#10 Principles for Brain Fitness – Part 2

Welcome, I'm Arnold Beekes and I enable you to have a better life between the ears. Why is that important? Because your inner state creates your outer reality. Today we're going to continue our discussion of principles.

Principles for getting to a state of brain fitness. So today we're going to add three new principles. The first one which most people will think that's something new is practice integrally.

Practice integrally. What do I mean by that? In a society where we are being forced to focus on just doing one or two things and then think our life will be super and great and we will be happy until we die. Which is not working.

Which is not working for anyone. And we think we need a quick fix and just do one thing for a short amount of time. Do it for maybe an hour, maybe a few hours and that's it.

No, that's not. Unfortunately that's not how things work inside of us. Between the ears.

The work between the ears takes time, effort and discipline. And what I mean with practice integrally is that as opposed to what we're being told that we are kind of a mechanistic system just like well the old cars not the new cars which are mainly electronically driven but the old mechanistic cars is like we look at a part and if that part is broken or not working we replace it with another car and then the car drives again. And we think the human body, the human being acts the same.

We focus on one thing. So for instance we're not eating healthy and we start replacing basically one item on our nutrition list and replace it with something else and then we expect our life will be super and happy ever after. No, we're not like that mechanistic car.

We are not just a combination of individual parts who get nothing to do with each other. No, everything is connected. Everything is influencing the other elements.

And integrally I mean we need to work mentally on our thoughts and beliefs. We need to focus on our emotions which means our feelings and our drives. Spiritually about connecting to the divine to something bigger than ourselves.

Physically you can I well I'm not making this up. I heard from my personal trainer that there are a lot of people who train very hard in the gym with a personal trainer and then they are so proud of themselves they come home and they drink a couple of beers. That is an ultimate example of why it's not working and it's not practicing integrally.

Meaning you work on your body for exercising which is good and then you come home you take a couple of beers because you're so proud of yourself. And those couple of beers totally destroy all the work you did in the gym. So mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically and I would like to add environmentally really really there's a huge impact of the environment.

Are you in an environment which is polluted? Which is too hot or too cold? Are you in an environment where there's a lot of noise? All of these things influence you also socially. Who are the people who surround you every day? Are the people who support your growth or people who just prefer that you stay stuck in your comfort zone? So practice integrally means you gotta work on all these things. Yes I know I know that's not nice and I know that's not something you prefer.

Yes I would have liked it would have saved me years and years of my life but that's not how things are organized. That's not how it works but I tell you if you practice integrally the results are really really incredible and makes you feel proud of yourself. The second principle of today is nurture your right hemisphere.

The right hemisphere of your brain. We have this well it's basically a lump of fat under our skull in our head and it's got a right and a left hemisphere. The left hemisphere is basically focused on logic whereas your right hemisphere sees things as the big picture of things.

It sees and it makes connections. Your intuition is there. Your higher senses are there.

So not just you're seeing, you're hearing, you're smelling. No it's your higher senses. We have well maybe that's another podcast talking about many of the other senses which we have but your right hemisphere needs to be nurtured.

Why is that critical? Because constantly your right and your left hemisphere are interacting with each other. It's not a black and white separation. It's like the left part does this and the right part.

No it's ongoingly connected but especially because we put so much emphasis on logic and rationality which we think we are which is not true and that's another podcast where I will talk about how emotions are the real driver of our behavior. But your right hemisphere needs to be nurtured because it's being neglected. It's being ignored because that is what they don't want you to use.

They want you not to see the big picture and not to form connections and not to listen to your intuition. So nurture your right hemisphere. Try to see connections.

Try to see the bigger picture of you, of your life, of the people in your environment. The third principle is unleash your uniqueness. I'm always saying one of my slogans is unleash and use your uniqueness.

Here we gotta start with unleashing your uniqueness. Why do I use the word unleash? Because we're operating in straitjackets but we don't know them. They're invisible straitjackets and they're all these limiting beliefs, limiting feelings, limiting physical limitations.

Everything which is put on us by the outside world we gotta unleash that because most of it is not true. Most of it is blocking your development and prevents you from reaching your full potential. So work on getting rid of your straitjackets.

Unleash your uniqueness. Everyday beauty. We conclude each session with some examples of everyday beauty because beauty and especially moral beauty like kindness, courage and compassion has a very positive influence on your inner state.

And as I said in the introduction your inner state creates your outer reality. So that's why we continuously need to work every day, every moment like hey what's my inner state? Is it in a good state or a destructive state? Example today is of some Uganda coffee farmers who just shrugged off a drought because they use regenerative agriculture. I'm using Uganda because right now I'm coaching and training a group of six seven refugees in a settlement camp in Uganda.

So I'm particularly interested in Uganda. But it's really something outside of that refugee camp. It's in the Masaka region in Uganda where they grow Robusta coffee.

And it's a variety, it's just a sort of coffee which is used in espresso and everything worldwide. But when drought hit the region farmers using conventional methods struggled. But a coalition of partners and the the farmers in that particular region held it and the practices were practical and unglamorous.

They had drought resistant seedling varieties, mulching to retain soil moisture, cover cropping and shade trees that cooled the microclimate and reduced water evaporation. And the combined effect was soil that behaved differently under stress, holding water longer and supporting root systems better than adjacent conventional plots. My coffee is stronger and more promising and so is my family, said Nakalisha Marie Fatuma, one of the participating farmers.

Another farmer, Munira Joseph said, we used to think erosion was something we had to live with. They no longer do. So please remember, we need your uniqueness.

Be a better maker for yourself, for others, for the world.