When both a family member and a friend developed medical issues with their brains, I found myself reading and learning about how the human brain works. It occurred to me that this information can be used to help us become more effective and successful in both our lives and businesses.
These 7 brain power strategies will support you in working WITH your brain instead of making things harder than they need to be.
Give Your Brain a Sense of Direction: If you don’t want your brain to waste time spinning with unproductive thoughts, give it guidance. The two easiest ways to do this are to set priorities and use the power of intention. Setting an intention and planning your day each morning can help you zone in on what is important and work more effectively.
Create an Environment that Supports Focus: You may not be aware of it, but your brain is constantly processing information about the sights and sounds in your surroundings. This input can keep your brain distracted and make it hard for you to focus. You can counteract this by working in a clutter free space and keeping files and papers out of your line of vision. Additional strategies include minimizing background noise and turning off notifications for email, calls and texts.
Feed Your Brain Quality Input: Your brain prefers clear, simple, and direct information, which is easier for it to process. This means avoiding written or verbal content that uses a lot of extra words, has contradictions, or has typos and grammatical errors. Communication with clients or within your relationships will also improve when you speak more simply and clearly.
Help Your Brain Remember by Paying Attention: If you want to remember where your keys are, stop and take an internal snapshot of where you set them down. Bringing conscious awareness to special moments you want to remember will get your brain’s attention when it is being distracted by a million other things.
Focus on What You Want: Have you ever heard that what you focus on grows? It’s true! If you want to be more positive, flood your brain with positive thoughts. To make your dreams come true, spend time visualizing your success. And, when you set a goal, be sure it is focused on what you want instead of what you are trying to leave behind.
Guide Your Brain with Mental Pictures: Your brain thinks in pictures and does not process many of the smaller words we use. This is really important when changing habits or setting goals. If you say that you don’t want to lose weight, your brain may only process the word “weight” and think you want more of it. A better strategy is to use words like healthy or fit that feed your mind with a vision of what you really want.
Think in Threes: When you try to focus on the big picture or several items at once, it can become overwhelming. Choosing to give your attention to three goals or next steps at a time seems to be optimal for effectiveness and forward action. Most of my clients do this by having project, goal, and action step lists where they simply highlight the next three priorities they will take action on. When one is complete, they highlight another. This allows them to move forward on big projects with easy to handle small steps.
