Remind Yourself To Be ‘Mindful’ Today!

Updated July 31st 2023

We received a great testimonial during the week from one of our regular newsletter readers about the effects that following the Mindful exercises in our 7-Steps to Learning & Habit Change series had on them.

It’s great to receive positive feedback from our readers. We write these for you guys to read on the move, when you’re in a hurry, on public transport, in a shopping queue or just taking five and looking for a bite sized read. We aim to deliver a short, direct message in each blog, so receiving engagement and feedback from our readers makes it all worthwhile.

If you’ve been inspired by anything we’ve written, reach out and let us know. Like or share our posts, it would be really appreciated. We would like to take this opportunity to wish all Adaptas friends, readers, supporters and colleagues a Safe and Peaceful Holiday break. Here’s that testimonial:

“The Adaptas blog I was most struck by this year, was from your 7-Steps to Learning & Habit Change series on Mindfulness. I would like to remind everyone of the benefits of Mindfulness heading into this Christmas period. In your blog, you spoke of the difficulty in learning this habit. Of being mindful in every moment, ‘when having conversations or drinking a juice.’ You are spot on about this. Since reading your blog in August, I set about intending to master this and practise mindfulness in my every step. You were so right….it’s not easy but I have to tell you, it is totally worth it. I have learned; It’s about giving, not receiving, it’s about being kind to yourself and to others. It’s about taking responsibility for getting to this point and believing that change is possible. Change is essential, in everything. Change is the ebb and flow of life.”

http://www.adaptastraining.com/mindfulness-foundations-for-the-7-steps-to-learning-and-habit-change#sthash.RwmNhGSo.dpuf

Anonymous

STOP Treating The Symptoms: Part Two from David Mullins-Tennis Coach

Updated July 31st 2023

Part Two from guest blogger, David Mullins, Head Women’s Tennis Coach at the University of Oklahoma (OU)

You are probably eager to know what diet I am going to recommend or how you should become a vegan, follow a paleo plan or something along those lines. I definitely do not recommend diets to my athletes, or anyone for that matter.

All I advocate is that you experiment with what works and doesn’t work for your body. However, there are four foods that all our digestive systems will have a negative encounter with:

Artificial Sweeteners – diet sodas and sweeteners for your coffee/tea. These products stimulate your appetite by disrupting your body’s ability to know how many calories it is consuming. This can obviously lead to weight gain and higher blood sugar levels.
Alcohol (sorry!)– it kills the good bacteria in your gut. Also when you consume alcohol you are more likely to crave the worst kind of foods
Any products containing Azodicarbonamide – it is a whitening agent in flour that you will find mostly in some white bread product such as bread rolls, Danish pastries and croissants. This is the same compound that is used in the making of yoga mats, say no more!
Be careful of you sugar intake, the recommended dose is 5-28 grams per day, depending on the study, but most people are up around 40 grams each day. Sugar can irritate your gut, which may at times manifest itself as an autoimmune response. There is also evidence suggesting that depression is linked to inflammation in the gut.

I also advise people to take a good probiotic supplement (with at least seven unique strains of bacteria) twice per day after meals if possible. Don’t rely on your morning yogurt for your probiotics as the amount of sugar in those little tubs cancel out any probiotic benefits the product is advertising! We like Dynamic Nutrition PureBiotics as they are allergy free and have no preservatives or artificial ingredients. If you don’t want to take a supplement eat more fermented foods, e.g. sauerkraut and pickles. I know Celine is experimenting with water kefir grains at the moment.

As a coach I do my best to educate my players about nutrition but there is only so much I can control. Instead, I make sure I am a great example to my team as to how they should be eating to effectively fuel their bodies for sport and life. I truly practice what I preach and I hope, with time, that they will continue to make better decisions.

Do your best to be the best role model you can be to those you are managing in all areas of your life, including nutrition. The extra energy and vitality you will feel with these changes will be noticeable and hopefully contagious too! A few basic changes can help alleviate a lot of the negative health & performance issues you and your team are facing. Good Luck!

During his 12 years of coaching at a number of different elite College Athletic Departments in the U.S.A, David has garnered numerous coaching awards and helped his programs breakthrough to new heights of athletic achievement. He is currently the Head Women’s Tennis coach at the University of Oklahoma (OU) where he helps develop players for the WTA tennis tour. He also received his Master’s in Education at OU and is currently working towards his Yoga Teaching Certification.

Before starting his coaching career David was a international professional tennis player earning an ATP world ranking in both singles and doubles play while representing the National Irish team in Davis Cup play.

For more health, fitness and relationship advice please follow David on Twitter @2KidsAndASpouse

Listen To Your Gut And STOP Treating The Symptoms

Updated July 31st 2023

Today’s guest blogger is David Mullins, Head Women’s Tennis Coach at the University of Oklahoma (OU)

As an effective leader, would you treat the symptom of a problem within your organization or would you work hard to try and find the source of the problem in order to prevent further issues?

My guess is that you would do everything you could to get right to the source of the issue. So why do we generally take such a different approach when it comes to our health?

Most people spend the majority of their time treating the symptoms to their health woes rather than getting right to the source.

There is so much noise out there as to what you need to be doing in order to be healthy and happy. Few people know where to start, and just get overwhelmed and give up with all the different things they are supposed to be doing; lifting weights, yoga, cardio, meditation, sleep, relaxation, supplements etc. The list goes on and on, and there is much we can be doing to improve our health and performance but what is truly the foundation of it all?

In my experience, the first step we should all be taking to help ourselves perform at our best, is to get our nutrition working for us, not against us. At the source of it all is how our gut is handling the bacteria we are feeding it:

A healthy gut equals a healthy digestive system. Listen to your Gut.
A healthy digestive system equals better quality sleep and more energy.
More energy equals better relationships, exercise, and performance at work or play.
Better performance, relationships and exercise equals a healthy body and mind!

Everyone is on different points on the spectrum but understand that the fatigue you feel throughout the day or the terrible night of sleep you got is not because you haven’t exercised…it is most likely caused by the food you ate. We can go down the whole list of symptoms that most people are dealing with on a daily basis and source it directly back to what food and beverages they are consuming.

There is no end to the literature out there as to what we should be eating, how much of it and when, but who has time for that with our busy schedules? My advice would be to cut out a few key foods that are playing havoc on your digestive system. For the next week, notice the foods you ‘go to’ most and notice how they make you feel.

For now, start paying attention to how you feel after you eat. Tune in to our next blog to learn about the Four foods that have a negative impact on our digestive system.

For more health, fitness and relationship advice please follow David on Twitter @2KidsAndASpouse

Mindfulness- Living WITH The Speed of Life!

Updated July 31st 2024

We think, say, and hear all the time:

“I can’t believe it’s already Friday!”

“We’re already into August!“

“Another year has passed so quickly”

“Where has the time gone??”

Let’s face it: we live in a world where life is literally running away from us. Not because it doesn’t like us and wants to escape from us. It’s because of how our way of living has evolved over many years; we have been surviving – and I literally mean surviving – on this planet.

Having said that, I feel an urgent need to throw a crucial question into the air for everyone out there to catch: Does our fast-paced world represent the rock-solid, inevitable nature of our life? Or are we just “living too fast“?

We always have 3 ways to deal with a challenging situation:

1: We flee.

2: We fight.

3: We adapt.

No. 1 (We flee) is ESCAPING the speed of life: I deem this as something impossible, because we might eventually grind to a halt and stand still for the rest of our life.

No. 2 (We fight) is living AGAINST the speed of life: at first this sounds like a good idea to me, because momentarily we are drowning (or suffocating – picture whichever option you like better!) in the current world of immediacy, instantaneousness, and promptness – it’s now or never!

Turning this world into the promised land where ‘time“ is a foreign word, is something that many of us – be it tangibly or just subcutaneously – wish and strive for.

However, I have one little issue with this: the word “against“ embodies a fight, a struggle, resistance – basically a lot of “negative effort”. We have enough of this in our daily life already, don’t we? So we don’t want any more of this, do we?

This leaves us with the last option, No.3 (we adapt). In which we don’t deny or run away from time but instead focus on ADAPTING to the speed of life. Now what’s decisive here is that we need to understand that we have two possibilities, as well as the choice to pick one of them – just like a train track can go into different directions as its rails split into two at certain points.

The first sub-option is that we live AT the speed of life, which means that we imitate and take on all its characteristics – we basically become one with the speed of life, meaning that we will BE the speed of life!

Getting back to what I said earlier about our urge for being gratified either now or never: if we choose this option – most of the time we do it without conscious intent, (perhaps because someone out there e.g. friend, parent, media, has in fact told us to do so)- we perceive less of what is happening in the world – because all we focus on is instant gratification!

Something happens which inevitably out-smarts our vast skill-set and reduces the quality of our decision-making, as we don’t take the time to see the whole picture. This means that we have less control over what we do, and eventually we get frustrated because of where our (unconscious) decisions have lead.

If this scenario does not appeal to you, you can always opt for sub-option 2, which is living WITH the speed of life. What we need to understand here is that when we adapt to something, we have the choice of shaping what we take on, as we like, without becoming that thing itself. We can instead become our own version, living next to that thing, rather than taking on its characteristics. For example, say you don’t like your manager, who is a stressed and aggressive person. You can adapt to him/her rather, than becoming like him/her – easiest thing to do to deal with the situation would be to become stressed and aggressive towards your manager or others. But the healthier thing to do is to learn some techniques to deal with this type of personality, and hence keep yourself calm and content.

In other words: we can let the speed of life determine how we adapt to it, or we can determine it ourselves to eventually live WITH it.

The former (sub-option 1) is the far more convenient and satisfying “low-energy-cost“-version, which will – ironically enough – lead to a “quicker“ life and therefore frustration.

The latter (sub-option 2) requires us to consciously slow down, hold on, step back, and see the whole picture.

The key is that only achieving a state of mindfulness will allow us to perceive the huge amount of options that are available to us – including living a “slower“, “longer“, and therefore a happier life.

I know why I thoroughly enjoyed writing this blog.

Written by our Guest Blogger Oliver Sifkovits (Msc, CSCS)

Oliver Sifkovits (Msc, CSCS) is a Performance Enhancement Specialist, Personal Trainer, as well as 4th belt holder in Capoeira. He has provided Strength and Conditioning service to athletes from various sports, levels, and age groups, including footballers from Hertha BSC Academy, World Cruiserweight Boxing Champion Pablo Hernandez, as well as multiple Austrian Racketlon Champion Michael Dickert. His approach is designed around improving body-mind-spirit performance and health in individuals.

Mindfulness- Foundations For The 7-Steps to Learning and Habit Change

Updated July 31st 2024

Are you living presently?
Or are you living focused on the next meeting, the next meal, the next email that needs to be responded to, and the next one and the next one? Are you living in the past, regretting what you have done or not done, or feeling angry at how you were treated by someone or how you didn’t make it to the gym, or ate that second croissant!

You are probably already well aware that mindfulness, one of the oldest practices in human history, has become one the newest ‘breakthroughs’ in managing thoughts and mental wellbeing in the workplace.

I started attempting to focus on living presently, using mindfulness and meditation a few years ago, (see more on this in this Irish Indo article) when approximately 20 years after being introduced to meditation and mindfulness, I finally was adult enough to start giving it a real go. The impetus was the realization that if I didn’t focus on the NOW, that life would pass me by and I’d have missed out on just experiencing rather then thinking about what was coming next.

This mindfulness lark is no easy habit to adopt! It involves being present in the here and now; when you’re eating, when you’re walking, when you’re speaking, basically in every moment. Personally, I find it challenging, as I often need to remind myself to focus entirely on the conversation at hand or savor the taste of a drink, deliberately experiencing every detail. In reality, like many others, I catch myself mindlessly juggling multiple activities throughout the day: hastily gobbling lunch between client sessions and meetings, and rushing around in a perpetual state of urgency. It’s a journey to break free from this habit and genuinely embrace mindfulness.

If it is so difficult to be mindful/ present in this moment, then why bother?

Well, there is empirical evidence that mindfulness:

reduces the physiological and psychological effects of stress
correlates with emotional intelligence
improves well-being and happiness
improves attention and emotional regulation

(see Keng, Smosku & Robins, 2011 for an extensive review of the empirical studies on the effect of mindfulness on psychological health)

Personally speaking, when I am being mindful, I feel more tuned in to the people I am with, the conversations we are having and the accompanying sensory information in the environment. I feel more grateful (which is in itself associated with reduced depression, more positive relationships, greater competence, resilience, self-acceptance, less stress, better sleep and much more!) and life feels much richer and more enjoyable.

Research also shows that people who focus on being mindful rather than focusing on the end goal or the future are more successful (e.g. Fishbach & Choi, 2012). Yes goals can help spark our initial interest, but then we must consistently focus and on the process rather than being overly focused on the end goal. It is much better for the outcome if we focus on the experience rather than the benefits. As Dr. Christian Jarrett (author of ‘Great Myths of The Brain’) said at the Learning Technologies Conference in Olympia, London I attended this week “Once you are doing it (e.g. exercise, work-based project), let your long-term future-based mission fade into the background.”

Living more mindfully is a must if you want to learn more effectively and change habits. As I mentioned earlier, it necessitates a shift in focus. Have you given it a try yet?

Exercise: Boost Your Brain’s Performance- Foundations for 7-Steps to Learning & Habit Change

Updated July 31st 2024

What do you start your morning with?
Written by our Guest Blogger Oliver Sifkovits (Msc, CSCS)

I start each morning with a 40-minute workout. Far away from the inconvenience of having to wake up early, putting on training gear, and dragging myself out into nature, it has become an essential part of my lifestyle. I want to be as productive as possible each day, and starting it with exercise is in my experience one of the best ways to achieve this.

“Mens sana in corpore sano”

….meaning if we look after the health of our body, the health of our mind will also improve.

In other words: put your trainers on, get active and boost your brain performance!

Indeed, research has shown that aerobically trained subjects improved executive task performance such as planning, task setting, reasoning, and focusing on goals after a 6-month intervention, which included moderate intensity endurance exercise (comparable to a long-distance run where you would just be struggling to speak with someone easily) performed for 40 minutes 3 times per week (Shay & Roth, 1992). This is supported by another study showing a strong relationship between aerobic fitness levels and performance in executive functioning tasks after 3 months of exercise (Smith et al., 2010).

Every day our minds are challenged in having to filter information which they deem important for their own survival. We are faced with all sorts of distractions. They test our ability to pay attention for long periods of time, to the limit. Exercise helps us to focus on what really matters to us by improving sustained attention (Colcombe et al., 2003) as well as information processing speed (Smith et al., 2010).

With high demands placed on our ability to focus comes the challenge to store information in the human „hardware“. As we know, from the blog a few months ago about one of the 7 steps to learning and habit Change (www.adaptastraining.com/4-memory), recalling what we learn during the day at a later stage is essential for continuous progress, since it allows us to put one „knowledge brick“ on the other to create a „building of sophistication“.

Who would have thought that exercise can be the cement holding the bricks together? In a 3-month aerobic exercise intervention, subjects showed high increases in celebral blood volume and thus memory in the dentate gyrus, an area of the brain which is responsible for short-term memory (Colcombe et al., 2009).

I always say that becoming successful is easier than remaining successful, and this is no different with storing and recalling information. Having a well-functioning short-term memory gets you to a certain point – the next step is having the ability to store information long-term. A crucial role is played in long-term memory by the hippocampus.

Additionally, did you know that the size of the hippocampus reduces with age? (and hence memory loss!). Research demonstrates that long-term (1 year) aerobic exercise increases hippocampus size (Erickson et al., 2010), and blood flow in this area (Chapman et al., 2013), as well as a significant decline in its mass reduction by an equivalent of 1-2 years (Erickson et al., 2010).

Are you looking to rocket your mental performance now and in the long-term? If the answer is yes, working out at moderate intensity for 40 minutes 3 times per week is a minimum requirement for you.

Commit to it. There is no single reason not to do it.
Be patient. Good things take time.
You will reap the benefits.
You will be grateful to yourself for having made the commitment!

Self Limiting Beliefs – Foundations for 7-Steps to Learning & Habit Change

Updated July 31st 2024

Our 3^rd Foundation block for the 7-Step to Learning & Habit Change is brought to you by our guest blogger Camille Donegan. Our Beliefs, the beliefs we hold about ourselves, can be one of the biggest blocks to us making change and to having the happiness and success in our lives that we deserve. Camille tells us her story, can you identify with it? This blog also relates back to Step Number 7, our piece entitled ‘Two-Way Street, Positive or Negative thoughts.

The World Is Your Oyster – guest blogger Camille Donegan
Optimists; you may see them as unrealistic, happy-clappy people who don’t live in the real world? So why would you want to be one? Well research shows that optimists have better health and more successful careers, plus a tight correlation has been found between pessimism and symptoms of depression.

I should probably hold up my hands at this point and confess … I AM A TOTAL OPTIMIST. When something ‘challenging’ happens to me in my life, I automatically look to see what learnings I can get from it. It doesn’t mean I don’t have fears, doubts, limiting beliefs and even some worries, it just means I don’t let them hold me back.

My dad wrote me a poem and when he passed away I included it in his memorial mass booklet. In it, he said that the world was my oyster and all I had to do was prise it open and suck out its sweet delights! How right he was! Even though I’ve been an optimist as long as I can remember, it’s been a fairly recent realisation for me that the only thing that holds us back in this life – is ourselves. Our own blocks, our own insecurities, our own doubts, and our limiting beliefs. Any of us can achieve anything – I truly believe that. For instance, I am currently working on getting my house overlooking the sea, plus the hot man and the gorgeous dog to go with it!

Knowing you can achieve anything (and being an optimist) doesn’t stop the voice of the inner critic though! Last week a colleague of mine announced that the next day he was going to present me as the CEO for a product we are working on to a Venture Capital Group he was pitching to. Right on cue, my limiting beliefs kicked in: “I can’t do that! I don’t know enough! I’m not smart enough! I’m not financial-savvy enough!”.

We all have a voice in our head, an inner narrator. For pessimists, this voice is predominantly negatively focused while optimists are able to over-ride the negative ‘stories’ or ‘self-talk’ quite quickly, and replace them with positives. Yet, we all have or have had some limiting beliefs regardless of how positively or negatively focused we are.

Over the next while, I invite you to start paying more attention to your inner voice. When you hear negative comments from your inner narrator, try to adapt it into self-talk which will empower and challenge you.

Once you start to become more aware of your negative self-talk, particularly reoccurring limiting beliefs, such as ‘I’m not good enough’ you can start to address them. Try ‘going vertical’ with them. Question them. Interrogate them. Ask yourself, do I believe these negative thoughts or limiting beliefs? If the answer is ‘Yes’, think “what evidence exists that this thought might not be true”. Then, think “what might be a better, healthier version of this thought”? Consciously choose to replace the negative thought or limiting belief with the new, more positive version.

That’s what I did for my big meeting…I created more empowering beliefs. I questioned each of the limiting beliefs and blocks that came up until I had dispelled most of them.

Granted, I did hit the books, and spent a lot of the night before the meeting researching. But all the reading and researching in the world would not have made me feel confident, had I not done the work on my beliefs!

Good news is in that meeting, I felt confident, informed and actually pretty relaxed.

I still need to work on my finance skills! But that’s a job for another day.

Camille Donegan is a Freelance Theatre Producer and Owner of Alive-O Productions, and a Technology Consultant. She is constantly self-developing, exploring philosophies and methodologies to enhance her experiences.

Sleep: Energy That Lasts All Day Long- Foundations for 7-Steps to Learning & Habit Change

Updated July 31st 2024

Recently I have been experiencing something great; energy that lasts all day long without any daytime slumps!

What is the difference? A combination of good nutrition, exercise a few times per week and sleep.

However, I had the experience recently of feeling like I couldn’t string a full sentence together, to the point where I had to put an end to a phone conversation half way through. And all because, I hadn’t slept due to a lovely bout of food poisoning.

As we saw in recent blogs, courtesy of Oliver Sifkovits, focusing on what we eat can make all the difference to how we perform. Sleep is another physiological lever that can contribute to, and detract from how we perform.

There is a compelling body of evidence that ties our performance, be it professional or personal, to adequate levels of sleep. Chronic sleep loss negatively affects focus, memory and cognition, impacting productivity and relationships, and overall well-being.

Not getting the correct amount of sleep is linked to heart disease, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, depression, and psychosis. It also causes unethical behavior (see Shane O’Mara).

How many times have you taken dodgy short-cuts when you are tired? The brain of the sleep-deprived person has to work harder than that of non-sleep-deprived person to accomplish any given task. Imagine what information your brain is excluding paying attention to when it is tired and the decisions it is having you make?!

Research shows that young adults (under 30 years) perform poorer than their older counterparts (50-60 years) following periods of sleep deprivation – whilst at the same time more confidently and inaccurately overestimating their abilities. Where does this show up in organisations and decisions being made?

Furthermore, we are less adept at reading social cues and responding appropriately inter-personally when affected by sleep loss. Our ability to accurately detect emotions tied to threat (angry faces) and reward (happy faces), becomes blunted, when sleep deprived. Also, sleep-deprived people fail to recall pleasant memories, yet recall gloomy memories just fine, and so sleep affects our positivity and happiness.

Additionally, recent neuro-scientific research points to the role of sleep in memory consolidation. Studies have shown that hippocampal neurons activated during learning tasks are reactivated during slow wave sleep, reinforcing the neural network and consolidating the learning. In a study requiring participants to learn routes through unfamiliar streets, performance, as measured by error rates in the task, was significantly lower for those who had benefited from sleep. Other studies focusing on sleep loss provide clear evidence for lower academic performance caused by reductions in both declarative and procedural memory, suggesting that the prefrontal cortex is highly sensitive to sleep deprivation. So, regular good quality sleep is a precursor for memory and learning.

Studies of sleep distinguish between acute sleep deprivation, defined as short bouts (24- 72 hours) of complete sleep loss, and chronic partial sleep restriction, defined as continued periods of less than normal quantity of sleep (for example 3-5 hours sleep when the individual’s ‘normal’ pattern is 7-8 hours). Performance in cognitive tasks shows a consistent deterioration in both acute and chronic forms of sleep deprivation. However recovery from chronic partial sleep loss is slower.

According to renowned sleep researcher Daniel Kripke, consistently getting between 6.5 and 7.5 hours of sleep per night not only contributes to longevity but also enhances happiness and productivity. Deviating from this optimal range can lead to various unnoticed issues, affecting our overall well-being. It is imperative that we pay closer attention to our sleep habits and consider whether they are supporting or hindering our learning, habit formation, and overall performance and happiness.

Eating Yourself Smart: Part 1 – Foundations for 7-Steps to Learning and Habit Change

Updated July 28th 2023

In our previous blog, we promised to supply the main ingredients that create a foundation for the 7 Steps to learning and habit change. These are:

Nutrition
Exercise
Sleep
Mindfulness
Blasting Limiting Beliefs and Emotions

Let’s start with our guest blogger Oliver Sifkovits on the topic of Nutrition.
Why roads between reception desks matter:

Would you like to be able to think quicker, concentrate better and for longer, increase your IQ, as well as have a sharp memory? In short – would you like be more intelligent? I’ve always found that the simplest solutions are the best ones, and this clearly applies to the topic of this blog: research compellingly shows that providing your brain with the right nutrients can rocket its performance to the sky.

Let’s look at our brain as a vivid city in which different parts and people serve a purpose. 60% of our most important organ consists of fats. These are the reception desks of the city which receive information. The more reception desks there are, the more information can be distributed within the city, right? It is therefore essential to eat sufficient Omega 3 & 6 fats so that the messages travelling between our brain cells actually find a place to dock on to.

Also, imagine the reception desks to be extremely busy workplaces: computers require maintenance, printing paper needs to be replenished, and pens need to be replaced when they stop writing. It is no different with fatty acids: since our brain is active non-stop during day and night, it’s optimized functioning is dependant on regular (and by that I mean daily) intake of these substances.

Studies show that sufficient intake thereof can enhance long-term memory (Glen et al., 1985, 1987 & 1990; Skinner et al., 1989). Fish such as mackerel, herring, salmon and fresh tuna, as well as eggs will give you Omega 3 fats, while flax seed represent an option for vegetarians. Primrose and borage oil are Omega 6 – rich sources.

What does travelling from South to North Dublin have to do with nutrition for the mind? The answer is simple: In order for information to find its way to different reception desks in the city, roads are required. The equivalent to this would be the so-called phospholipids in the brain: they allow for smooth nerve signal transmission between cells. One of them is called phosphatidylserine, which has been shown to improve memory, learning, vocabulary skills, concentration, as well as mental alertness (Crook et al., 1991).

You will find this type of nutrient in organ meats and in the form of a supplement. Vegetarian options are soy beans and white beans.

Dimethylethanolamine – short DMAE – are further building blocks of roads in the city. It has been shown to stop mind wandering, improve concentration, promote learning (Holford, 2009), as well as enhance memory, attention, and associative thinking (Dimpfel et al., 1996). Egg yolks, sardines, and organ meat all contain this substance, whereas vegetarian capsules are also available.

So far you have learned about the importance of building a structure in the brain that allows cells to communicate effectively. Look out for the next blog, which will be about the “human” side of nutrition for the mind: communicating and initiating intelligence.

Thank you for reading, we would really love if your liked our blog that you would share it among your social media platforms. Remember, sharing is caring and we Care! 🙂

Oliver Sifkovits (Msc, CSCS) is a Performance Enhancement Specialist, Personal Trainer, as well as 4^th belt holder in Capoeira. He has provided Strength and Conditioning service to athletes from various sports, levels, and age groups, including footballers from Hertha BSC Academy, World Cruiserweight Boxing Champion Pablo Hernandez, as well as multiple Austrian Racketlon Champion Michael Dickert. His approach is designed around improving body-mind-spirit performance and health in individuals.

Lasting Habit Change; Take 7-Steps to get there!

Updated July 28th 2023

In recent months, our blogs have been considering the 7-STEPS to learning and habit change. We now know there are 7 Steps or facets that need to be considered and applied in learning to make it addictive, to enable people to learn and for neural changes to take place in the brain to have lasting impact.
These are:

Imagine ‘Why?’
Motivation
Fun
Memory
Repetition
Feedback
Two-Way Street

Let’s take an example of when the 7 facets that are necessary for learning and brain change are not fully utilised (using a simple example that many of us will be able to identify with).

Visualise this; Liz wants to lose weight. She is aware she has put on weight, as she is not fitting into her clothes comfortably anymore and is feeling lethargic. Liz has booked a holiday leaving in 3 months and wishes to fit into the clothes and swimwear she wore two years ago on holiday. Since that holiday, she has put on approximately two stone, from not exercising and eating on the go (IMAGINE & MOTIVATION INTACT).

She commits to a gym membership and starts to go 3-4 times per week. She is measured and given an exercise regime. 1 month later her gym visits have dropped to 2 times per week as she has noticed no difference and the scales says she has put on weight. In reality she has strengthened up (muscle is heavier than fat but she doesn’t realise this). (REPETITION SUBOPTIMAL)

Also her gym visits have dropped to twice per week because she didn’t identify something that could be fun (she detests running on a treadmill, but she loves dancing), that might have been more fun for her as a mode of exercise (NO FUN).

Also, she did not ask the gym instructor to keep her motivated by agreeing to check in weekly to look at measurements, and track progress (FEEDBACK SUBOPTIMAL).

Liz is eventually going to the gym only once per week, as she can’t see any real time benefit of the exercise and is feeling more tired than before because she didn’t listen to, or implement the gym instructor’s advice on eating more vegetables, cutting out bread, drinking more water etc,. Additionally, she is not getting feedback from people around her telling her she is looking well. (REPETITION SUBOPTIMAL)

This regime is not hard and fastened as the right thing to do according to her mind and brain!

While running the 8th mile on the treadmill, Liz keeps thinking, ‘I don’t want to look awful on the beach’ instead of visualising herself ‘I am looking fantastic in my bikini’ (TWO-WAY STREET NOT INTACT).

Liz eventually stops going to gym (‘Falls off wagon’, and doesn’t get back on because she has no support and encouragement and does not have enough self-discipline) (MEMORY & FEEDBACK SUBOPTIMAL).

Liz goes on her holiday. Every day, she gets annoyed with herself that she didn’t keep up the exercise, and she feeds herself with more negative language (TWO-WAY STREET NOT INTACT).

Hopefully you can now see the 7 Steps coming to life.

There are 5 ingredients that create a foundation for these 7 Steps and depending on if they are in place will either support or hinder these 7 steps.

We are going to take you through these 5 ingredients in upcoming blogs so that you can actively apply and turn yourself and your learners into real addicts! Between now and our next installment, it’s time for you to reflect on what you eat, how much exercise you do, and how much sleep and relaxation you do or don’t get.

The Adaptas 7-Steps to Learning: #7 Two-Way Street, Positive or Negative thoughts, you choose!

Updated July 28th 2023

Mindset is a two-way street
Did you wake up today feeling good about yourself, looking forward to the day and life in general? Or did you wake up thinking ‘here we go again’, ‘I hate the traffic’ ‘I hate my boss’ etc?

How you feel about yourself and your life, whether you are negative, unhappy, de-motivated or on the other hand positive, happy, motivated has an impact on your ability to learn and change habits.

When we feel good; thinking, making decisions and taking action in pursuing goals require less effort.

If you have read step no.4 ‘Memory’ in our series of 7 Steps to Learning blogs, you will know how important memory is for creating habit change.

When we feel positive we are more likely to be able to pull on good memories. When we feel negative, things couldn’t get much worse for our memory; Not only are we more likely to access more negative memories, but these negative memories get in the way of accessing positive memories which in turn can interfere with getting that dopamine flowing!

Brain plasticity is a two-way street. We can drive brain change positively or negatively.

If you have read Maureen Gaffney’s book ‘Flourish’ you will have come across the 5:1 ratio. We need 5 positives for every 1 negative in our thoughts, experiences, and feelings in order to thrive and flourish in life. As Maureen says, “If the balance remains at 3:1, three positives to one negative, you have achieved the minimum platform needed just to stay well and manage your life in an average way. If the ratio falls below 3:1, and stays down, however, you are tipped into a downward spiral from which it is hard to escape. This is when someone becomes depressed; when a relationship enters a new, destructive state; or when a team or an organisation becomes dysfunctional.”

Unwanted bad habits continue because the brain has hard-wired itself through years of repeated behaviour. We must literally tell our brain what we really want, and not what we don’t want! As discussed in earlier blogs; to create change, we must literally rewire the brain!

It’s up to you which way you want to wire it, towards the negative or towards the positive; towards the ‘I can’t do’ vs. ‘I can do’, towards the “I am a victim of circumstances’ vs. ‘I am the master of my own universe’.

In every moment of every day, we have a choice. We often just don’t realise it, because our unconscious and our older parts of our brains exert so much control over how we behave.

Consider, in this moment, consciously, what do you have to be grateful for? Are you healthy? Do you have a job? Do you ever get to go out for dinner or to go on holidays? If you have any or all of these, you have more than many hundreds of thousands of people around the world and more than many in your own village, town, and city.

Research in Positive Psychology repeatedly finds that those who remind themselves every day what they are grateful for are happier and more positive. So if you are going to do nothing else to support your mission of making some changes, start by doing this. I personally list off three things in my head, that I am grateful for every morning, as soon as I wake up. It’s a nice and ultimately powerful way to start the day. Do it every morning for a few weeks and smile at the same time (even if it pains you to do so) and let us know what positive changes you have seen in your life.

This brings us to the end of our 7 Steps to Learning blogs. However, as the great Mel Blanc wrote in his account of the making of Bugs Bunny, ‘That’s Not All Folks!’. There are 5 ingredients necessary to support these 7 steps. If you are looking to create real and lasting change, keep posted for more….

Seasons Greetings to you all and we look forward to an amazing 2015 helping you put these 7 Steps into practice. Happy Holidays from all at Adaptas.

The Adaptas 7-Steps to Learning: #6 FEEDBACK – Everyone needs Feedback!

“It takes 21 days to change a habit!”
How many times have we all heard this?

Jeremy Dean (Making Habits, Breaking Habits: Why We Do Things, Why We Don’t, and How to Make Any Change Stick) has collated research around habit change, and found that it takes on average 66 days (not 21 days!) to change a habit, with people often taking beyond 230 days of repetition to change habits long-term!

As discussed in the ‘REPETITION’ step of the 7 steps to learning a few weeks ago, we know that the brain forms a model of the brain connections that contribute to a good try. Repetition strengthens the connections between neurons engaged at the same time. Additionally, we know from the ‘MEMORY’ step, that the more we can create meaningful, emotional and elaborated opportunities to practice the more likely long-term learning is to occur i.e. emotional connections create more permanent memories.

Be it 18, 21, 65 or 265 days it takes to create change, let’s call a spade a spade…it is difficult to commit to practicing in order to embed change! Not only must the brain receive feedback on good versus bad tries. We NEED feedback from others on good versus bad tries…we need feedback and support to know it’s working! FEEDBACK on performance and acknowledgement from others encourages us to repeat.

It’s about recognising what needs to change, then doing it repetitively, and getting feedback, especially with a focus on how improvement is being noticed by others. We all like to be told we are doing a good job! Constant monitoring of progress by oneself, one’s peers and one’s superiors is tantamount to long lasting change.

In my experience, most people in management positions just don’t have or prioritise putting the time in to do this. People remember how they feel. If you make them feel good for attempting to make changes, they are much more likely to succeed. People must see results – one of the jobs of a manager should be to support and coach.

We need to be reminded that it is working, even when we ‘fall of the wagon’. We must track behaviours, and get feedback on how that behaviour is being noticed by others and how it is impacting on others.

It is important therefore, to work with people over a period of time. If that means writing reminders to check in with your colleagues on the change they are looking to make, do it…you might be still checking in with them on that change they were looking to make in 6 months time, but accountability and repetitiveness lead to new habit forming. It may take 21 days, it may take many many more. But imagine the difference it will make!

Thank you for reading. We’d love your Feedback. Leave a comment or share on your social pages.

Remind Yourself To Be ‘Mindful’ Today!