This is how to increase your brain power

Your brain is your ultimate Weapon. It’s the only weapon that you have with you for all kinds of situation you may find yourself in. So, it’s only natural to have the desire to sharpen it and make it as powerful as possible. As our brain is the only tool that we have available 24/7 to deal with life’s challenges, empowering the brain through various activities sounds like a good idea.

Let’s say you want to improve upon the current condition of your brain. How do you approach it? To answer that question, first let’s talk a little about the brain itself.

Necessary Information about the Brain

The brain is a relatively tiny part of the body. It only weighs like 3 pounds, but it uses 20% of our total energy consumption.

Therefore, our body is very cautious about making it as efficient as possible. As a Child we are born with many different faculties of the brain, but they wither away as we become adults because, to increase efficiency our brain shuts down or limits resources to the parts of it that we don’t use as often.

Another thing we need to know about the brain is that it’s made solely with fats. And its preferred source of fuel is from ketones.

Okay, now that we have learned a little bit about the brain itself, let us discuss about how to improve its day-to-day functionalities, i.e. focus and cognition.

Foods for a Healthier Brain

Let’s first talk about the foods you need to intake to grow your brain. The old convention was that you are born with a set number of neurons and that you cannot generate any more. But this idea has been debunked and now we know that new neurons grow all the time. Your diet can influence it. The diets that support a healthy brain the most consist mostly of fats; as the brain itself is made from fats. You may want to eat salmon fish oil and nuts and fish rows. Also, a balanced diet where you get all kinds of nutrition is helpful.

The Importance of Sleep

Now let’s talk about the rituals that will boost your brain. These are habits that will enhance your brain’s performance. The first thing you want to ensure is good sleep. Make sure you have a good amount of uninterrupted sleep every day. If you couldn’t sleep one night, then don’t sleep for Two or three hours in the morning. Rather skip sleep completely for that day and get an uninterrupted longer sleep later. Because, when you interrupt your sleep midway, it’s harsh for the brain and the brain thrives when you let it complete its sleep uninterrupted.

How Exercise Boosts Brain Power

The next ritual you may want to incorporate in your daily life is to exercise. Exercise feeds your neurons, helps to grow novel synapses and makes them stronger. Working out will also make you more focused and energetic. Your ability to concentrate and your willpower will also increase. So, it’s a good idea to start your day with a workout regimen.

The Power of Meditation

The next daily ritual you may want to incorporate in your everyday life is to meditate. Meditation detaches you from your monkey brain and lets you see it as is.When you focus in the present moment, it releases unnecessary burden from your brain and lets you think more clearly and see things more clearly.

Tips and Tricks to Enhance your Brain

Okay, now there are some tips and tricks that you can use to help your brain retain all its potential faculties that usually wither away as we don’t use them. One way to do that is to use your left hand as often as you can. Another way to do that would be to learn dancing. And the best and the most holistic way to do that is to think about difficult stuff and take new challenges.

How Ketosis helps your Brain

The last thing I want to introduce is the importance of ketones. We can take our fuel from food in two ways: from glucose with the help of the insulin that our body produces, or from fats through ketosis. Our brain’s preferred mode of getting its fuel is through ketones. And that’s why it’s a good idea to introduce intermittent fasting or ketogenic diets in your life. People with intermittent fasting have reported to have higher focus and concentration and overall better mood.

So, there you go. I hope these are some helpful pointers for you to start building a healthier brain and nurture it properly.

(I must acknowledge the hard work of Dr. Rahul Jandial, What I’ve learned, Barbara Oakley, Impact Theory and Sam Harris. I wouldn’t have the slightest clue about all this if I hadn’t been following them.)

How to organize your day and stick to it.

If you are like me, you have a lot of things that you want to accomplish in a day. A day is only 24 hours and we waste most of it. To prevent yourself from wasting it you may have thought about scheduling your day. (A very popular version of scheduling is time boxing or time blocking. There are some very well-made videos on this on YouTube. If you are struggling with scheduling the day, then look it up. Elon Musk is famously known to use this in his everyday life.

However, when the time comes for actually doing the things that you listed in your schedule, you might find yourself very unmotivated and wanting to do something else. I am writing this blog post to let you into my secret of how I deal with this problem.

The activities, we do every day, can be broken into 3 types: habits, obligations and others.

The activities that you plan to do at regular intervals and always at the same time, can be turned into habits. They don’t need a place in your getting things done list. These are activities like working out, meditation, taking a shower, writing morning pages, sleeping early, waking up early, going out for an evening walk etc.

Then there are obligations. Anything that you have a commitment with someone else to do at a given date in the future is an obligation. School or office times, exams, workshops, birthdays, dates etc. are examples of obligations. Obligations should be taken care of by timeboxing.

Then there are others. These are the things that need our willpower and careful scheduling. These are your passion projects/ hobbies/ homework. These have no supervision, neither are the habits that will automatically happen.

So, what I do is make space for them in my schedule first. Then I make sure there won’t be any obstacle towards doing them. Let’s say I want to practice python for a month. I would first make space for it between my habits and my obligations. Then I’d have to make sure that I have relevant courses downloaded and the computer won’t be occupied by someone else.

The last thing that could help in making these ‘other’ activities happen is to visualize them. Visualize the whole day, visualize yourself doing these ‘other’ activities.

So, in summary, the things that you want to repeat for a lifetime, should be made into habits. Then timebox the obligations. Lastly, make space for the ‘other’ stuff, remove obstacles towards them and visualize getting them done.

Why I started my self-improvement journey

I’ve never been a popular guy. I didn’t have much luck with girls either. Nevertheless, when I was 15, I had a crush on a girl. And I proposed her.

She rejected me.

This broke me and I felt like I couldn’t live with myself anymore.

All the rejections I have had so far and all the ways in which I was not living up to my own potential and my own image of who I could be, had become too much to bear. So, I decided to kill myself.

I Went on top of the roof to jump. At the last moment, I told myself that if I’m so desperate that I can even think about not existing anymore. How about I give life another shot and this time use all my anger and desperation towards something positive. How about I prove all the people who rejected me wrong and show them that I am worth something. I started to look for someone who could help me. I had no clue. So, I searched the internet to find help. Soon. I found a website called 2knowmyself. This is a website that has articles on psychology and taught about depression love life success determination. Then I found stevepavlina.com.

Steve did experiments on himself and then published the results. He would go on a vegan diet or go polyamorous and tell the world how his life had been impacted by these decisions. This kind of lifestyle sounded fun. There was a guy who was contributing to the society while he was improving himself and exploring his own potential. That sounded fascinating. I wanted to be like him when I grow up.

Thus, started my self-improvement Journey. I started to. read a lot of books. I read Dale Carnegie to improve my social skills. I read “The magic of thinking big” to ignite my passion and make me believe that dreaming big is not only achievable but it’s also practical.

A turning point in my life was when I read “The Power of Now” that introduced me to spirituality and taught me to disidentify from my ego. Another turning point in my life came when I found out about Dr. Jordan Peterson. He taught me how to take ownership of my life and showed me how life can have meaning. I’ve never stopped reading and trying out new skills or new Lifestyles after that. And this blog is in part me trying to be somewhat like Steve Pavlina where I share my journey, so that maybe I can inspire some of you. Now when someone rejects me, I embrace the pain and thank my luck for giving me a new fuel that will keep the fire inside me burning.