None of us are born with an ideal set of beliefs and knowledge; we all hold beliefs from our childhood that influences our behaviour, yet we rarely challenge this later in life. As such, this offers the ability for us to explore our beliefs to make personal sense of situations through reasoning.

Reasoning plays a major role in how much confidence we have in our ability to solve unexpected problems and adapt to sudden change. This includes our ability to be resourceful, think critically, identify opportunities and take an action-oriented approach to best work towards our own and shared goals.

This also extends into proactively identifying opportunities so we can instigate change and innovate to create an environment where we can thrive together with others; creating a sense of community. Here the ability to be creative in a stressful situation can be a powerful and highly regarded personal attribute.

The processing that happens preconsciously is about testing and validating information before it becomes conscious. This way information you become conscious of is already filtered down to what the brain sees as the most important information.
Biases and deep beliefs affect the processing of information, which can also give rise to blind spots, and we find that connections between neurons encode our thoughts, actions, beliefs and memories; strengthening the right neural pathways in the brain.

This strengthening occurs through the chemical connections that neurons have to each other, which are triggered by electrical signals called action potentials.

This may create an ability to challenge our own beliefs; being able to challenge our own beliefs is a crucial skill for resilience. It helps us update our mental understanding of the world, which in turn helps us be more successful in achieving our goals.

22/01/2020

Small Steps

The reason we invest time in neuroscience is because it is useful. This is about learning how to operate this complex machine inside your head; to make best use of your brain.
And knowing that your investment in resilience changes your brain and results in long term benefits to your mindset.

To find out how we can help the brain to integrate resilience skills, we need to consider how neuroplasticity works. Plasticity is about the brain’s ability to change. You are re-wiring your brain through your efforts.

The connections between neurons encode your thoughts, actions, beliefs and memories.
Learning resilience skills is about strengthening the right neural pathways in the brain.
This strengthening happens through the chemical connections that neurons have to each other, which are triggered by electrical signals called action potentials.

Action potentials are the electrical signals travelling across neurons. It takes the activation of many neurons to stimulate another neuron enough to produce an action potential.
This means it takes coordinated firing of neurons across the network. If we have frequent and strong activation (lots of coordinated firing), then we see a physical change where the second neuron now becomes more sensitive to the first neuron. This means it now becomes easier for the second neuron to produce an action potential.

At a conscious level, it means that it now becomes easier for us to think in a new way.
The skills we are trying to learn are becoming more natural and become the default way of our mindset. What really changes the brain is strong coordinated firing – this means practicing skills on an ongoing basis.

The key point is that short, frequent tasks are better for synaptic change and for making lasting improvements in how we think.

Therefore, small steps (microtasks), which are short daily activities that create this kind of change. Microtasks are a more effective way of learning, especially when it comes to learning the skills that make us resilient. The convergent activation of the pathways we want to strengthen, speeds up neural change.

The key points are that small frequent tasks help create neural change and writing and talking about those activities speed up change even more.

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