How to Master Emotional Resilience with One Strategy 🧠✨

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Unlock the secrets of optimizing your mental and physical performance with Dr. Jon Finn as he guides us through the intricate world of activation and brain states. Ever wondered how your daily energy levels impact your ability to sleep, work, and engage with life? Dr. Finn explains the continuum of activation from zero—where life ceases—to 100, where we find our minds racing with excitement or anxiety. He breaks down the three core brain operating states—recharge, medium charge, and high charge—and offers insights on how to manage these states for peak productivity and well-being.

This episode shines a light on the powerful emotions economy, challenging the notion that intentions alone steer our decisions. Emotions are the true drivers, influencing our attention and actions in profound ways. Dr. Finn shares practical strategies for measuring and mapping your brain states to your personal activation scale. Whether you're seeking to enhance cognitive performance or better understand your emotional landscape, this conversation offers a treasure trove of strategies to boost your mental agility and resilience. Join us for a thought-provoking discussion that promises to change the way you approach your mental state management.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello Habit Mechanics. It's Dr John Finn here. We've just finished a live coaching session in the app, so I just wanted to spend a few minutes reflecting on that and probably put some of this out as a podcast as well. So if you're listening on the pod, welcome.

Speaker 1: 0:27

What really interested me with the people's insights is that you know, activation is so, so central. So if you're not sure what I mean by activation, it's the way that we think about our physical and our mental energy levels and really we're talking about neurotransmitters in the brain and we like to think of activation on a continuum or on a dial where you've got zero and you've got 100. If you're at zero on the activation level, it means that you're dead. That's the starting point. So that's where we start, and then, if you're like a 1 or a 2, you'll be in a really deep sleep and if you go all the way around to 100, you are going to be as physically and mentally active as you can be, which might mean you're really excited or it might mean you're really nervous. It depends. It kind of looks the same neurobiologically or very similar. So the key with activation is to understand that everything you do every day has an optimal activation level. So if I want to go to sleep at night, I don't want to be at 50 on the activation dial because I need to get to go to sleep. I need to be about a five. Equally, if I'm trying to do some premium cognitive work, where for me I'd need to be around 55 or a 60, then I'm not going to be able to do that if I'm at a 30 on the activation dial because I didn't sleep very well last night. So activation is ever present in our life. It's just that for many people they find it well, they're not aware of it and they find it difficult to match their current activation level with their ideal activation level.

Speaker 1: 2:29

And then something we can layer on top of that is our understanding of brain states. So we think of the brain being a bit like a battery. It has three. Our brain, literally, is like a battery. It runs on chemicals and electricity and it has three core operating states. The first state is what we call recharge, which can be sleep or non-sleep recharge. That's where obviously we sleep or we relax and we switch off. We have the medium-charged brain states, states where we do fairly routine work, and we have high charge brain states where we're doing our mentally complex, mentally challenging work and what we're trying to do is get the right balance of brain states throughout every 24 hour period is get the right balance of brain states throughout every 24 hour period and every brain state has an optimal activation level connected to it.

Speaker 1: 3:31

So here are mine. For example, if I want to do sleep recharge, I need to be five and below. If I'm going to do non-sleep recharge just want to switch off and relax I want to be 20 and below on the activation dial. I can do medium charge activities or routine tasks at home and in my life generally if I'm about, say, 30 to 40 on the activation dial, but to do my mentally complex, premium cognitive thinking I need to be about 55, 60 on the activation dial. So what you can start to do and you can actually do this in the onboarding course of the Habit Mechanic University, which anyone can do for free is you can start to get a better understanding of your own brain states by measuring them and then actually you can understand how your brain states map on to the activation scale by doing something called the Optimal Activation Review. This is all free and then you can learn how to create what we call a willpower story and, if you want, you can work with myself and our expert coaches to help you to start improving your brain state management and optimizing your activation.

Speaker 1: 5:02

So that that was my main reflection from a live session that we just ran, and I think the other thing that was also interesting was people's interest in the negative, whereas emotions are on a continuum, from being really happy and excited all the way through to being really sad and depressed. But what we know is that emotions run our lives and they're the most immediate signal that get our attention. So we actually we hear about the term intention economy, but that's actually not quite accurate. It's actually the emotions economy that we're living in. But I think the simplest way to think about emotional regulation and I do unpack this in quite a lot of detail in Chapter 14 of the Habit Mechanic book I think the simplest way to think about is that it's a two-part process.

Speaker 1: 6:17

The first part of regulating your emotions is just being aware. Being aware is are the things I'm thinking and doing actually helping me to be at my best? And then, if they're not, it's doing something different. So if you notice that you're eating the wrong kind of foods to regulate your emotions. Connected to that would be to eat some different food or not eat any food you know. Or if you recognize that you're not sleeping properly, it would be to use your emotional regulation to practice sleeping well. Or if you notice that you're procrastinating, it would be to use your emotional regulation to actually do some focused and productive work.

Speaker 1: 7:02

And the sort of in-between step there is that you've got to do some intelligent planning. So you're doing some intelligent self-watching by noticing yourself, but then you need to do some intelligent planning. So you're doing some intelligent self-watching by noticing yourself, but then you need to do some intelligent planning. And of course, that's what all the habit mechanic tools are designed for, whether it's just the basics, like the daily tea, or the three to one or more sophisticated tools like the willpower story, or the diet, exercise and sleep swap plan. All of the and there are we've got over 35 habit mechanic and chief habit mechanic tools they are all designed to help you to get better at regulating your emotions. So, whether you know it or not, if you're using the habit mechanic tools, you are getting better at regulating your emotions and the outcome is to help you to get a better brain state balance. So I hope that's interesting.

Speaker 1: 7:49

Remember, you can take, we can take the, the onboarding course. It's it's pretty new, the current onboarding course, so not everybody's taking it inside the app. I'd really encourage you to do that. But also, um, if you're not in the, if you're not part of our community, you can join. You can get access to our expert coaching for free and we'll help you to actually achieve your goals in 2025. We'll help you to do that 37.5% faster. I can explain that equation to you, but it's real. So thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for engaging in the Habit Mechanic Games, if you are, because they're going really, really well. And if this generates any questions, questions, feel free to reach out, but I look forward to speaking to you again soon. Bye for now.