Neurochemistry-Based Lifestyle & Nutrition Habits
š¤øāāļø Stretch 36
Charlotte Grysolle
May 26, 2023
In Stretch 34, you voted to learn more about the neurochemistry of focus and motivation.
So, I went out and put on my little citizen-researcher glasses. š©āš¬
Iāve collected notes and learnings from neuroscience/management book The Leading Brain and Huberman Labās episode Optimize & Control Your Brain Chemistry to Improve Health & Performance.
I know, I know.
āNeurochemistryā and āoptimizing and controlling your brain chemistryā might sound far-fetched and wacky, but itās really not.
Itās pretty basic biologyāespecially when it comes to the simple lifestyle and nutrition-based habits we can all experiment with.
I really feel like this is information we should all be aware of. Sleep, exercise, nutrition. Itās not just about looking better. Itās also about working, thinking and feeling betterāevery day!
Having this understanding can save us so much frustration and self-criticism around feeling unmotivated, disorganized, distracted, and low energy.
You donāt have to be resigned to feeling that way. Itās not a part of your personality, and itās not a sign of weakness.
If you can learn how to control the levels of certain neurochemicals in your system, you can control the activity of neural circuits involved in motivation, focus, and energy to a surprising extent.
So in this deep dive, Iām looking at the four most potent chemicals that influence our mental states and behaviours:
šāāļø Motivation - Dopamine
ā”ļø Energy - Epinephrine
šÆĀ Focus - Acetylcholine
š§āāļø Contentment -Ā Serotonin
Weāll look at tools and habits you can use to influence these chemicals across three levels:
Baseline - how to ensure a natural, healthy baseline level.
Directed - how to boost your baseline level in a directed, acute way.
Task-oriented - how to plan and organise your daily tasks to make optimal use of the chemicals in your system.
P.S. - I am always thinking about how to best structure and share this kind of information. Is this deep dive too long? Would it be more helpful in another format? If you have any thoughts or ideas about how I can make this better and more useful, Iād love to hear it!
šØĀ USE THE INTERNET AS A TOOL FOR CREATIVITY AND EXPLORATION
We just finished another cohort of Write of Passage, the online writing course I work for. I am feeling fired up and so inspired about the 300 people having gone through an intense 5-week experienceāby so many described in the final session as āabsolutely life-changing.ā
I work in online education, so naturally Iām a big believer in online courses to explore and reinvent yourself.
I think thereās a huge untapped potential for people. Donāt just use the internet to shop and scroll. Use the internet as a tool, to be more creative and learn new skills.Ā
(Thatās exactly what Iāve been doing with my Year of Creative Experiments! It changed my relationship with technology and the trajectory of my career.)
A Write of Passage session (can you spot me??)
I thought Iād share two workshops coming up in the next couple of weeks that Iām super excited by:
Life Drawing for Women. A life model drawing class. Hold on! Resist the urge to say āI canāt draw!ā* Thereāll be drawing and awareness exercises to help you get past your resistance and doubts. As one participant said, āMy first life drawing class! I donāt think Iāve drawn anything since pencilling Bart Simpson in maths class at school. As someone who has always felt like they ācanātā draw it was blissful to drop the judgement and enter a space, as an adult, that felt so freeing and fun and creative! Lara and Meryl are brilliant, so welcoming and exceptionally talented!ā This is for women only. 90 minutes on Tuesday, May 30. Book tickets here.
Writing Sprints, one-day writing workshops run by Write of Passage. If youāve been curious about starting to write online but youāre not sure where or how to start, this is for you. Within a day, youāll workshop your idea, write a draft, receive editor feedback, and hit that āPublishā button. You donāt need to want to be a writer. This is about feeling what itās like to share your ideas and thoughts online (Trust me, itās fun!). Coming up on Saturday, June 10 and Friday, June 23. Enroll here.
*I love this story from Howard Ikemoto: āWhen my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college ā that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared back at me, incredulous, and said, "You mean they forget?"
šĀ SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUTā¦
Rejection is a sharp pain that dulls over time.
Regret is a dull pain that sharpens over time.