Dr. Delia McCabe’s Post

Anyone want to ADD anything to their ‘to-do’ list? Of course not! Why would I suggest this? Someone who teaches people to simplify vs complicate their lives? Hold on, it will make sense: We’re all living in a complex world with seemingly insurmountable problems. It’s not any individuals ‘fault’ that we’re living in a stress-inducing world. A multitude of confluencing variables have led to what we're now navigating. Life isn’t going to get less challenging anytime soon! So, what to do? MORE of the things that support cognitive resilience. We need to be able to ‘overcome the negative effects of setbacks and associated stress on cognitive function or performance’ (Staal, et al. 2008). This mental state is termed ‘cognitive resilience.’ Ironically, we need to ADD activities to our lives to build and maintain cognitive resilience. Laura Vanderkam writes about ADDING to our lives vs the opposite and believes we should choose ‘EFFORTFUL' before 'effortless’ because we need ‘energizing activities.’ [Link to article in comments] Extrapolating from her great article I’ve added the following as they relate to mental wellbeing, and building cognitive resilience: 1) We need to ADD more physical activity AND connecting with others – every day, in person if possible. When we do this, we naturally engage less with technology, which is a stress-inducing AND cognitive resilience depleting activity 2) We need to ADD more activities that lower our stress response – every day. This means ‘getting into the flow’ with an activity we’re good at, so that we become unaware of time passing – cooking a great meal, gardening, an attention-requiring hobby. Sometimes the two points above co-occur, for example, if we play tennis well, we tick three boxes. Yoga is another stress reducing activity that stimulates our ‘rest + digest’ PNS (parasympathetic nervous system). 3) We need to ADD thoughts and behaviors that increase our sense of control vs the opposite. This means addressing our habits of mind – the neural pathways (ruts) that we fall into automatically because we've travelled them so often. Yes, the brain does have a natural bias towards negative thoughts, but we have the power to consciously shift this tendency. 4) We need to ADD checking into our body signals – increase our interoceptive intelligence – so that we can quickly lower our stress response. Again, conscious practice is required. 5) We need to ADD more real food, and evidence-based dietary supplements to our mealtimes because we can’t be cognitively resilient with malnourished neurons. Diet misinformation, driven by profit-seeking and clever marketing can hinder this activity. When we focus on ADDING activities that serve us, those that don’t, tend to fall away. What enjoyable, effortful activities can you ADD to your days if you look at each day as an opportunity to increase your cognitive resilience? #neuroscience #productivity #personaldevelopment