Improper Nutrition And Hydration

Contributing factors to mental fatigue are poor nutrition, lack of sleep, hormonal imbalances, or cognitive overload. Cognitive overload can take the following forms:

• When you focus on a single task for an extended period of time.
• When you spread your attention across too many things.
• Worrying about tasks. It is as mentally taxing as doing the task.

Your brain is fuelled with the same food as your muscles. What you eat has an enormous impact on your cognitive functioning.

• Cut down on refined sugars as it decreases alertness. Aim for sustained energy levels throughout the day.
• Plan your meals in advance. If you wait until you're hungry, you're already low on energy and willpower and will reach for a quick energy boost in the form of sugar.
• Don't skip breakfast. Without it, you may likely crash in the middle of the morning. Eat more eggs, yogurt, and oatmeal to sustain your energy levels until lunch.
• Snack mid-morning and mid-afternoon to give your body consistent fuel.
• Stay hydrated with water. Mild hydration can negatively impact cognitive performance.
• Listen to your body to figure out what makes you feel best. The same nutrition advice won't work for everyone.

Make a simple chart to help you see what kind of energy you operate on at various daily checkpoints and consider what affect this pattern has on you.

Discover how to better match your own energy with your daily goals.

The most common reason is energy mismanagement - not supporting specific times of the day and specific actions with the right match of energy.

Identify your own energy traps and mismatches and replace them with the right energy to increase your energy gains. You’ll get more done with less effort and greater satisfaction when you can train your body and mind to operate with “higher-quality currency.”

“A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.” 

Momentum is created or destroyed every day with the first few decisions you make.

If you learn to master your day, you’ll learn how to master your weeks, months, years, and life.

Regular exercise can treat mild to moderate depression, as good as the antidepressants.

Exercise provides us with feel-good chemicals made naturally inside our body, as the brain releases endorphins, dopamine, and serotonin.

Exercise also has a psychological benefit of making us feel great.

Using exercise as a social activity, we improve our self-esteem and get to meet new people, forming healthy and positive connections

A study conducted by the University of Copenhagen found that many people suffer from “Facebook envy”, with those who abstained from using the popular site reporting that they felt more satisfied with their lives. 

Becoming more conscious of the amount of time you spend scrolling through other people’s online profiles could help you focus more on yourself and boost your self-confidence.

It’s so important for us to be able to communicate and forge personal connections with one another. However, it can be hard to do so when we’re glued to rectangular screens, becoming more acquainted with our friends’ digital facades than their real-life personas.

A study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology that assessed 5,208 subjects found that overall, regular use of Facebook had a negative impact on an individual’s wellbeing. 

Instead of thinking of a cut-and-dry end goal to certain situations, creative people sit back and examine the problem in different ways before beginning to work.

If you find yourself stagnating by focusing on generic problems, try to re-conceptualize the problem by focusing on a more meaningful angle.

For example: Instead of thinking “What would be something cool to paint?” rather ask, “What sort of painting evokes the feeling of loneliness that we all encounter after a break-up?”

Creating “psychological” distance may be useful for breaking through a creative block.

Try to imagine your creative task as being disconnected and distant from your current position/location - this may make the problem more accessible and can encourage higher level thinking.

• Lack of sleep can result in a feeling that our space is being invaded, leading to us distancing ourselves from others, physically.
• The region of the brain which is responsible for compassion and sociability is less active in those with sleep deprivation.
• Other people perceive those with sleep deprivation as socially 'repulsive' and surprisingly start to show the same symptoms if they deal with them for a while.

Puzzle games and crosswords are both good mind stimulators and can improve your brain power, confidence, and self-esteem.

Their inherent attractiveness lies in the fact they are challenging. Solving puzzles makes your brain work continuously, thus making you push the limits of your intellect.

A hobby that you can pursue in a relaxed and non-competitive environment opens up the creative windows of your mind. 

Try something like embroidery instead of the usual paintings and water-color drawings.

Aspirational tasks, like writing a book, don’t belong on a to-do list; instead, create a separate bucket list. 

Daily to-do lists should be focused. If you have a big project you want to complete, you can put it on your to-do list if you chunk it out into smaller, more attainable tasks.

You don't have to do anything wrong; you just have to change. You’ll be teased, made fun of, joked about, frowned upon, mocked, or end up being excluded.

People around you may simply react to you for being different from themselves or the group. They still care about you, but just want the old you back and the group's identity to remain the same.

The downside of a misunderstanding is that every tease, mock, or remark, regardless of how serious or mild it is, will affect you and question your choices.

The beginning is the hardest part when you'll need the most energy to avoid going back to your old self. For some, that's how the journey ends. Trying another time will be much harder because they'll also have the past failure to deal with.