Language – your best friend or worst enemy?

Since our daughter came along over four years ago now, my husband and I have been very conscious of the language we use around her (even more so in the last two years since she’s started repeating everything we say!).

Earlier in the year, I listened to James Clear’s Atomic Habits (and subsequently purchased the hardcopy book). If you haven’t read it, I suggest you get yourself a copy, stat!

Our brains are wired to keep us alive. From the many years of neurological research we are now lucky to have available, we know the amygdala’s key role is to protect and prepare us for emergency events. Unfortunately for us, it hasn’t evolved from the paleolithic times and cannot decipher between a sabre tooth tiger attacking us and the project deadline for next week.

You may have come across a post on Instagram which is a jar of folded up post-it notes. The gist of the caption is that once a week you write something great on a note, pop it in the jar, and then at the end of the year you read all the awesome things that have happened.

For my training, I have a specific warm-up routine I go through religiously every single day. It has become second nature to me, to the point where if I don’t do it, I don’t feel right and don’t perform as well as I know I can. It’s actually the same for when I get ready for work each day.

At NEP we pride ourselves on individualising performance. There are no two humans exactly alike. We have so many different factors that make up our perspective it’s a wonder we can even sit in the same room as other people and find common ground, let alone come to unified decisions together.

Thanks to a further understanding of neuroscience, “choose your thoughts” is generally pretty good advice. It works on the basis that our thoughts become wiring in our brains so we want to make sure that our thoughts are aligned with the wiring we want to create.

So many people believe that you can’t really build resilience until you have experienced a major setback. The good news is that isn’t true. No two brains are created the same, which means that some people are naturally going to be more optimistic and resilient than others. And thanks to neuroscience we know that brains are able to be re-wired so that resilience can be built even if it doesn’t come naturally to you.

I recently read a post from a fellow athlete I follow on social media about the hard work and effort he puts into his training and athletic career. He also, quite rightly, pointed out it was all totally his choice – he chooses to give up other things in his life in order to follow […]