Health First, Brain Last
E66: 3 Steps to un-hijack your brain for optimal performance
“I just need to stop thinking negatively!”
I only realised it with hindsight. When I was sat at my desk, stuck in an avalanche of work, I would often grasp for a solution that started with the words:
"I just need to ..."
It’s that feeling of frustration when you've lost your confidence.
Or the tightness you feel in your neck and chest because your arch-rival at work has just impressed their team, and you haven't.
Your brain comes up with all sorts of simple commands.
"Stop ruminating!"
"Be more confident!"
"I just need to stop letting it get to me!"
One of my clients recently called this his "Inner Bitch"!
Simple, but useless
These simple ideas are like pushing water up a hill. The more we try to tell our brain to stop hijacking our performance, the more it does precisely that.
It's frustrating, isn't it, being the internal observer of our brain when it's in overdrive?
It ignores our past achievements and starts a doom loop of stories about our certain failure
It spotlights how the spark and joy have gone from our work.
It reminds us that we're tired or depressed, or how some of our colleagues suck the energy out of us.
So how do we stop thinking negatively, bring our confidence back, and show up as the leaders we know we can be?
How do we stop our “Inner Bitch” brain from hijacking our performance?
Health first. Brain last.
It's easy to rely on our brains to solve our problems. But what’s worked for my clients (and myself) is to let our brain hang out and take a break backstage while we invite the other protagonists to come on stage first.
I've always been inspired by the way Functional Medicine approaches chronic health conditions, like my autoimmune condition, psoriasis. If we have a headache, we don't only take a tablet to relieve the pain, but we look at what’s causing the headache in the first place.
It might be inflammation caused by a particular food that’s not suited to you, toxins, or heavy metals.
Or it might be a deficiency in certain vitamins or minerals.
Or it might be your nervous system being in a loop of high alert that rewiring your brain with amygdala training or dynamic neural retraining can resolve.
By addressing the root causes, we might not even need to reach for the conventional tablet at all.
When we address the root causes of our “Inner Bitch” minds, we create:
the conditions for our nervous system and our brains to react less and respond more
the space for awareness to emerge,
the capacity to tap into the wisdom of our three brains.
When we re-discover the space and capacity to connect with what's going on around us, we can show up with joy and courage as the leader we want to be.
Here's how 👇
Step 1. Support your gut to improve your brain power
Eat real food, flush toxins from your brain, manage your stress through food and boost your Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (or BDNF). I share how to do this in edition 63.
Step 2. Lead from your body, not your brain
Sometimes we need to tune in to the wisdom in our body whilst our brain is backstage. I share how to do this in edition 64.
Then when your foundations are reset, it's time to bring your brain back on stage.
Step 3. Restore your Brain-Powered Confidence
Don't Wait, Start now! I share how to do this in edition 65.
👉 Over to you!
I know my clients have found this "Health first. Brain last" approach useful because when we work on the root cause of a brain that's hijacking our performance, we can restore what our brain does best: solving our most challenging problems and showing up as the joyful, courageous, heart-centred leaders we want to be.
What has sparked your attention from this week’s Effortless Thursdays?
What might you want to try?
ps If you’re an entrepreneur, a lawyer or another high-flying professional - who’s looking to bring joy back into your work and home life - by building a healthy brain for a career that’s full of success in a way that feels effortless, get in touch and let’s have a conversation.
That’s it for this week!
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To your health and success!
Eric
the title of this post is a very simple and effective slogan. I mean it's really landing with me. It's an invitation to stop getting hooked into endless loops of cognitive cogitation and troubleshooting when you feel that your brain is not on your side, and to literally and immediately invest in some form of health right then and there before trying to do more with a compromised cortex