deepstash
Beta
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.
155 SAVES
This is a professional note extracted from an online article.
Read more efficiently
Save what inspires you
Remember anything
IDEA EXTRACTED FROM:
6
Key Ideas
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.
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.
SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
7
Key Ideas
Challenge Unhelpful Thoughts
Listen to your thoughts — but don’t necessarily believe them.
They're suggestions, possibilities. But they’re not gospel. You can’t control what thoughts pop up, but y...
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.
- Selective Attention: If your brain is always looking for the negative, you’re gonna find it.
- Disqualifying the Positive: Sometimes we go into problem-solving mode and focus only on what is broken.
- Predicting the Future: “This will never work” or “They’re going to think I’m stupid.” You don’t know the future. So don’t act like it.
- “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
- Social stuff.
4 more ideas
4
Key Ideas
Untreated trauma and its negative effects
All individual who has ever dealt with trauma knows that healing can take a lot of time if it eventually happens. Untreated trauma seems to leave scars on our brain, altering the way we perceive...
Trauma changes our brain
After having experienced trauma, our brain can not function properly anymore, at least for a while.
Among the negative effects that trauma leads to there is the risk of developing physical illnesses or the so-called Post-traumatic stress disorder.
Post-traumatic stress disorder
When dealing with PTSD, the three parts of our brain, which are responsible for processing stress, suffer changes: the hippocampus, the amygdala function and the prefrontal/ anterior cingulate function.
one more idea
3
Key Ideas
When you're in love
When humans fall in love, their bodies are actively producing feel-good hormones and preventing the release of negative hormones.
When this process suddenly stops, the "w...
Going through a breakup
Heartbreak is a form of grief and loss that can cause serious issues with insomnia, anxiety and depression.
The pain we feel during heartbreak is similar to the physical pain we feel due to a severe burn on a broken arm.
Healing from a breakup
- Visual reminders are likely to create dopamine surges in your brain that relate to feelings of craving and withdrawal.
- Replace those surges of dopamine by taking a fitness class. Exercise can also release endorphins that trigger positive feelings.
- Find a "new normal".
- Accept the reason for the breakup.