Taking Control Back - The 3 Key Brain Hacks for Maintaining your Mental Health (includes 3 videos)

There are a lot of people dealing with stress at work that is impacting their job performance and their personal life happiness. The modern workplace is getting busier, more overwhelming with information and more challenging to keep up with everything. There are higher expectations, a need to respond to people faster, and a pressure from the use of technology.

People are tending to be on email constantly, looking at their phones just before bedtime, and back online checking email and messages as soon as they wake up. We are over loaded with information from being online and connected.

Progressing my own PhD in behavioural sciences, having worked as a Director in health research and being an adjunct in medical and health sciences, I have been fascinated as to how simple you can change your thoughts through a few basic techniques. I am talking about the negative thoughts that are overwhelming you. These are generally causing you to lose confidence, beat yourself up and result in your lower self-esteem.

High performers on the other hand are doing something to keep themselves thinking more positively and I can tell you exactly what they are doing.

I have recorded on video the top 3 Brain Hacks I have learnt over the years and found they are used by all the highest performers I have ever met.

The reality is that you are typically needing to deal with the issues from the past that play out as the negative voices in your head, as well as program your mind for future proofing your thoughts.

The basic truth is that your thinking impacts your behaviours and actions that gives you your results. To change your results, begins with a change in your thinking. For example, you can have the best knowledge, qualifications and experience, but have a negative attitude. You may have seen this in colleagues and recognised how their thinking is negatively impacting their otherwise success.   

That type of attitude will cause you not to take the necessary actions and behaviours to get winning results, and therefore your thinking becomes self-sabotaging your progress.

Another key element to understand is that the brain uses emotion to instruct it to remember events, just as you may realise you have forgotten most things about the drive home only a few hours ago, however you would remember that good looking person you saw, the car that cut you off in traffic, or your favourite song that came on the radio while driving. This is because you engaged your emotions.

It also explains why you forget a person’s name soon after when you met them – you simply didn’t care enough! However, if they had the same name as someone you know form the past and that triggered the memory of that person, chances are that you will now remember their name.

This also explains why you remember the best and worse moments in your past. They are stored strongly in your memory.

In understanding that, you need to do all of these three techniques with emotion to make them work most effectively. The emotion will tell the brain these are important!

Technique 1 – Rejecting and Replacing the Negative Talk in Your Head

The first technique is called the “Reject and Replace” technique that allows you to reject a negative thought and replace it with a positive one. Basically, you have to replace the negative thought with something that implies a positive change.

For example, if you said to yourself “I am no good at maths”, then you say “reject” and then a replacement thought, such as “Reject – I am as good at maths as I need to be”, or “Reject – I don’t need to be good at maths in my job”, or “Reject – everyday I am getting better at maths”.

If you say something that is not true today, then a second negative comment may come back at you. For example, if I was significantly overweight, and I said to myself when looking in the mirror “you are fat”, and I responded with a “Reject – I am skinny”, you can appreciate the subconscious will come back with another negative voice like “who are you trying to kid”, or “just look at yourself mate – you are fat”, or “you must be joking me – you can see you are fat”.

Instead, if you said something like, “Reject – I am getting slimmer everyday” then the brain will think “are you? – well done – that is great”.

Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/aBOoLeT0b1Q to learn more.

The voice that is the loudest wins, so once you have countered that voice, we need to start overpowering the negative phrase by having a more louder voice with a positive phrase.

Technique 2 – Affirmations: Self-Talking Your Way to Success

The second technique is dealing with programming the mind where you physically create new neuro-wiring to guide your future thinking. Life is like a roller coaster – there are ups and downs, yet this very techniques is the one I use as soon as I realise I am on the downward run of the roller coaster of life, when you realise you are thinking negatively and need to change it around – and fast!

As soon as I start thinking negative, I begin my “Affirmation” technique, and I have affirmations for family, health, business and wealth. You can have one for every negative theme.  They are simply self-talk sentences you say that go in the format of “Everyday in perfect ways”, then “I am…” and insert what you are wanting, and end with, “and this / that…” that sets out your desired outcomes or benefits.

For example, “Everyday in perfect ways, I am feeling more confident and I am feeling stronger, and that makes me achieve more” or “Everyday in perfect ways, I am feeling healthier and slimmer, and that makes me inspired to do more exercise”, or “Everyday in perfect ways, I am feeling more confidence and assured, and that makes me communicate more clearly”.

This 'Affirmation' technique is extremely potent to program your thinking.

When I have to coach a person who has been told they are about to be fired if they do not improve, I get them rapidly using this technique over and over again to get their confidence back, and every time they have done this the Chief Executive Officer says to me, “I don’t want you have done [through coaching], but they are a different person than they were two weeks ago”.

Watch the video here: https://lnkd.in/fYht_S2 to learn more.

We need to program the find using all senses, hence we need another programming technique.

Technique 3 – Visualisation: Using the Senses to Set a New Image

The final technique explains the concept of “fake it until you make it” that results from when you visualise something with emotion, you start creating the neuro-networks that mimic it as a real life experience. You actually start wiring your mind as if it is true. It explains why a compulsive liar ultimately starts to believe their own lies, as the brain over time cannot differentiate between the real experience and that new neuro-pathways created, and they can even pass a liar detector test.

When you visualise something with your eyes closed, it is better to engage as many sensors as possible, and imagine the outcome your want – see it, hear the noises, feel the success, and maybe even smell and taste it.  You have to live it as if it is as real as possible.

Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/5l27K8Eggqk to learn more.

Some people compliment this with a ‘vision board’ that is a number of pictures and other props that represent their desired outcomes.

Take Back Control

All of these techniques are highly effective in taking control of your life. Remember that stress is a real or perceived loss of control, so when you feel you are out of control, your stress goes right up.

I start using these techniques when I sense something is going wrong, however it is more sensible to get into a habit and do them like rituals.

These techniques start allowing you to control and guide your thinking and therefore feel more in control. This reduces the stress, and programs the mind to move toward your desired achievements.

About the Author - Todd Hutchison

Todd Hutchison is an international bestselling business author, a Nationally-accredited trainer and certified speaking professional (CSP), and a global strategist, project management and behavioural specialist. He is listed in the Who’s Who of Business in Australia. 

Todd is the Global Chairman and CEO of Peopleistic (including the Business Education Institute and Film My Video businesses), an executive with law firm Balfour Meagher and resides as the Chairman of the International Institute of Legal Project Management, as well as being a Board Director of Leadership Western Australia.

Todd has been trained by Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) experts Dr John Grinder, Michael Grinder, Anthony Robbins, Dr Tad James, Dr Adrianna James, Dr Topher Morrison, Dr William Horton, Gary De Rodriguez, Carmen Bostic St Clare, Joseph O'Connor, Chris Howard, Terry McClendon and Alan Parker.

Todd is also a qualified company director, having served on boards in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, and has led international businesses. He has worked in over 160 organisations in 13 countries, including global corporations like AT&T, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Deloitte, Sime Darby, Genting, Schenk Process, JP Kenny and Honeywell.

He holds adjunct positions with Edith Cowan University and Curtin University, and teaches international business as part of the MBA academic staff at the Australian Institute of Management, and the Masters of Professional Engineering at Curtin.

Todd’s qualifications include an MBA and a Master of Commerce and he is now progressing a PhD.