Here 's what she said in her interview for CNN: "During the time I trained thousands of people, during the time I talked with other successful coaches, I learned one lesson: if your mind is well organized, then your lifestyle will change. You will become a successful, healthy and happy person.
It was this thought that became the basis for the book "Organize Your Mind, Organize Your Life", which we wrote with Paul Hammerness, a psychiatrist at Harvard University. We have identified six principles of organizing the mind and given some tips that will help you work on yourself.
In this case, we are not talking about putting all your cases on the lists, we are not talking about finding a new super-service that will help you organize all your affairs.
It's about the ability of your mind to achieve a higher degree of order when you become calm, wise, positive, learn to think strategically. These skills will be useful to you in absolutely all areas of life, including your health and well-being.
Disorganization of the mind becomes some kind of epidemic. You yourself probably notice that many people around you are depressed, confused, fussy, they have a huge burden of worries, they do not know where to move on.
Hence all the bad habits, constant nervous situation and, as a result, poor health.
If your mind is organized, you can easily focus on solving problems and calmly solve them. Fortunately, these organizational skills are already embedded in us, we just need to learn how to use them!"
And now let's talk about the very rules of the organization of the mind.
First of all, you must learn to manage your negative emotions, such as anxiety, anger, sadness, irritation. These emotions absolutely do not allow you to focus on the problem, they have a destructive effect on the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which is just involved in logical thinking.
Explore what measures help you personally to deal with negative emotions. It can be a full sleep, sports, and meditation. Or maybe, in moments of rage or deep sadness, you should just remember that these emotions prevent you from making the right decisions and moving on to the goal.
After you learn how to manage negative emotions, learn to focus on only one task. Our brain is not able to solve several tasks at the same time. Highlight a priority goal and give it all your attention. Turn off your phone, close messengers and email, and set a timer for 20-30 minutes to devote this time to only one problem.
Your focused brain should be able to stop as abruptly as a car when a red light turns on at a traffic light.
Even when you are focused, your brain continues to scan your internal and external environment. Such distractions are inevitable, unless, of course, you are a robot. But you need to be distracted correctly: stop, take a deep breath and think about what specifically distracted you and whether it is worthy of your attention right now. Maybe you feel like you need to eat or take a little break.
But you need to be distracted correctly: stop, take a deep breath and think about what specifically distracted you and whether it is worthy of your attention right now.
If what distracted you does not require your immediate attention, then go back to your task, focus on it again and work until you finish the execution or feel that you need a break.
The working memory stores small fragments of information necessary for momentary mental activity (Wikipedia). Accessing working memory reverses various elements in it and helps to produce fresh ideas, helps to get to the heart of the task and offers you new ways and strategies to solve problems. Scientists have come to the conclusion that the level of development of mobile intelligence depends on the size of working memory, which includes the ability to learn, inductive and deductive thinking, abstract thinking, recognition of connections and patterns.
The same exercises that help you take control of negative emotions will help you gain access to your working memory. Sleep enough time, learn meditation techniques.
When you need to switch to a new task, give it all your attention. Forget about the task that you performed before, now all your concentration should be directed to solving a new problem.
Such a change of activity is also useful for our brain because it makes thinking more flexible and agile, with such a technique of work, interesting and non-standard ideas are often born.
We need a flexible and healthy mind no less than a flexible and healthy body.Let's summarize some results. You must learn to manage your negative emotions and focus your attention on one task. You must be able to properly distract from the task. You must learn to switch completely from one task to another and access your working memory to generate new ideas and solutions.
Having learned all this, you will not only make your mind more flexible, you will be able to look at life differently, you will be able to change your habits. You will get rid of constant nervousness and haste and will calmly and intently solve incoming problems.
You will become more productive, which means you will be able to devote even more time to your self-development. You will feel better and healthier, as the constant feeling of anxiety, the feeling of haste will go away. Using your organized mind, you can set yourself any goals, and most importantly, achieve them.
