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How to Refresh Your Brain in a Matter of Seconds When You're Stressed
Higher-order thinking
When your creative, higher-order thinking fades due to stress, all you are left with is binary thinking; Yes-no, now-or-never thinking. This makes it impossible to be innovative or to engage in any form of value creation.
You can get back to the 720 possibilities by restoring your higher-order thinking.
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How your brain handles data
For example, in a meeting, you could be processing:
- what happened in your last meeting with her;
- the concerns that are now surfacing;
- your goals;
- the rewards if this meeting goes well;
- the person's pupils dilating;
- butterflies in your stomach.
Sequencing these events in different ways will generate 720 bits of intel. (6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 720)
When you're stressed
If during a meeting, you perceive an emotional threat, your brain will release stress hormones that will attempt to remove complexity from the situation. These stress chemicals will flush out bits of data that seem unimportant.
If just one bit of data is flushed out of your rational brain, you will be left with 120 options. (5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 120). It effectively means that you just lost 600 possibilities.
Higher-order thinking
When your creative, higher-order thinking fades due to stress, all you are left with is binary thinking; Yes-no, now-or-never thinking. This makes it impossible to be innovative or to engage in any form of value creation.
You can get back to the 720 possibilities by restoring your higher-order thinking.
Tap into gratitude
When you focus on gratitude, your body releases feel-good hormones that flush out stress chemicals, helping you to keep your smarts.
Name your emotional state
When you are experiencing anxiety, you can reduce stress by half if you notice and name your emotional state.
Three deep breaths
When you experience stress, your breath becomes fast and shallow. To counter this, make your breathing slow and deep to signal to your brain's emotional center that you are no longer under threat.
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Identifying Unhelpful Thoughts
- Black and White Thinking: There are heaping piles of nuance to most things.
- Unrealistic Expectations: Cynicism is bad, but a little skepticism is essential.
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- “Should” thoughts: It’s usually just an insistence that the world bends to your will and is a great way to amplify frustration.
Do More Stuff
Doing little positive things is better for happiness than occasionally bagging an elephant:
- Enjoyable stuff
- Achievement stuff: Defeat your goals in single combat and feel like a conquering hero
- Meaningful stuff: Do volunteer work or just help someone
- Physical stuff: Exercise. Not only keeps you alive, but it’s like miracle grow for your brain
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The Science of Sleep
The average adult spends 36 % (or about one-third) of his or her life asleep.
Purpose of Sleep:
- Restoration
- Memory Consolidation
- Metabolic Health
Restoration
The first purpose of sleep is restoration.
Every day, your brain accumulates metabolic waste as it goes about its normal neural activities. Sleeping restores the brains healthy condition by removing these waste products. Accumulation of these waste products has been linked to many brain-related disorders.
Memory Consolidation
The second purpose of sleep is memory consolidation.
Sleep is crucial for memory consolidation, which is responsible for your long term memories. Insufficient or fragmented sleep can hamper your ability to remember facts and feelings/emotions.
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Cognitive biases
...are common thinking errors that harm our rational decision-making.
We don't always see things as they are. We don't simply glean information through the senses and act on it; inste...
Optimism Bias
Is our tendency to overestimate the odds of our own success compared to other people's.
Overly optimistic predictions can be dangerous, leading us to waste time and resources pursuing unrealistic goals. In the real world of business, things don't always work out for the best, and it serves us well to know when conditions are not on our side.
How to control the optimism bias
- Be skeptical of your own rosy expectations for your work.
- Assume projects will be more difficult and more expensive than you initially think they will.
- Don't trust your good ideas to manifest through positive thinking - be ready to fight for them.
- Trust the numbers. Numbers are firm but fair, and getting intimate with your business's cash flow can help you make more rational decisions.
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