Going on alert!
- Written by preethab30
One of the ways…
If you have ever had to run a conference call soon after waking up in the morning, you will know that “arousal” is important for making sense of the world. Putting aside stimulants such as caffeine(which is, like a bigger computer screen, a proven technique for increasing mental performance), there are two main strategies for increasing arousal.
One strategy, perhaps the easiest and quickest, is to increase adrenaline levels by bringing “urgency” to a task. Nor adrenaline, is the brain equivalent of the adrenaline most people feel before public speaking. It’s the chemistry of FEAR. When you are scared, you pay intense attention; you are highly alert. Fear brings a deep and immediate alertness. Nor adrenaline also turns out to be important for binding circuits together in the prefrontal cortex.
You can play various “trick” on yourself to generate the release of this chemical. Visualizing an activity generates similar metabolic response to actually doing it. One study found that picturing yourself doing a finger exercise increased muscle mass by 22%, which was close to the 30% achieved by doing the exercise for real!! ( Of course, one has to really focus, to put in a the effort, a lot of effort, to keep mentally focused on doing the exercise.)
If your alertness is too low, you can generate adrenaline by imagining something going wrong in the future, literally by visualizing a scary event!! A professional boxer once explained to me the secret of his success. He used to imagine that going into the ring could kill him, which would make him train like a maniac. Some people use a similar trick when writing. If they can’t focus, they imagine handing in a piece of work and other people finding mistakes in it. That wakes them right up! (That does not work for me, though. I need to think positive for things to work right for me.)
The key to this technique is not to let the imagery take on a life of its own. You want to arouse the brain just enough to get motivated, but not so much that you end up obsessing about your fear and increasing you load!
Please look at another article on another way for a person to “get interested” or going alert. What is described above is one of the ways of getting alert!
Do log into my webinar too to understand more!
Respects,
Preetha
www.preethabalakrishnan.com
Courtesy: Know your brain transform your performance
Dr David Rock