SUMMARY
Chronic stress can literally rewire your brain to focus on the wrong things, and over time, kill your dreams. Stress can influence what consumes your focus. This can reduce productivity & motivation for long-term goals, which can lead to depression, and eventually kill your dreams.
At Forms & Focus, our mission is to increase your focus so you can accomplish your dreams. Many of us have dreams and goals. What keeps us from them is our inability to remove distractions and focus. We will accomplish our mission by providing you with guided forms that manifest radical focus.
0:00 - Intro
1:25 - Problem - Stress is killing your focus.
7:26 - Solution/Habits for better focus.
Problem
- In research from Bernstein (2021), when you experience chronic stress, the body makes more cortisol than it has a chance to release. Chronic stress has a shrinking effect on the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain responsible for memory and learning.
- While stress can shrink the prefrontal cortex, it can increase the size of the amygdala, which can make the brain more receptive to stress.
Christopher Bergland writes in Psychology Today. “Cortisol is believed to create a domino effect that hard-wires pathways between the hippocampus and amygdala in a way that might create a vicious cycle by creating a brain that becomes predisposed to be in a constant state of fight-or-flight,” - From Harvard Health (2021), Your brain isn't just a single unit, but a group of different parts that perform different tasks, says Dr. Ressler. Researchers believe that when one part of your brain is engaged, the other parts of your brain may not have as much energy to handle their own vital tasks.
Top Down Attention
- According to The Neurochemistry of Focus, 2020, there are two types of attention, bottom up and top down. The bottom up attention, sometimes called exogenous attention, is when your sensory world is driving what information you notice.
- The “top down” attention, sometimes called endogenous attention. This is where it is your brain which is dictating and directing how you should be focusing your attention
Solution
- Reduce social media Pew Research Center, 2018 reported as many as 59% of teens report having experienced cyberbullying.
- American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 2017 reported that using platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat for more than two hours a day is associated with feelings of social isolation among individuals between ages 19 and 32.
Turn up your “Top Down” Attention
- Meditate: (Williams, 2018) in New Scientist, Mindfulness meditation increased thickness in the prefrontal cortex and parietal lobes, both linked to attention control
- Apps like BrainFit
- Read and Thinking Activities
- According to neuroscientist Susan Greenfield and her book Mind Change, when we read a novel, we read linearly, rather than sporadically jumping from tab to tab, and slowly think about the information in front of us
- Physical activities, (Tsujii et al., 2012), found that physical exercise improved behavioral performance of the working memory task compared with the control condition.
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