Why begin with the Brain?
Reason #1. We can train our brain to work for us or against us.
We can all wire our brain to help us work smarter not harder - figuratively and literally. Modern society has many norms that trick the brain into working against our best interests, like telling us to keep eating when we should feel full! Following a few basics principles, we can re-wire and re-enlist the brain to support our needs, our goals, our priorities. We have the ability to make everything more doable and this can be much easier to do than most people realize.
Reason #2. It's all connected - when you protect your mind, your body follows.
The basic patterns of living that protect our brain, are the same as virtually all those required to create a foundation of health, vitality, and resilience. When you prioritize a habit that is good for your brain, you are going to have a positive impact on your body, your mind, or both - directly or indirectly. Mood. Weight. Inflammation. Blood pressure. Blood glucose. . Mood. Strength. Energy. And these are just a few examples. Protect your mind and you will see the benefits across all your health markers and feelings of wellbeing.
Reason #3. The brain seeks efficiency - AKA habits.
The brain likes efficiency and habits are one of the brain's favorite efficiency mechanisms. Habits don't take mental energy. Rather, habits automate behavior, freeing time and energy for the brain to focus on other matters. Our job is to identify the most useful, easy to adopt habits to entrain the brain based on what is doable now. With every new habit we gain a little more motivation and free up a little more time to focus on creating the next round of new habits (if that's an aspiration) or to take that time and energy to focus on other life interests.
Reason #4. We now know the formula - the science of Tiny Habits.
We know how to take advantage of the brain's habit efficiency principle. It boils down to this: Behavior Cue + Reward + Repetition = Habit. Stacking small, doable, repeatable new habits reinforced by any size reward - big or small - turns the idea of rewiring our habits into actionable reality. No heroics or extreme measures required. No need to sustain fickle high motivation states to create serious habit change. A regular micro dose of dopamine from small steps can be all the reward the brain needs. As with compounding interest, these many small steps add up to exponential gains.
Reason # 5. Quality of mind shapes our destiny.
Perhaps this is self evident, but it is foundational: the quality of our mind determines the quality of our life. We need to protect our brain for its capacity to shape our identity and destiny. Destiny is not fated. It is shaped by our every day choices, our habits.
Final Word
We define AgeSmart Living as leveraging the power of our natural biology by making the brain the first priority. We make this actionable by keeping five considerations top of mind:
Wiring our brain to support our individual needs and priorities,
Prioritizing good habits for the brain which are also good for the body and mind,
Taking advantage of the brain's predisposition for creating efficiency through habits, and
Leveraging the science of Tiny Habits for simplicity, doability and sustainability.
My bias for beginning with the brain began when my father passed from complications due to Alzheimer's in 2019. Over the next few years while approaching my 60th birthday, I found myself getting more serious about all aspects of aging and soon realized virtually everything good for my brain was also good for my body. There was no "either/or" trade off. But it did become obvious I needed to enlist the power of my brain to work for me instead of against against me hence our brain first approach.
Why focus on food and exercise if my brain was getting signals to keep eating and conserve energy (avoid movement) due to bad sleep? Why waste time and effort on strategies where the brain was not being retrained into a sustainable new habit?
That said, we all need to find the pattern that works for our individual needs and time in life. Any small change that is doable and sustainable is worth doing! Stay curious. Learn what works for you and what does not. Life is a grand experiment where we're all constantly learning and refining. Enjoy the process!
Wishing you well,
Janice
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