Make The Placebo Effect Work for You with Erik Vance

Most people know what a coach is. It’s someone who helps you learn a new skill with instructions, guidance, and hands-on practice. There are many different types of coaches out there: sports coaches, diet coaches, music coaches, career coaches, and many more. But what exactly is a brain coach? And why do you need one?

What is a brain coach?

The human brain is an amazing organ, but it requires training to develop your focus and attention. Keeping the brain stimulated through active learning results in better memory, critical thinking skills, decision making, and other important functions. Normal cognitive processes and other skills can decline—including memory and critical thinking—if you don’t stimulate your brain.

My job as your brain coach is to help you train your brain so you can perform at your cognitive best. We do this by understanding how the brain functions, and how that functionality relates to people’s skills in learning and life. When you understand how connected your body and brain are, you can use that information to make better lifestyle choices every day.

How is brain coaching done?

We have several resources to help you on your limitless brain journey. We dedicate our classes to helping you focus on memory function, problem-solving, decision-making skills, and overall lifestyle changes, such as sleep, diet, exercise, and stress management. In addition, we offer weekly podcasts with incredible guests to help you hone these skills.

It doesn’t matter what age or stage in life you are in, our programs are designed to help you unlock your limitless potential. Whether it’s through a class, a podcast, our extensive Kwik Brain community, or any of our live streams and webinars, our training will fit into your busy life. For less than twenty minutes a day, we challenge and exercise your brain.

Benefits of brain coaching

Your brain is a muscle, and like any muscle, if you don’t use it, you lose it. Brain coaching can lead to better performance, not only at home, but at work or school. Students often perform better in subjects that they might not have done so well before brain coaching. At work, you can have better overall mental performance, and that can lead to promotions or better pay.

By stimulating different areas of the brain, it improves overall functionality. This results in better brain health marked by things like reduced anxiety, lower stress, and an improvement in your mood. Your confidence will grow, leading to higher competency levels that will carry over through other areas of your life.

Why does brain coaching work?

Your brain is constantly working. When you apply brain training methods and techniques, you’re ensuring that the brain growth process of neuroplasticity continues. Neuroplasticity keeps your brain healthy through new neural growth and the organization of neural structures.

When you stop learning new things, your brain will eventually prune the neural network associated with skills and information you no longer use. By staying mentally engaged and active, you ensure that you not only use these networks, but maintain them. This stops your brain from shrinking and helps your grey matter stay healthy.

One of the biggest reasons our programs are so effective is that we aren’t teaching you one skill. We’re embracing the idea of metacognition—or learning how to learn. In school, teachers taught you what to learn. But they limited the actual process of learning to rote memorization and repetition. No matter what program you choose, you can apply those skills to learning any subject.

Conclusion

There are many approaches to brain coaching. Here at Kwik Brain, we want to help you improve brain function, increase brain capacity, reduce stress and anxiety, improve your sleep, and get you to perform better at work and school. Our programs fit into your busy schedule, and our staff are here to help support you on your limitless journey.

 If you want to learn more about how unlock your superhero potential, watch this episode:

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Overthinking, ruminating, or letting your thoughts repeat, is a very common function in your brain. But what if it affects other aspects of your life?

Say you made a mistake at your job and that caused a delay in your project. It is a good practice to think about what went wrong so you can learn from your mistake. But when you run that single thought repeatedly, it can form unwanted connections in your brain, and the result can be very distressing.

This type of rumination is commonly called overthinking. While we are all guilty of it to some extent, extensive overthinking is bad for your brain health. Here are five ways to interrupt repetitive thoughts when they.

Why is Overthinking Harmful?

• Overthinking has serious consequences for mental health and your overall well-being.
• Dwelling too much on past mistakes and shortcomings can lead to chronic anxiety and depression. This causes you to over-focus on the same thought, feeding a vicious cycle.
• Studies have shown that in order to cope with overthinking-related anxiety, people may rely on addictive substances like alcohol and binge-eating. This leads to long-term and serious health problems.
• Overthinking seriously affects your sleep cycle. When you overthink, your brain cannot shut down as the thoughts keep running through its circuits. Extensive periods of sleep deprivation can lead to several health problems, as well as affect your memory, learning, and cognitive abilities.

How to Stop Overthinking?

1. Catch Yourself

• This is the hardest part because, most of the time, you may not even realize that you are overthinking.
• Practice questioning your negative thoughts.
• A characteristic of overthinking is vague or generalized thoughts. Thinks like “I know I’m going to fail the test” or “What if I cannot wake up on time”.
• Recognize this tone in your thoughts and stop yourself.
• Meditation and mindfulness techniques are a great way to improve this ability.

2. Let It Out

• The more you keep these thoughts inside you, the more they will affect you.
• Find a way to let them out.
• Write them down or verbalize them by talking to someone close and trusted.
• When you write or speak your thoughts, you’re giving them a clear articulation, and become better positioned to face them.
• Most often, when you write or talk, you’ll realize the counterpoints to the negative thoughts on your own.

3. Set Time Aside

• Put an alarm on your rumination time.
• Set aside 10-15 minutes (not too long) each day to reflect on everything.
• Once that time is past and the alarm rings, forcefully take your mind elsewhere.
• This will stop the negative thought circuits from taking root in your brain, and over time, these will fade and stop affecting your wellbeing.

4. Get Busy

• One of the surest ways to stop overthinking is to divert your mind with another task.
• When you catch yourself overthinking, immediately and purposefully take up some work that is unrelated to your thoughts.
• You can work on a different project, practice art, or indulge in any hobby you like.
• Exercise is also a great way to clear up an overwrought brain, as it has several other benefits too.

5. Seek Help

• Overthinking is associated with loneliness, and a feeling of being misunderstood.
• When you catch yourself overthinking often, speak about it to someone you can trust, or seek the help of a professional counselor.

Conclusion

Your brain is a complicated mechanism, and overthinking is a natural product of this. There is nothing wrong with overthinking a little, but continual fixation on any one thought is unhealthy. Take a deep breath and follow the steps above to help disrupt repetitive thoughts and stop overthinking.

‍To learn more about intrusive thoughts and how to stop them, watch this episode:

When people ask if Kwik Learning works, what they’re really asking is if brain training works. The short answer is yes. Your brain is a muscle, and the more you exercise you give it, the stronger it will be. But how do you exercise your brain? That’s where brain training comes in.

Your brain has the ability to change itself through a process known as neuroplasticity. Our training program is based in the scientific principles that work with this natural capability to improve the quality of your brain functions, which then expand to improve your whole life. Specifically, we focus on improving the mental skills needed for a healthy overall life—things like memory, attention, skills, and thinking.

Here are some of the scientific facts that our programs are based on.

1. Training Nourishes Your Brain

We mentioned that your brain is a muscle, and like muscles, it needs food, exercise, oxygen, and rest to be healthy and strong. Our programs focus not just on mental abilities, but on how to improve your overall lifestyle. Having a good memory is an impressive and vital skill, but if you’re constantly stressed or tired, you won’t be able to maximize the use of that skill.

Our training is comprehensive to strengthen your brain properly. Studies say that training which focuses only on certain aspects like memory or intelligence have limited benefits, while working on all of the aspects together shows better results.

2. Enhancement of Your Mental Performance Starts with Enhancement of Your Senses

Our sensory organs send information to the brain from the moment they start working until they are no longer functioning, constructing our experiences and memories. How our brain records everything determines the quality of our memories and experiences. Also, the more effective your brain is with the small details, the better it works.

Our programs focus on sharpening your senses in order to sharpen your mind. With time, you will notice that your brain processes, records, and recalls information faster and easier, which will boost your overall brain function.

3. Brain Problems

Your brain can always do better; that is a fact. But over time, our brains degrade and tend to do less. If your senses work perfectly, then the problem is from your brain itself.

These problems include:

• Slow Processing

As we’ve stated, as long as your senses are functioning properly, the speed of information sent from them to the brain does not change. Over time, the brain slows down its speed. When the processes become slower, the brain begins to miss details and react slowly.

• Lack of Accuracy

When your brain misses some details, its accuracy becomes blurred. It is like a puzzle, and missing some pieces affects the whole picture. That is why your brain’s overall accuracy decreases when it starts missing details.

• Brain Clarity

When we are younger, our brains are able to collect all the pieces of the puzzle easily. But when we get older, our senses degrade and our brains slow down, which decreases our mental clarity, replacing it with mental fog. That is why we face problems like lack of concentration as we age.

The question now is, what does our training do for your brain?

Our training is designed to eliminate these brain problems. It uplifts your spirits, increases your brain processing speed, sharpens your senses, improves your brain connections, and enhances your learning capabilities.

The training works on your whole brain at once. This is the key for improving the overall quality of your life, not just a single aspect.

For more on how to train your brain and the benefits it brings, check out this video: