Recently Seth Godin blogged about how your Lizard Brain sabotages your success—why people say one thing and reliably do another.
The lizard brain, as he calls it, is very real. He doesn’t call it by name, I will.
A small almond shaped node at the base of your brain, the Lizard Brain is a the primitive emotional center of your brain called the amygdala. It holds emotional memory which helps you react to your environment without the delay of “thinking about” it.
When under attack by a ferocious lion, the amygdala is very good at triggering fear and saving your life, but it’s not nearly so useful for running your life, day to day. You’d never want to put it in charge of your diet or anything that requires planning or self-restraint.
I’ve studied and written about this little saboteur the amygdala, for it is implicated in the inability to maintain a healthy diet. When this “lower-mind” takes charge of your actions you’ll do just about anything without thought. Good intentions, even discipline are impotent in this case.
Can’t figure where the entire box of cookies went? You ate one, looked down to find an empty box. What happened?
Your little lizard brain happened.
With this primitive “lower mind” control center taking you over from time to time, you’ve gotta wonder how you ever manage to achieve any success?
How do you stay on track, gain control of your life and get results?
Simple. Focus!
We humans have a lizard brain, we are not one. Fortunately, millions of years of evolution has graced us with an antidote to life as a lizard—a remarkable “focus control center” that provides incredible powers of concentration and helps us to produce just about any outcome “we put our minds to.”
This “higher-mind” powerhouse of self-control is called “The Prefrontal Cortex.” By enabling us to generate forethought, achieve major goals, and master of self-control; it is in many ways what makes us human.
A healthy, vibrant “PFC” is key to overcoming entropy, breaking through resistance and staying the course—it puts your Lizard Brain on ice.
Want to achieve extraordinary success? The real question is not, “How do we resist succumbing to the lizard brain?,” but rather “How do you nourish a strong, focused, resolute higher-mind?“
When you’re focused, clear and strong you can achieve anything.
5 Sure-Fire Tips for Taming Your Lizard Brain
and Super-Charging Your Success
What follows are five proven tips and techniques for putting your lazy lizard brain on ice and super-charging a sharp, focused, powerful success seeking mind. Try one, two or all five. You’ll feel the difference fast in your day and in your results. I’m serious—this stuff works!
1. Eat healthy, balanced meals rich in protein.
Focus is a state as much generated by environment and intention as by the biochemistry of the body. That is to say, perfect conditions and the most noble efforts will not generate focus in the absence of the necessary interior chemistry. Alternately, when you properly—often intentionally—provide the necessary fuel for the brain and body, the Prefrontal cortex, and your entire brain, works much better—and focus is suddenly effortless.
While the brain utilizes glucose for energy, every single neurotransmitter—the chemicals that transmit between neurons in the brain and allow you to think—are made from the amino acids from protein. Hence, you need protein to stay focused.
A balanced meal rich in protein keeps your energy levels stable, prevents the rise and fall of blood sugar and insulin which sends you on a sleepy rollercoaster. This is all important for you can’t be focused and sharp and drowsy at the same time. And as noted, the protein supports the essential neurotransmitters.
Simply stated, quality nutrition supports your higher mind and keeps you thinking clear, quick and resolute.
A rock-solid, reliable daily nutrition source, rich in perfect proteins, with nearly ideal energy balance, may I suggest Full Strength nutrition shake. It’s designed to support body-mind energy for hours and provides not only the proteins, carbs and essential fats but an abundant array of all essential nutrients to keep your thinking clear and strong.
2. Avoid snacking on simple carbs and sugars.
Just as balanced meals can keep you running strong and focused, pure and simple carbs are equally debilitating to your brain and your focus. The more sugar in the food or snack the more rapidly and powerfully it’s likely to pull you from higher-mind to the lower mind.
Sugar, especially has a very powerful anchor in your emotional memory—add this to the way sugar “unfocus” and suppresses your pre-frontal cortex activity and you’ve got the recipe for disaster, unless you’re a cookie salesmen (aka Girl Scout).
With a proprietary Tri-Stage Sustained Energy Source, Full Strength has the fuel to get your going—the single grams of sugar ensures you stay going strong.
3. Train to Strengthen Your Body & Mind
Strength training inherently requires some degree of focus—more so than cardio as you have to be present and locked on each rep. This simple act of stressing your muscle of focus can do wonders for conditioning your mind to respond and stay with something.
You can do so much more and get so much more out of your training by bringing your mind, intensely focused, to each and every rep of your training. In Strength for LIFE, I share a specific Strength Training style I have evolved that integrates and synchronizes your body and mind in a strong, hyper-focused state.
This “Integral Strength” practice I call Focus Intensity Training (or F.I.T.)
Imagine the intensity of martial arts meets the focus and presence of yoga with dumbbells and you’ve got it. It’ll make your workouts more enjoyable and effective—strengthening your focus and body faster than ever before.
It’ll change the way you train forever—I promise.
Strength training also energizes your body, increases blood flow for a healthy brain and stabilizes insulin blood sugar for better energy. There’s also considerable research which indicates Strength Training enhances your brains wiring strength and effectiveness. Yep, makes you smarter too.
4. Simply Sound Sleep
This seems obvious but at the time of this writing more than 78% of Americans are not getting enough sleep to function optimally. A tired brain is not a high performing mind. A rested mind is a primed and strong mind.
Aim for a minimum of seven hours. It’ll change your life. To further reduce your stress level, practice breathing methods for centering and relaxing (also part of F.I.T.) and consider a meditation practice.
5. Supplements for Strong Focus
As I said in Tip #1, focus, and a healthy prefrontal cortex, is no accident—it’s a masterfully orchestrated cascade of events. And one of the most elevating events is the infusion of certain nutrients and other triggers for generating neurotransmitters—basically creating a state that looks like focus—to then enjoy focus.
Too often we’re guilty of waiting for external circumstances to be perfect and thrust focus upon us—this works in the event of emergency but with a little knowledge you can stop waiting for the rain to fall—and become the creator of your focus.
Should all else not provide enough immediate boost, here’s a simple, scientifically supported formula for supercharging your focus from the inside out.
Dopamine is the neurotransmitter of focus—it helps you achieve goals and stay laser-focused. Dopamine, like all neurotransmitters, is derived of amino acids, primarily a single amino called L-tyrosine. When you want a kick it up, take some L-Tyrosine (you can experiment with what works for you. What I’ve seen is that the right amount if anywhere from 1000 mg to 2500mg with right in the middle being most effective, for most people.) on an empty stomach. This allows is to enter the blood and hence brain without all the other amino acids competing for uptake.
Optionally, add a little caffeine (about a cup of coffee or green tea) to release a complementary cascade of focus, enhancing elements and you’re on your way to “fighter pilot focused.”
In addition to the rapid release pure whey isolate proteins, being a bit of a focus/dopamine fan myself, I loaded Full Strength with about a gram of L-Tyrosine for a nice, smooth focus lift. If you’re part of the Full Strength Inner Circle, you may feel the lift in the slight tingling behind the ears, or just the extra kick of solid energy that follows your shake-break. If you’ve never tried it, grab yourself a FREE sample now, and feel the energy, now.
(Of course, this is for entertainment use only! No medical advice found here!)
Until Next Week,
Stay Strong,
Shawn
Follow Me: /Twitter/shawn_phillips
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P.S. BONUS Seth Video: Seth Godin Live on presentation on Calming the Lizard Brain.
Life, with it is intensely enjoyable; in it’s absence, dull and difficult.
Tue, February 9, 2010
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