According to psychologist and neuroscientist David Rock and Dan Siegel you can plan to have a balanced mental diet just as you can plan to eat a range of healthy foods. Having a balanced healthy mental diet helps our cognitive balance in areas such as stress, sleep and mental focus.
Copyright 2011 David Rock and Daniel Siegel, MD. All rights reserved.
Sleep Time – Getting enough sleep each night. This allows the brain to the rest. It consolidates learning and aids memory.
Physical Time – Moving our bodies improves cognitive function like working memory. It’s been found to reduce stress, anxiety and depression.
Focus Time – The opposite of multitasking. We think we can multitask but we can’t! Our poor brain is trying to do each task 100% so therefore is not doing it 100%. This drains our pre-frontal cortex (PFC) the part of our brain needed to do our best thinking.
Connecting Time – This is a basic human need like food and water according to D. Rock & D. Siegel. When we connect with other people they say it has physical and mental health benefits.
Play Time – or “Play-joy” as J. Panksepp terms it, stimulates the reward center in the brain and releases the highly beneficial neurotransmitter dopamine. Being creative, spontaneous and playful makes you feel good!
Down Time – Allowing ourselves to relax, do nothing, let our minds wander helps us recharge our brain. It can help with decisions too.
Time In – When we deliberately pay attention to the present moment and our direct experience. We tune out the noisy chatterbox brain.
Rate yourself from 1-10 for each as you are today. 1 being not doing it at all and 10 doing just the right amount for you. Then how would you like it to be? You can do this daily, weekly or even monthly. What do you notice? What can you do to create more balance?
