Run from Perfect – Embrace Excellence!

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It’s one of the great ironies of our modern era. We’re obsessed with staying well, and being perfect. Have you noticed though, we’re as unwell and imperfect as we’ve ever been. And sadly, we’re also leaving many good people behind along the way.

Embrace excellence and our brains rev up several mental engines to keep us mentally fit! Perfectionism does the opposite. It’s a matter of making choices that store internal supports. Make a choice to lead innovation so that ALL benefit, for instance, and excellence steps its innovative magic into center stage for ourselves and others!

A certain stimulus, such as visualizing our favorite hobby, will enhance feelings of enormous well-being. That’s golfing with my grandchildren for me, but it could be anything you especially love to do, regardless of your skills in that thing.

 

That stimulus prompts a neuron in the area to awaken a natural opioid. It’s called enkephalin, it’s natural, and it’s manufactured by your brain. How does it work as your custom-made opioid when you feel a bit down or overwhelmed?

Enkephalin interacts with other proteins to trigger the generation of the brain’s natural version of marijuana to help you out. It’s called anandamide and comes with your personal pharmaceuticals.

Sometimes known as the bliss molecule, anandamide acts as a messenger molecule which helps to relieve pain, works against depression, improves memory and regulates appetite.

We come equipped with pharmaceutical wonders!

Studies have begun to affirm the key connections between your mindset and your wellness. Since the 1980’s wellness programs have proliferated, and at their core is one common denominator – a change of mindset.

The impact of our mindset on behavior is a subject that has fascinated me for decades. It’s why I published several books such as Mita in the Classroom and Beyond, with Pearson Publisher and others over the past 40 years.

The opposite of mental wellness is stress and anxiety, which stimulate toxic chemicals such as cortisol. This unhealthy narcotic with its compelling urges can put our wellness, and even our lives in danger, and place us into a vicious cycle of craving contentment while at the same time awakening its opposites.

In the process of adjusting to a healthy new mindset, you may confront the resistance of old habits. Two typical roadblocks for those who struggle with discontentment are perfectionism and lack of motivation.

Run from perfect!

The desire to be perfect can shrink brainpower needed to become content and well. How so?

Perfectionism is bad for the brain!  Anna Farmery  engages ideas about perfectionism and the human brain at her popular podcasts.

Listen here to “brains on perfect” between Anna and me.  

 When we look at “perfect” as our brain sees it, we take  the wind out of perfectionism’s demands?

Perfection may drive us to procrastination – yet when we discover the chemical and electrical circuitry for wellness, we begin to motor toward amazing new horizons. Have you seen it happen?

Motivation with wings

 Motivation also adds wings for putting us in touch with our healthiest selves, and when we lack motivation – wellness drops to the ground.

What does your motivational airship look like today? Unless we know what motivation looks like, we rarely ride its wonder, or fuse its mental energy into our day.

To cross  the interplay between motivation and healthy results is to leap across huge caverns that create high performance minds – and like every successful flight, it takes a winning plan. Incentive also comes in two-footed questions, that stoke curiosity into inventions, and tosses in serotonin to fuel well being.  Have you seen it?

When we purposefully chase our passion for instance, that custom-made stimulus powers us to achieve visible change and growth for the next highly charged adventure. Motivation simply drives the chase itself to trigger a mental stimulus that delights us  in the heat of the race.

On down days, inspiration can elude us, much like an ice cream melts away under a noonday sun. Somehow, our brain’s basal ganglia defaults us back to ruts and we slog through the mire of routines without the driving force our mind deserves.  Today though, we stoke waves and electricity for brainpower we’ll need.

No naysayer can hold us back.

Motivation – equips us with the tools that will leap us from drudgery to dare again, as this senior thrill seeker leaped from a plane for adventure? Motivation tends to come from building new neuron pathways toward a dynamic adventure that moves our success and satisfaction along a finer trajectory.

Can others motivate us? Not surprisingly, if we waited for others to motivate us, we could miss life-changing opportunities.  Far better to plan for a brainpower boom. To media or people around us there may be a hundred reasons to languish in gloom, yet there remains one reason to tap into power of the human brain to beat the wings of upper air as an eagle does – our brains thrive there!

Motivation’s the opposite of boredom, and research shows boredom is more choice that circumstance. Einstein opened motivation through 10 keys to discoveries. I find amazing motivation when I question myths in ways that reboot brainpower. That process helps us back on track and rekindles our vision, while helping us to follow a dream.

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Created by Ellen Weber, Brain Based Tasks for Growth Mindset