Hey, guys, and welcome back to another episode of your Brain's Coach podcast. My name is Angela Shurina, I'm your host, I'm your Brain's Coach and it is my job here to bring to you all the best recent, cutting-edge, most important, useful, simple, hacked and applicable to your life brain-body tools so you could control better your emotions, your thoughts, your energy levels, your motivation, your drive, so you could get out there, take more, better actions and shape the life experience that you absolutely love living. Today, guys, we are going to talk about health and why, if you work with your brain, if your career, your business depend on your brain, you should care about your health. And, most importantly, it's not that complex, and I wanted to leave this podcast today feeling inspired, like you want to make changes, empowered, like you can and it's easy and you have the time and resources and driven that you actually-day experience for a team of 60 people at one consulting company here, locally, face-to-face, in Cape Town. We talked about nutrition and we talked about stress, fitness and we talked about sleep, but, most importantly, we talked about struggles and barriers to doing the things that we know are probably better for us. But I think, even more important, we started and I did it on purpose, with asking ourselves why do we want to do this in the first place, why taking care of your health should be one of the primary things you should take care of.
Speaker 1Let me ask you this question Is your income important to you, to the quality of your life, to taking care of yourself and your loved ones and making an impact in the world and having a meaningful life experience? Does your career or business journey, do they define how well you live your life, what kind of life experience you have, how you contribute to different causes, how you create success and how you feel daily? Does your career journey does it all affect you in a meaningful way? And if you are like most people these days, you work with your brain for a living. Your brain is your primary tool of your career and business advancement and that is why you got to care about your health. Just let me read you something about health habits and your brain health habits and your brain. These are the quotes from different studies and research. And all of these quotes I chose them specifically because over the years, they were just amplified and we're getting better and more research that this is true, and if you do care about your career and your business and the quality of your life, and because of that, you do care about your brain, because brain is the one that does the thinking, the creative problem, solving the emotional regulation and defines whether you make good decisions or decisions that you regret right. So brain and health care or health habits.
Speaker 1The results revealed that the measurements of both direct and indirect emotional empathy of participants in the sleep deprivation group were significantly lower. So this talks about how, when we are sleep deprived, even by a little consistently, we are less empathetic to the people around us. And if we are less empathetic it means it's harder for us to see other person's view, it's harder for us to understand how it is to stand in other people's shoes, what do other people think and feel and what's important to them? And this is what we all need to care about. If we want to advance our cause or build our business or become a great professional or consult others, we need to understand other people, and sleep robs us of this ability. We become kind of numb and we get into stressed and anxious and internally oriented mode when we are consistently sleep deprived. Not only that, you might have heard that one night of sleep deprivation meaning sleeping less than five hours a night makes you perform like you would when you are legally drunk. So that's why a lot of professions where other people's lives depend on your performance, that's where they prioritize sleep and why they prioritize sleep. You don't want to be operated by a surgeon who is sleep deprived. There is a huge margin of error that can happen, which is vital for your health and well-being. And then so the same is for, for example, airplane captains. They prioritize sleep and they sleep on the plane during long time long flights. There is a reason why they do not allow sleep-deprived people to do important work, but that affects every single one of you. So sleep To stress. Our brains are wired to be more reactionary under stress. What basically this research shows is we simplify our options to all or nothing.
Speaker 1During our evolutionary times, when you were under stress, it was not the time for you to do creative thinking and complex problem solving. It was the time to follow the proven, safe path. And your brain is the same. It's wired exactly the same way. When we are chronically under stress, it turns off our creativity, our learning. We're going to just keep running in cycles. Did you think that is important. Learning is important, creativity is important, innovating, being present, being a great communicator, solving other people's problems Well, do you think that is important for your career and your business? So, under stress, when you don't know how to manage daily stresses, when you don't lower your stress on purpose intentionally, your brain becomes dumb. Lower your stress on purpose intentionally, your brain becomes dumb.
Speaker 1Another one around activity. Prolonged sitting has been associated with poor executive function. Executive function is everything that your prefrontal cortex, this thinking, logical part of your brain, the most complex part of your brain, that is your executive function. The most complex part of your brain, that is your executive function. So your executive function, your memory, your attention, other cognitive skills, important cognitive aspects of work performance, are diminished. You do everything worse when you don't move. There is also this saying by a famous brain coach when your body moves, your brain grooves. Your brain needs that blood circulation, these nutrients, oxygenation, and the more you sit, the worse your brain does its work. Good news that that can be interrupted with short bouts of physical activity. You don't have to do a lot to get most of the benefits, just get off the chair every 30-40 minutes and do 10 bodyweight squats, which we did at our health day yesterday.
Speaker 1Nutrition Scientists have known for years that unhealthy diets may cause detrimental changes to the brain and lead to cognitive impairment. May cause detrimental changes to the brain and lead to cognitive impairment, from your memory to your learning ability, to your anxiety, to your ability to focus. All of that depends on good nutrition. All of that, guys. I say it here to make you understand that if you work with your brain for a living, then you got to take care of your health. It's not healthcare, it's your brain for a living, then you got to take care of your health. It's not health care, it's your brain's care. It's your ability to do great work and advance your career, it's your ability to build great business. It's all about taking care of your brain and that is all about taking care of your health.
Speaker 1During our workshop yesterday, we got questions like how do you do it when there is so much information and I don't actually know what to do? There is no clarity and that's why I'm kind of like should I do this or this? And then it gets overwhelming and I do nothing. Shorten time, how do I know what to prioritize? Do I sleep more or do I exercise? Which one is the most important? And which one is the most important for me right now with the goals and the state where I'm in Struggling to stay consistent, building habits.
Speaker 1Okay, I might do this habit or a couple for a little while and then I just fall off the wagon and I don't ever get back to it. Or again, it's on and off and doesn't produce consistent changes. What do I do with that? Or simply, I don't feel motivated very often. How do I motivate myself to do what I know I got to do? Or how do I know what's enough? I don't have all the time in the world to do everything and I'm not even sure what to do exactly. How do I prioritize? How do I know what's the minimum effective dose so I can do it and I can sleep calmly knowing that I invest the right amount into my health, into my self-care? Or, if I don't get all the habits dialed in, is doing a couple going to be good enough? Or I kind of cancel it all out unless I do all of them? All of these questions were brought up to the surface and, believe it or not, most of these habits can be solved really easily.
Speaker 1Well, maybe not easily, but simply let's talk about information overload. Why information overload happens. There is a lot, a lot of information about everything, and we already talked about this on this podcast. It's not the problem of too much. It's the problem of not having the right filter, and by filter I mean having enough knowledge to understand what is right for you out there, what is not right and what's a good source of information or not.
Speaker 1And just like you would do for any more complex area professionally, like, what do you do for a living? What's your profession? How do you figure out what's the right thing to do? You probably get education professionally or you consult with somebody who's like a mentor or someone who is more advanced than you at your career or your business. Right, that's how we learn. That's how we grow. We go to the certified bodies and institutions. We consult other people who have a good track record of being successful in the area where we want to grow. So the same for your health.
Speaker 1Yes, there is a lot of information, but there are also a lot of experts and there are coaches like myself who spend decades working in this area. And we consume all this information to be able to filter out the noise from what's important and, most importantly, to help individuals to filter out what's important for them at this point, at this stage of their life and with their goals. So get professional help Like even one hour consultation will help you filter out most of it. So you can do it once a month, once in two months, and then you're going to have a plan for the next two to three months. So, one habit at a time, you can build the habits, the behaviors, and then you can start tripping rewards and, once you're ready, get to the next level, get consultation again, and then you don't have to think about all of the information. Professionals save you years of figuring it out on your own. So shortcut your learning cycle. Get a consultation with a professional. So that's how you remove information overload. There is no other way. There has never been another way. We learn from each other and that's why we get education and that's why it's good that we have educational institutions or different certifications or different resources that are more credible Time management and priorities. From my perspective, it's actually very simple. Once you know what to do, once you get good information from a professional or again, some educational institution, you'll understand what you need to do at this stage. The next logical step, and you can only take one next logical step at a time.
Speaker 1With health, it's actually even easier, because the things that you need to do well, you already do them, just not so well. You already invest in your food and your nutrition. You already move from one place to the other. You already do sleep and go through your day. You just do it not in the right way. So what you invest in your eating, for example, ends up hurting you more than helping you. But you do eat already. And when it comes to exercise, you can redesign your lifestyle a little bit or introduce what became very popular exercise snacks into your daily routine, which doesn't require you to get any extra workout time or any fitness or gym membership, and you're going to get most of the benefits.
Speaker 1Obviously, you're not going to become a fitness cover kind of person, because that takes a lot of work. Mastery of anything takes a lot of work, but you will get 80% of the benefits from just reorganizing your lifestyle a little bit, knowing what the minimum effective dose is and how to fit it simply into your lifestyle and get back to getting information from good sources and shortcutting your learning cycle and saving yourself decades of lessons learned through trial and error, or decades of pain that you get from not taking care of your health, or decades of not getting the results in your career because your brain is so foggy and unfocused all the time. Just think about that, what you are prioritizing and where you're creating struggle for yourself more than necessary. So time management and priorities you already do do things. You just do them in the wrong way.
Speaker 1And that's where actually, I consider health and fitness to be much easier than professional development. There is a lot less ambiguity and questions about what is good and what is not good when you start working with professionals not with the next health and fitness influencer and then building consistent habits A lot of hurdles, a lot of struggles, a lot of questions. We got around building consistent habits, like how do you build habits? And that also has been simplified in behavior change science and for most people, there is a combination of three next things First of all, get very clear and very small on every single habit. So, to give you an idea, you want to start taking your fitness to the next level and you're pretty much at zero. Like some of my clients do 10 push-ups while you boil your eggs. That's where you start. That is a very precise small habit. And then, a year later, they go for an hour of exercise every day because all of a sudden they got a passion for fitness.
Speaker 1You see, you always find the time for what you like and what you feel the benefit of and what you consider important, and that changes as you start walking the path. There is this Rumi saying as you walk the path, the path appears. But applied to fitness and health habits, as you start taking small actions, you change, and what you're able to do also changes. Plus, with greater health and fitness, you become more efficient with your work as well, and all of a sudden you have a lot more time, versus always struggling with getting things done because you don't have energy and focus and because of that you have to stay up late and because of that you don't sleep well and because of that the next day you feel like crap and because of that you don't have energy and you're not productive. All of that snowballs and then you don't feel like you have time for anything. But it all actually starts with you feeling good, and you feeling good starts with your health.
Speaker 1So back to building consistent habits. So starting small and very clear plan of action, like one action for the next two weeks, and it's got to be very small, very clear, very specific, like, again, 10 pushups while you boil your eggs. Then the next one is you got to motivate your brain to maintain discipline, and motivation is all about knowing strong reason to take the action, understanding why it's important and how it affects your life, how it affects who you are and how it connects to your deeper values. A lot of people think, oh, why my reasons, my values? Fluffy stuff? It's not fluffy. It's what makes you do things consistently. And if you consider that to be fluff, then yeah, everything around values and reasons and meaning and fulfillment is fluff. But that actually in research, in hard research, has been shown to drive every single human being, your reason why. And once you learn how to connect everything you gotta do to that deeper reason, there is going to be no problem with your discipline. You're going to be disciplined for every single thing you want to do, once you learn how to connect to the deeper reasons for you to live and create impact and get after the goals your goals that you consider vital in your life.
Speaker 1So first, start small, start precise, build consistency, one thing at a time. Then the second one understand your why. What's the reason that's going to keep you disciplined and motivated in the hardest times? And the third one make it easy for yourself. Look at your environment, look where you live, look at your kitchen, at your fridge, at your office, at your room, at your routines and your surroundings, and ask yourself how can I make what I need to do super easy and how can I make what I need to stop doing hard to impossible? So long-term sustainable change lays on this foundation of having things, having your environment, work for you.
Speaker 1We human beings do most of the stuff on autopilot, and our brain does this autopilot because it treats the environment, sees what's available, sees what's the easiest and then, based on that, makes a decision with proceeding with certain behavior. So, if you kind of can sum it up, what you see is what you get, and there is a whole body of research showing that if you see more chocolate in your kitchen all the time, you're going to eat more chocolate. If you see more fruit, you're going to eat more fruit. Now, with my clients, when we work on, for example, eating more fruit and veg, I don't even allow them to have pineapples in their fridge because I tell them that is going to be too complicated. You're not going to be able to peel that pineapple because you don't have enough reason, enough motivation, enough discipline, enough habit. Even I don't buy whole pineapples, I buy them cut because I know it's going to be too much work for me to peel that pineapple. So why I'm talking about pineapples?
Speaker 1Make it simple and you'll be surprised how much easier it's going to become to build any habit. If you decide to go to the gym, then choose the one that is easiest. On the easy part, if you have a partner who goes to a specific gym, or you have an accountability buddy or you have a whole group of people who will keep you accountable, then, yes, go to the gym with them, because social accountability is even stronger than your environment. But if you decide to go on your own, choose the easiest thing. Work out at home or in the gym, like whatever, makes it simple and easy. So you have to use your discipline muscle the least. Make it easy, make it seamless.
Speaker 1That's what behavior change science tells us. You want your team, you want your company, you want your whole division to act differently. Reorganize your environment. So the behavior you want them to do is the most simplest thing they can be doing and then start doing it yourself. We always are affected by our social environment. Especially if we look at our leaders and we see them doing things, then we start doing them as well, because we want to be alike. We want to be like them.
Speaker 1So, to simplify habit building, start small, one very precise habit at a time. Start with your level so it feels easy and you require less motivation than more. The second thing is know your why. And the third thing is make it easy. Reorganize your environment so it supports what you want to do easy. Reorganize your environment so it supports what you want to do. And that's what we talked about at the half day, besides all the specifics around sleep and movement and things like exercise, snacks and how you can interrupt your workday with a few squats every 30-45 minutes, and that has been shown to be almost just as effective as a daily workout, depending, obviously, on your workout. I'm not going to say that heavy squatting is the same as doing 10 desk squats, but you're going to get 80% of health benefits from doing those things that you won't even notice after a while. So that's also been a huge takeaway from our health day that things we want to do aren't actually that complicated when we know what to do. And that's where professionals like myself come in, who save you years of trial and error and years of suffering because you never put anything into practice when you could. That's it for today's podcast.
Speaker 1Folks, if you do want to do a health day experience, remotely or in person, please do get in touch with me, angela at brainbreakthroughcoachcom. Even better on Instagram, angela Brain Body Coach. All one word. What else? If you do decide to invest in your health and save yourself decades of suffering in all different domains, from pain to not delivering your best performance, if you decide to shortcut your way to health and career and business success, then also reach out for that session to get your plan for the next two, three months, so then you can get the next steps and you know exactly what to do and what's minimum effective dose of your health investment, so you can start getting better without spending hours and hours of time wondering and figuring it out and falling off the wagon and getting back on it.
Speaker 1So reach out, angela Brain Body Coach, and share this podcast with at least one person who you think might benefit in one way or the other. Be the change, share the knowledge, share the enthusiasm, the excitement, good tips so we all get better faster, we suffer less and create more positive impact. And that's about it. Thank you for your attention. Thank you for your energy, thank you for your time. If I can help you in any way, please do reach out Instagram, angela Brain Body Coach. And till next time, coach. And until next time, invest in your health, because that will transform your life, not just how you feel, but also your career, your business and pretty much everything else about you. Talk to you soon and have an awesome weekend.