How to optimize your functioning?
Why is it is so important to adapt your environment to the needs of your brain or your unique personality make-up?
Have you ever wondered why you can’t concentrate or why you feel bored? Or why you feel more agitated or nervous? And just can’t really tell why. Nothing really happened, you slept just fine and there are no real issues in your life bothering you, but still you are not quite functioning as you should or as you would like…procrastination anyone?
Have you ever heard people comment on the ‘AD(H)D-diagnosis’ and say ‘it’s just fashion now to put labels on kids and that there were no or less children with labels ‘back in the days’?
What if we say the answer in why you feel like this or perform like that, or children do or don’t what they should be doing, lies in the environment? In someone’s surroundings?
Ever hear people say ‘they now feel like home’? Or ‘now they feel like they have the job where they belong’?
Chances are that one of the key factors are that their environment is more adjusted to the needs of their brain and soul.
So how can you find out if there is a match or ‘mismatch’ between yourself, your brain and your environment, your surroundings?
First of all it can be helpful to hold a journal and write all the environmental elements you experience in the space around you, the next time you experience negative emotions or notice cognitive or performance problems. If you see multiple elements coming back at those times, it is interesting to go and look further!
So why is this so important? To know this, you need to know that your brain is ‘never in a rest modus’. It is always working and processing al kinds of stimuli. That is why sometimes an event or activity can become ‘to much’ and you need a break. You want to withdraw. Sometimes at home, sometimes at work, sometimes from a social encounter. You can feel it gradually or it can hit you at once. And in some cases you just feel at edge or not quite ‘ok’ when you are in a building or specific setting. It just ‘doesn’t feel right’.
Your brain and soul need a change, need something else in that moment. And that is nothing really surprising, no? Who wants to eat the same thing, every… single… day?
Or your brain just needs a different kind of space, so your brain doesn’t have to much excessive stimuli to process or doesn’t get to bored by a lack of it. An acrobatic artist can juggle a lot of balls in the air, but if you just keep adding them up, at a given moment everything will fall down.
A brain needs the right kind of stimuli at the right time and in the right amount. Every brain and person is wired differently, by how they grew up, the relationships they had, the environment in which they resided, so everyone needs a different roadmap to which environment works best for them.
But everything keeps being in motion. Your brain doesn’t stop evolving and changing. It changes with every experience, every space it encounters, every social interaction..so by controlling those elements you can influence your brain.
So what should you do first?
1) Self-discovery
First of all you need to get to know yourself in a deeply manner. Why do you do what you do? Why do you perform like that? Why are you feeling like you do? Which kind of thought patterns are you having?
If you know who you truly are, you will know your ‘baseline’. How your brain is wired and what you normally need to get your brain to work in an optimal level. With that you will feel more balanced and happy, concentrate better, perform better and just have a higher level of well-being.
2) Self improvement
Second, if you want to go a step further: you can focus on something you would like to change in a momentary way and after that, if you repeat it enough, in a more permanent way.
Take it in, step by step…it makes sense doesn’t it?
And the fun part: you can get totally creative with it too! Mix and match what you need, change and tweak.
So in a nutshell: How to design a better brain? By changing your environment!
If you want to change something about yourself, just change your surroundings!
Just Mind your space, baby!
