New Strategies In Physiology, Nutrition and Psychology That Promote Mental Well-Being, Productivity And Health.

It has been just over a year since Singapore has gone into lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, a series of victories have led Singapore to have typically less than 5 infections a day in community spread, although generally staying around 0.

We are fortunate! Or are we?

As with almost any predatory gut-reaction, there is an overall uneasiness. First, you get to stay at home. You bring home your "stuff". Now, you have to bring it back. This constant adjustment is not "normal". It's like you've left home for work not knowing if you have forgotten to switch off that appliance or close the window. And even that is insufficient to drive the point about the energy-guzzling experience of having to be on the lookout for an invisible assailant. The longer a person stays in this, a rush of unsavory patterns begins to emerge. It is not because of COVID19: it is because the problems were already present and COVID19 merely brought it to light.

What Happens In Your Head Happens In Your Body

Just as an aside, did you know that when you are in short term stress, simply focusing on your peripheral vision instead of foveal (focused) vision for a moment can bring your body's stress levels down? This is a simple trick I learnt from Stanford's Andrew Huberman, in one of his Youtube lectures, which shares plenty of useful neuroscience information for anyone who wants to better drive their own brain.

According to Alia Crum (Stanford University) We all believe that stress is often negative. However, research has borne out that there are a few things we are underestimating. First, the fact that stress is multivariate. It's not just the event that makes the difference. A lion in the room can cause different reactions not just fear. Second, the fact is stress reactions depend on the nature of the individual's attitude toward stress. Believe that stress is bad, and you start activating the placebo effect in that direction. The average person starts with fear and running away, actually causing the lion to give chase. But just as some safari rangers suggest, standing your groud and projecting your firmness, making yourself larger with loud noises, and the lion might be the one feeling the threat and go away.

The irony is that the belief itself often constitutes what is required to change - if you know how to attend to your beliefs, you are now able to cease your abdication of power to the external, something I often cover in my customizable virtual trainings.

A series of further research related to mindset, nutrition, energy, sleep and cognition show us that humans have quite a long way to go in terms of managing ourselves well. We now know some of the mechanisms of neurochemicals that prevent us from sleeping (and for that matter, waking up properly) that create a dramatic dent in our energy during the day. Numerous researchers now point to the fact that when we misregulate our serotonin levels (which convert into melatonin at night) through the use of exogenous melatonin before sleep, without considering complexities of human nutrition (e.g. the appropriate amount of bio-available Vitamin D, omega-3 fatty acids and the gut microbiome).

I won't go through the intricacies of this in this article, but I am available to share this important information in Virtual Talks to organizations that want to bring information to their employees so they can be empowered to work with this information.

We also know that physiologically adjusting our breathing often leads to a fundamental change in our energy levels and thermal levels, which has been shown to neurtralize even the e.coli bacteria injected deliberately into the human body. Wim Hof, also known as the "Ice-Man" has 26 Guiness World Records related to this amazing but freely available superpower.

We also know now that mental well-being is often a function of the way we interpret the world. If our mindset is focused on the positive, we tend to see that in our bodies. Professor Ellen Langer's (Harvard University) research on mind-body connection has sparked a lot of other findings ranging from the idea that the beliefs triggers hunger more so than the real need for nutrition, to the interesting revelation that age reversal often is possible. The reparative work the body can do is utterly fascinating.

Coming to the real world applications, we know that the virtual work environment is not new to one segment of the working population. At the same time, the asymmetry of others who are struggling to cope begs the question: are we missing the skills to enable us to become an effective virtual team member?

I still remember a period where there was drilling happening for a full week due to renovations carried out in my block. I had to pull out the stops to ensure that my Zoom calls and MS Teams meetings had some kind of noise suppression. Thankfully, MS Teams has its own internal noice cancellation system, and I was able to use NVIDIA's software for my Zoom calls, which worked fabulously well. It did not stop the fact that the noise required me to exert something to the tune of 4 times the amount of effort to concentrate and speak. While I felt exhausted, I also felt a rush - the fact was that I could sit through that terrible incessant banging and power drilling for days, without "losing it". Utilizing all known psychological strategies to me, I pulled through this tough period.

Now, I won't try to make out this situation as if it is so terrible compared with others undergoing more troubling situations. It's just an illustration. There are definitely many more traumatizing events I've gone through in my life that I have worked on successfully, and I'm not willing to share openly on an article like this. If one is merely angry and resentful at life's circumstances, it hardly makes a positive difference. It is merely adding oil to the fire. Just do know that if you want to work on it, your mental resources are actually available to you. The only question is how.

The mind is full of strange and amazing qualities. I know that many individuals, families and organizations are under stress due to this period of life. But it is temporary. Just as the weather is stormy, we know that a raft is not going to cut it when trying to stay afloat. It is only during these times where we realise that building a stronger, sturdier and massive ship is a real need. We can't control the storms, but we most certainly can decide to build that lifeboat in a manner that befits the context.

The stronger we learn to become, the heavier the loads we can bear during the bad times. I wish you strength at all times.

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Stuart Tan MSc., MBA, is a psychologist and speaker of 27 years, having spoken to and trained over 500,000 people across 11 different countries. As a leadership consultant and executive coach, he develops leaders' ability to establishing a high performance team. As a professional counselor and psychotherapist, he has been conducting regular talks and workshops to educate people about the Growth Mindset and the systems of personal mastery that yield better mental well-being and self-management of difficult emotions and circumstances. For more information on how these could impact your organization, email [email protected].