07/26/2023
4 Simple Brain Hacks to Escape Stress hijacking your work:
Our brains naturally respond to stress by sending messages to narrow focus, increasing breathing and heart rate, and releasing cortisol, which increases blood sugar levels. These are great assets if you are being chased by a bear, but if you are sitting down in an office it can cause problems, especially if the stress becomes chronic.
Your amygdala is part of your brain’s limbic system which regulates emotional and behavioral responses. When you are stressed your amygdala literally hijacks your brain’s resources and diminishes access to higher executive functioning in the pre-frontal cortex, memory storage in the hippocampus, and temperature regulation and metabolic functions of the hypothalamus. It just takes over!
It’s important to notice when you are feeling an inappropriate level of stress and take action to escape this hijacker.
Have you ever…
• found it hard to concentrate?
• Lost motivation or confidence in your job?
• found it hard to make decisions?
• felt depressed or anxious?
• felt more emotional – you might be more irritable or moody?
• felt overwhelmed or unable to ‘switch off’?
If so, you are not alone.
Some stress is inevitable and can be a good thing, motivating and propelling us to great achievements.
However, we must manage stress in healthy ways to optimize our physical and mental health and our productivity at work.
We can increase our overall resilience and reduce unhealthy stress levels with good lifestyle habits, but there are also many simple quick techniques or ‘brain hacks’ that we can use today to make our work experience so much happier and more productive. Here are just four.
4 Simple Brain Hacks
1. Breathe
You can’t overemphasize the power of taking a deep breath. There are many breathing techniques to reduce stress and increase mental and physical health. One simple, but very effective one is pursed lip breathing.
You do it by taking a deep breath in through your nose and releasing it out through your mouth, pursing your lips like you are blowing through a straw. As you breathe focus on your body’s movements. Notice your abdomen expanding and falling. Notice as your heart rate slows down. Aim for an exhale that is twice as long as your inhale, it can be helpful to count as you breathe.
Lengthening our exhale will activate our parasympathetic nervous system and bring oxygen and blood flow back to our pre-frontal cortex, which helps us relax, feel calm, and think clearer. It also slows our heart, lowers blood pressure, and promotes healthy digestion.
2. Exercise
Take a walk. Plain and simple, walking will get your blood flowing to all the right places. It will lower your blood pressure and increase your energy levels. To supercharge your stress release while you walk, admire the lovely trees and plants around campus or look up and take in the clouds and colors of the sky. Try to notice any animals you see, like birds or squirrels. Your mind will go for a quick vacation from your workload and you’ll come back fresh and ready to reengage in your work.
If you can’t get away from your desk, just stand up and stretch for a few minutes. Look at a nice picture on the wall or visually scan your office for similar colors and shapes. This will give your eyes and brain a quick break from your computer or papers. It will encourage better blood flow to your extremities and the critical thinking part of your brain.
3. Visualization
“Go to your happy place.” Picture yourself in a peaceful, beautiful place that you love. It could be the ocean at sunset, a mountain stream, a beautiful lush forest, a secluded beach, a field of wildflowers, or any place you enjoy and feel relaxed. Use all your senses as you visualize the place in this imagery. Hear the sounds of the waves, feel the breeze on your face, and smell the scent of the flowers. Once you have built your mental happy place, you can easily retrieve those comforting images in just a few seconds or you can take extra time to build a brand-new scene and get lost for a while in your mental vacation retreat. You’ll feel relaxed in no time at all.
This process of using visualization to systematically create your “happy place” integrates and activates more of your brain’s creativity and intuition with the brain’s analytical and strategy-building functions. It is very helpful with developing cognitive flexibility and helping you self-regulate in moments of stress.
4. Gratitude
This is my absolute favorite brain health hack. It’s easy and takes only seconds to do, but can change the course of your day and your life. It’s the ultimate power boost to any technique.
A simple gratitude exercise is to take a moment to recognize and celebrate how much you’ve done, how far you’ve come, or what challenges you’ve overcome in the past. You can write these things down or give yourself a pat on the back. Feeling successful will motivate you to do more.
You can also notice things that you are grateful for at work, like having clean drinkable water, climate control, and the presence of so many good people on our campus. Gratitude is the antidote to negative emotions, a neutralizer of envy, hostility, worry, and irritation.
Space and time limit my ability to elaborate on more strategies to better handle stress and build resilience like getting adequate sleep, staying hydrated, eating leafy greens, and using humor. But just implementing any of these 4 simple brain hacks will empower you to feel better at work right away.
