All people have potential, but different kinds of potential, based on their unique neurological design. Knowing your neurological design and the drivers that optimize your brain performance, is the key to potential development and performance optimization. Effective and successful people manage their neuro-design and the drivers that optimize it, to become an even better version of themselves.
Because of our genetic coding, there will always be one hemisphere, brain region, or sensory organ that will lead and be preferred because of neurological dominance. This will be the natural default mode we choose to function in, especially during stress or fatigue. We can and should, however, optimize the other hemispheres, brain regions, and senses to process information and perform at optimal levels. Ultimately, this is what being Neuro Agility is all about.
Unfortunately, our world mostly has a dualistic approach to understanding how the brain works, suggesting you are left-hemisphere or right-hemisphere oriented, expressive or receptive, rational or emotional. This produces a limiting view of who we are. Dualism does not accommodate the concept that you are a whole-brained person who can do whatever is expected. An inclusive perspective is better – you are left and right hemispheres, expressive and receptive, rational and emotionally oriented. One region may lead because it is dominant, but the other can function as effectively as the dominant region. When brain regions are firing on all cylinders simultaneously, a multiplication effect occurs that optimizes your brain’s performance to enable you to function at the optimum level.
Your brain has the potential to help you do whatever life requires of you. It has unlimited learning, thinking, and creative potential. Sometimes people may not act like they have limitless potential, because there may be an absence or lack of drivers that optimize their brain’s performance. These drivers will also improve your brain health and overall brain fitness. To optimize your brain performance and enable all hemispheres, lobes, and brain regions to function simultaneously as one functional whole-brained system, you need to produce the right neurochemicals, do appropriate physical and mental stimulation activities, and create the right conditions for your brain to thrive.
There are drivers like brain agility, sleep, stress, diet, mindset, movement, cognitive skills, and the physical environment that can negatively, or positively, influence your brain’s performance and health. One can’t improve what one can’t measure. To get the most out of your whole brain, you must know how these drivers influence your neurological design and learn appropriate skills to optimize them.
Infographic about drivers that optimize your brain health and performance
Brain Agility
Brain agility is about utilizing all brain regions simultaneously as one functional 3-dimensional system. You are not born brain fit. You develop and maintain brain fitness through regular physical activities and mental stimulation. Lack of brain agility will result in alternating between hemispheres rather than processing information simultaneously, causing you to think, learn, and process information longer, slower, and harder. Optimized brain agility results in learning, thinking, and processing information optimally and reducing your risk for errors and mistakes.
Your overall brain fitness skillset consists of a combination of physical cross-lateral exercises and mental activities that help produce neurotrophins, and neurotransmitters, activate mental integrative states, and promote cerebrospinal circulation.
Infographic about brain fitness
Stress Coping Skills
During continued stress, your brain starts losing control over certain brain regions. When you experience stress, your brain releases neurochemicals called cortisol, which decreases the speed of electrical transmission of impulses and the likelihood that the neuron (brain cell) will fire an electrical impulse. In layman’s terms, dehydration and inhibiting neurochemicals trigger a biochemical “switching off” effect of the less dominant brain regions, resulting in a person functioning more from their natural default (dominant brain regions) preferences. Learning, thinking, and processing functions of a person’s preferred default hemisphere will be amplified during stress and the less preferred hemisphere’s functions become more inhibited.
Depending on the level and duration of stress, you may release even more cortical inhibitors that result in losing control over more brain regions, regressing from the neocortex (reasoning centers) into the limbic system and brain stem areas (emotional and survival). The longer and more intense the stress you experience, the more you lose control. Continued stress thus, increases your risk of making mistakes and errors, and limits your performance, memory, concentration, mental alertness, learning effectiveness, information-processing abilities, and brain health.
Coping with stress, and feeling positive, safe, and relaxed helps you access all brain regions naturally. Information is then processed in the brain’s cognitive prefrontal cortex and new learning is incorporated into long-term, conceptual memory networks. This state of relaxed alertness is where you concentrate better and are mentally alert and sharp.
Pro-active stress management skills are a conglomeration of many skills like maintaining work-life-sleep balance, developing and maintaining optimistic mindsets in stressful times, having strong social bonds with others, exercising and moving sufficiently, self-debriefing stress coping skills, healthy diet, practicing spirituality and so on. Dealing with stress proactively is not about doing one or some of these skills, but doing as many of them as possible most of the time. Contrary to popular belief, these skills are not common sense. They have to be taught. If it was common sense and everybody was doing it, continued stress wouldn’t be the greatest killer in society and the no 1 cause of most illnesses. Developing these skills is vital, as stress is your brain’s greatest enemy.
Sleep
Sleep is essential for mental alertness, energy, wellness, and optimum brain performance. When you sleep long enough and deep enough, you produce neurotransmitters that are vital for managing fatigue and maintaining health and wellness. Sleep helps your body to restore depleted resources and to repair damaged cells. It makes the mind more receptive to thinking, learning, concentration, and memory. Dreaming helps to clear away ‘brain clutter.
Lack of sufficient sleep causes fatigue. You will be at risk at work, more prone to accidents, mistakes, and errors, and also may suffer serious health problems. Although everyone needs a different amount of sleep, most people need 7 – 9 hours per night. It is not just the amount of sleep you get, but also the quality that determines how rested you will be.
Developing sound sleep strategies to maintain quality sleeping habits in a demanding world has become an art that most people have not mastered well enough. It will impact their health, life span, performance, and happiness in the medium to long term. Maintaining the discipline of good sleeping habits is not optional, but mandatory for mental alertness and safety.
Movement and Exercise
If you do not exercise sufficiently, and constantly move, your brain health and performance will be compromised. Movement activates your brain’s thinking centers and activates all brain regions. It stimulates thinking and learning. Movement promotes the circulation of oxygenated blood to your brain and energizes your brain. Exercise helps to produce neurotransmitters that promote good feelings and health. Stretching promotes increased focus and concentration.
Most people assume that it is enough to exercise every day. Research indicates that you should also be standing and moving throughout the day for your brain to reap the benefits of movement.
Including movement and exercise in your busy lifestyle, as much as possible, is a prerequisite for a sharp and agile brain. Exercise. Walk where you can. Take the stairs rather than the elevator. Stand during a meeting rather than sitting. Stand when doing computer work.
Attitude / Mindset
Your attitude or mindset is the way you habitually think. You are what you think. Changing your performance starts with changing the way you habitually think. You cannot be more than the sum total of your thinking. A positive attitude is essential for good brain health and optimum performance. Henry Ford said: “Whether you think you can or you can’t, you are right.” Your mind controls your body and whole life. Actions follow thoughts. If you want to change your life, performance, success, and happiness, it starts with changing your thinking. A positive mind produces positive performance. A negative mind produces negative performance. A negative mind can never produce a positive performance. If you want to be successful, think and do what successful people do. If you want to be happy, think like happy people and do what happy people do.
It is not only your thought patterns (neural pathways) that impact your success and performance but also the biochemical response that positive or negative thoughts evoke. Chemicals produced by positive thoughts and feelings complement learning and health. Unfortunately, chemicals produced by constant negative thoughts, feelings, stress, and fatigue inhibit the effectiveness of electrical transmissions in your brain, drain your energy, and may even weaken your immune system in the medium to long term. An optimistic, mindset and a constructive mind, are vital for success, brain health, and optimum performance.
Contrary to popular belief, people are not born optimists or a pessimists. Optimism is a habitual, positive mindset of someone who always has hope for the future, regardless of the negative realities they may face. A positive mind is a mental discipline you develop and maintain. Your mindset is an attitude you develop and something you are responsible for. You are supposed to control it. It should not control you. A positive attitude is an underlying mindset for most desired skills like creativity, problem-solving, and emotional intelligence. A negative mind will limit your brain’s performance even if you exercise, eat healthy, and have an agile brain.
Brain Food
The food you eat impacts your information-processing ability, emotions, health, concentration, and performance. Your brain’s energy comes from the food you eat, the water you drink, and the oxygen you inhale.
You are what you eat. Eating natural and healthy brain foods compliments working faster and smarter. Most of nature’s produce, used in moderation and variation, will be conducive to increased mental performance. Unfortunately, most of man’s “quick fixes” and products like processed and fast foods are not always conducive to physical and mental performance and health in the medium to long term. Maintaining a healthy, brain-friendly diet for people on the go, may be their greatest challenge, but something that significantly influences their energy, life span, well-being, performance, and happiness.
Brain Ergonomics
Your senses connect your brain to the environment in which you learn and work. The senses are the doors to your brain. You absorb information by constantly taking in sensory data as visual (see), auditory (hear), olfactory (smell), tactile (touch), and gustatory (taste) messages to the brain. What you see, hear, smell, taste, and touch will have a positive or negative biochemical impact on your brain. Chemicals that facilitate and transmit electrical impulses between brain cells are called neurotransmitters. These chemicals are highly conducive to learning, memory, concentration, and health and are produced when you work in a humanized environment that resembles natural colors, sounds, textures, and smells.
Most man-made working and learning environments are not always conducive to optimum brain performance or health. If you work in a dehumanized environment, it will negatively impact your brain’s performance because it may cause you to produce chemicals, called cortical inhibitors, that may hinder or limit electrical transmission between neurons (brain cells) and are therefore not conducive to your brain health and performance in the medium to long term.
Brain ergonomics is about the conduciveness of the physical environment in which you learn, think, and work for your brain. For optimized performance, the physical environments in which you live and work should be as humanized and natural as possible to be conducive to learning and thinking.
Cognitive Skills
Except for regulating bodily functions, learning and thinking are the primary functions of your brain. You are born with unique learning and thinking potential but you have to develop appropriate cognitive skills aligned with your unique neuro-design to be good at creativity, analytical thinking, and complex problem-solving.
To optimize your brain performance, learn the mental skills required to survive and thrive. Skills like advanced visual processing skills to read faster and process volumes of information effectively, how to reduce volumes of information (data) to meaningful content, complex problem-solving skills, critical thinking skills, creativity, emotional intelligence, judgment and decision making and cognitive flexibility will be a necessity to thrive today and in the future.
You can’t improve what you can’t measure. To have a fast, focused, and flexible mind, you need to understand the factors that make up your neurological design and learn appropriate skills to optimize the drivers that impact your brain performance. The Neuro Agility Profile® (NAP™) is the most comprehensive, multi-dimensional assessment to measure and optimize your neuro-design and the drivers that optimize your brain health and performance.
Go ahead. Invest in the greatest asset you have – YOUR BRAIN!
written by: Dr. André Vermeulen