Do you often struggle with difficult tasks? Most people do! It’s hard to stick to working hard on things that are involved, time-consuming, and out of your comfort zone. Fortunately, you can rewire your brain to accomplish these things.
The fact of life, though, is that these tough times will come, and you’ll need to be able to handle these complicated problems in as positive a manner as possible. Learning certain routines and habits can help get you accustomed to the concept of handling challenging work in better ways. Here are six practices that rewire your brain to do difficult tasks.
1. Meditating
Meditation is famous for its ability to change the brain’s structure, allowing for boosted cognitive function and better task completion. It sounds far-fetched at first, but it’s grounded in reality and science, and the fact that it’s convenient to do anytime, anywhere, and is entirely free to practice is a great bonus. Here are some ways meditation achieves the lofty goal of rewiring your brain for complex tasks:
· Cerebral Blood Circulation
The brain requires sufficient nourishment and oxygenation to function at its best. Improved circulation can help the brain, and many of its little areas to work in better conditions, allowing for better focus and sustained attention, improved emotional regulation, and general management of tasks and feelings. Studies indicate that meditation can boost blood flow to the brain, allowing these improvements to occur.
· Stress Relief
Difficult tasks bring stress levels to a peak, making it harder to do those tasks at all. Meditation is renowned for its calming effects, allowing you to decrease stress responses and chill out for a little while, bringing your emotions back to a balanced level.
· Grey Matter Density
When you meditate, the density of your brain’s grey matter increases around your brain stem, packing more neurons into a tight space quickly. This is great because it boosts your cognitive performance, according to research. How? Think about it like transistors on a computer or central processing unit; the more transistors, the less energy consumed and/or the better the CPU’s performance. Basically, the act of meditating makes you more efficient in energy use, performance, and productivity!
· Stacked Benefits
Meditation does a lot of minor things that don’t seem very groundbreaking at first. But with regular practice of meditation and increased meditation session length, these benefits stack on top of each other. This essentially allows you to “rewire” your brain by adding all sorts of “upgrades” of sorts to its cognitive function.
2. Prioritizing Commitment, Not Motivation
A lot of people think about difficult tasks in a somewhat romanticized way. They seek to feel inspired and motivated to stick to them as if they’re protagonists in a movie facing a significant hurdle or challenge that will ultimately unlock their real inner strength.
Sure, you’re indeed the protagonist of your own life, but things don’t work out in the real world like they do in the movies! Research has found that more than half of all people who make resolutions to change often give up within half a year and that most people make the same resolution in life more than ten times without achieving their goals.
What does this mean?
These statistics are not meant to dishearten you but to show you the simple fact: resolve, motivation, and inspiration do not last. They peter out at some point, and you have to have something stronger than that, keeping you to your goals. Meaningful changes that last are not borne out of something so fickle!
What you need is to learn to prioritize commitment over motivation. There will be days where you hate your tasks and don’t feel like doing them, no matter how much you hype yourself up. This is where the values of commitment will keep you going. Patience, consistency and an understanding of the importance of sticking to things are all far more crucial than being inspired even when it’s hard.
On top of all of this, it’s important to remember that long-term training is one of the only real ways to rewrite your brain permanently altogether. The goal is not to get a lot of practice in at once but to stick to a regular schedule of doing something often. A few hours a week can work wonders, say studies, so it truly is a commitment that is more necessary than inspiration that has you working for days on end. It rewires your brain to stick to things in moderation for long-term achievement.
Need more assistance in long-term training? Therapy, workshops, masterclasses, and more are available in this great 21st century, easily accessible to anyone!
3. Managing Stress
Difficult tasks are stressful. There’s no doubt about that! And a little bit of stress is unavoidable now and then. Sometimes, it’s undoubtedly necessary to handle stressful events and keep going anyway without pause.
But, on the whole, stress needs to be managed. No one works better when they’re under pressure. If anything, it leads to low-quality results that barely meet requirements, are rushed, and are a pain to complete!
Do you feel like you’re more accomplished when you’re stressed out? There’s an explanation for that. Stress hormones exist specifically to force you into overdrive. These neurotransmitters set off your fight-or-flight response, filling you with adrenaline that helps you power through the stress.
What does that mean? Essentially, any positive feelings or positive thinking you think you get from stress only exist because your brain is forcefully creating them. This isn’t healthy or sustainable, and eventually, you will stop being able to continue a difficult task like this. Learning to manage stress productively and effectively will help you to function more accurately and adequately in the long run.
4. Positive Thinking
Positive thinking is one of the absolute best ways to rewire your brain for complex and challenging things. It’s truly magical what a little bit of change can do in this respect. Here are some ways to enhance your positive thinking for better rewiring:
· Release Negativity
Dwelling on negative things, holding grudges in your heart about them, and finding negativity and cynicism everywhere are ways you may be holding on to too much negativity. These things have you back, perpetuating a cycle of negativity that draws you in and keeps you down. Learning to confront these thoughts, address them, and let them go is crucial to rewiring your brain for a more positive outlook on life and the work ahead of you.
· Choose Positivity Now
You have the power to bring positive thinking into your life right now at this current moment. Don’t hold off and “try again tomorrow.” Find things in life to be optimistic about, whether it’s thinking of things you’re grateful for, immersing yourself in what you love and enjoy, or spending time around positive people.
· Change The Negative Into Positive
Finding silver linings is challenging but doable. Learn to be aware of the negativity that your brain tends to get stuck on and focus on catching those thoughts before taking root. Then, seek out the good in those things. For example, when you make a mistake, instead of getting caught up in your failures, think of this as an excellent opportunity to learn and grow!
· Pay Positivity Forward
If you have trouble finding positive things in life, then create them by giving them to others. Do kind things for the people around you, volunteer for an organization you believe in, and be compassionate and empathetic to the people in your life. You’ll find that by giving out good things, you receive good things in turn. It’s a cycle, too – but this time, it’s a good one!
5. Finding Someone To Hold You Accountable
Habits are things that you are solely responsible for, but that doesn’t mean you can’t also ask for help. Studies have long indicated that having a partner-in-crime who has similar goals or is doing the same tasks as you is helpful to positive results for both parties. Even someone who holds you accountable can be beneficial in rewiring how you perceive tough jobs. Here’s why:
· Your Progress Becomes Measurable
People perform best when they can measure their results and performances. Reporting your performance to an accountability buddy – and perhaps hearing their reports in turn – is a great way to achieve them, often upping success rates significantly.
· Others Can Keep You Motivated
We’ve talked about the importance of commitment over motivation, but you’ll likely need a little bit of encouragement, at least if you want to keep things going. An accountability buddy will hype you when you need them to and call you out when you start slacking. The friendly competition may help, too!
· You Learn To Take Responsibility
Taking responsibility is a huge deal and is extremely important in life. Some people never fully master the art, but it’s one that you can’t afford to skimp on. If you want to continue performing difficult tasks on your own, you can learn to be held responsible thanks to an accountability partner.
6. Spending Time In Nature
Nature is a beautiful and powerful thing. There’s something innate in all living creatures that connects us deeply to nature. Even if you’re not fond of the great outdoors, a part of you can benefit from it, especially when you’re trying to rewire your brain.
When you regularly spend time in natural greenery, you experience boosted positive thinking, creativity levels, and ability to focus. These are all crucial factors when you’re trying to do complicated tasks, and if you want to maintain those benefits long-term, your time in nature should become a regular habit.
This is likely because when you spend time in nature, you get some exercise while distracting yourself from negative or unhealthy rumination. You stop brooding when you’re out in the sun, and you leave the stuffy environments that cause you stress and the rushing hustle and bustle that consumes your every waking moment.
Final Thoughts On Some Ways To Rewire Your Brain To Do Difficult Tasks
Challenging tasks will accost you no matter how much you try to avoid them. So instead of fighting the inevitable, rewire and reprogram the way your brain perceives them! You’ll find that it’s much easier for you to do difficult tasks when you’ve worked on changing how you think.
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