Mind – Crisbie Coach

How Creative Visualization Will Help You Achieve Your Goals

Do you find your ambitious life goals confined to your thoughts rather than materializing in reality? Creative visualization might be the missing link to transforming your aspirations into tangible achievements. In this blog post, I’ll explore the power of creative visualization and how it can help you manifest your dreams.

What is Creative Visualization?

Creative visualization is a potent technique that leverages imagination to shape your desired life. The fundamental principle is that your mind can actively influence your reality by nurturing it with the right mental images. When you intentionally visualize and feel your future successes, you plant the seeds that can sprout into reality.

Creative Visualization embodies three core principles:

Clarity: The more vivid and detailed your mental images, the more impactful your visualization becomes. Clarity in your mind’s eye is key to manifesting your goals.
Emotion: Infusing your visualizations with intense positive emotions enhances their effectiveness. Feeling success in your imagination strengthens the connection between your mind and body.
Belief: A profound belief in the possibility of achieving your goals is crucial. Your mental state profoundly influences the outcomes, and unwavering belief supports the manifestation process.

Mind-Body Connection in Visualization

Creative visualization is grounded in the concept of the interconnectedness of the mind and body. When you vividly imagine your desired outcomes, your brain activates neural pathways as if you were experiencing them. This process triggers physiological responses, reinforcing the mind-body connection.

Achieve Your Goals with Creative Visualization

Clarify Your Goals: Visualization helps define your goals precisely, enabling you to identify your true desires.

Boost Motivation: Vivid mental imagery stirs emotions and motivates action towards your goals.

Overcome Obstacles: Anticipate and mentally prepare for challenges through visualization, enhancing your ability to overcome obstacles.

Grow Confidence: Repeated visualization of success builds self-confidence and a robust belief in your capabilities.

Attract Opportunities: Positive energy generated through creative visualization can attract opportunities and resources into your life.

Better Focus: Visualization sharpens focus, aiding in maintaining clarity and persistence when pursuing your dreams.

Incorporating creative visualization into your daily routine can be a transformative tool for manifesting your dreams. By understanding and applying the core principles, you empower yourself to clarify goals, boost motivation, overcome obstacles, grow confidence, attract opportunities, and maintain better focus on your journey towards success.

Are you ready to embrace the power of creative visualization?

Why Walking Meditation Helps Regenerate the Brain

Walking meditation is an act of personal liberation because it offers you the simple pleasure of freeing yourself from daily obligations. You can see the benefits already after the first week you started to walk, and it is becoming a habit of your life.

According to some research, people living in large cities, which usually are big urban areas highly polluted, suffer from extreme stress also because they tend to spend very little time in nature.

If you add to your routine walking meditation practice, you will get a really powerful anti-stress remedy. Practicing it brings enormous physical and psychological benefits. Ten minutes a day are enough, and you can practice walking meditation at any time of day.

A meditative walk in nature will allow you to free yourself from everyday stress.

Walking by itself is good for your health. It allows to reduction the risk of cardiovascular diseases and back pain, for example. Why not combine this practice with meditation?

Here are 6 tips on how to do it.

Keep your back straight.
Synchronize the breath on your steps, by keeping a quiet walking pace.
Become aware of your body. Focus on your feet, on your legs, on the movement, on the contact with the soil. Try to eliminate tensions and concentrate only on the steps.
Focus on the feelings this practice gives you. Are they pleasant? Is your body relaxing? And your mind, is it calming down?
Then move your attention to your emotions. What do you feel? Do not judge the emotions you feel, let them go, observe them as if they were in front of you.
Finish your practice by standing, contemplating the feeling of fullness, and thanking your body and mind for the beautiful meditative walk.

Do not try to stop thinking, because thinking is the activity of the brain and it is impossible to stop! On the other hand, try to take advantage of the moment of relaxation you are experiencing, to become aware of your body and your emotions without this affecting your mood and without judging.

By regularly practicing the meditative walk, you will feel more and more balanced and at peace with yourself.

Here are some results:

1. When you walk, your brain stops worrying. Walking is an activity within everyone’s reach and allows you to receive an extra dose of oxygen and clean air from nature. This is when we begin to stimulate our frontal lobe, the one that is related to creativity and mood. If we add to this the natural release of endorphins, magic happens. The brain feels more euphoric and optimistic.

2. Thanks to a better mood, you will be more creative. When you are not under pressure, you drop negativism and the hormone cortisol produced by stress disappears. You will feel more relaxed, more enthusiastic, and more confident.

3. You are used to moving in small spaces. Your home, your work, public transport, supermarkets, and other places you regularly go, are limited spaces in which tensions may ignite. Therefore, just starting to meditate and walk in a natural, open space is a wonderful act of liberation and relaxation.

4. According to research, you must seek, above all, contact with nature. The idea is to fill your lungs with pure oxygen, and your eyes discover new horizons, and stimulating landscapes thanks to which the brain is enriched.

Be aware that walking is much more effective than a painkiller or any vitamin! And a meditative walk is an experience you cannot miss!

Would you give it a try?

How to Build a New Habit and Like It

Habits represent a great strength, perhaps the greatest in absolute.

Usually in life, a success or a failure that happened only once, doesn’t make a difference. Studies have shown that some winners of the lottery run short of money a few years later because of their bad habits.

If you eat a big slice of cake from time to time, you won’t get fat. But if you eat biscuits containing a lot of butter every day, you may become fat.

Then success is a habit, not a one time off event. The tortoise always wins although the hare always brags about being the winner.

Do you know the famous fable of Esopo where a Hare ridicules a slow-moving Tortoise? Tired of the Hare’s arrogant behavior, the Tortoise challenges him to a race. The Hare soon leaves the Tortoise behind and, confident of winning, takes a nap midway through the race. When the Hare awakes however, he finds that his competitor, crawling slowly but steadily, has arrived before him.

It is never too late never to adopt a new habit. Since habits are so powerful, you will begin to see immediately great results, once that you will have acquired yours that will bring you toward the realization of your goal.

Then, how to build a new habit?

First thing, decide what you can make more often in order to reach your goal.

Obviously, it depends on your goal.

Do you want to acquire a specific skill? A new competence, or knowledge? Eating healthier? You shall establish your objective. The next important step will be deciding the time and the place. Every habit should come true within a certain time frame and in an established place.

From a scientific study carried out by Philippa Lally, it results that acquiring a new habit takes 66 days. Actually, some people can make it in a shorter time (18 days) and others need more time (8 months). Then, patience must become your mantra.

However there is a small technique that you can learn in order to make the acquisition of a new habit.

I explain it better with a practical example.

Let’s imagine that you want to acquire the habit to go to gym regularly. Well, at the beginning it is not fun. You have to go to a place and make a big effort to train yourself. Going to the gym happily has to become an habit.

Then the first step is deciding about the time and the place, but don’t do anything yet!

I make it clearer: you schedule a day and a time to go to the gym but when you arrive, you don’t exercise. You can make a tour around, or maybe do some light exercise and for a short time. If the gym has a jacuzzi, go to the jacuzzi and then back home.

In this way, you establish the time and the place in your mind but you don’t complete the action, that is not so amusing for the time being.

I know that it may seem strange to go around the gym without training. You may think that it is a loss of time but it is not. This is the first step to build a habit, therefore be patient (be the Tortoise!)

After a few days, or a couple of weeks, your mind will associate the time and the place to the gym and not the effort of the physical exercise.

Don’t think that this phase is a loss of time; actually, it is the most important part.

Are you ready for this challenge?

Why Your Brain Will Be Affected if You Procrastinate

To procrastinate is a fashionable word nowadays that you may have heard. We procrastinate for invoices to be paid, for the dentist, to take the trash out to the bin…

Procrastination is the act of delaying or putting off tasks until the last minute, or even past the deadline.

Waiting too much can have serious consequences. Think of climate change, for instance. Or illnesses. If you don’t try to find out what you have as soon as you notice the first symptoms, it might become too late. The doctor could say: “You would have come at the beginning, it would have been different. We would have been able to deal with it, the chances would have been better… ”

Cras in Latin means tomorrow, pro means for. Therefore, pro-cras means: it is for tomorrow.

Statistics show that in the United States about 20% of the population, postpone the boring tasks to the next day, as if the tasks in question had then the virtue of disappearing or becoming less boring (seriously, isn’t it rather the opposite)?

A study carried out by Chinese researchers shows very interesting results: procrastinators have certain hyperactive intellectual regions, that are a part of a network of mental wandering: when it is time to take an appointment with the dentist, to pay the invoice or to take the trash out to the bin, these centers make the person think at something else. And, let’s say it, to try to find excuses on how unpleasant it would be carrying out these tasks.

Besides, in procrastinators’ brains, another zone is weak. It is the zone that blocks the activity of wandering and that allows one to remain focused.

People who work in advance according to a planning, in order not to be taken by surprise at the time of an examination, or of the fiscal term, have a high activity in this area, so that the wandering zone is blocked.

When the mind gets loose from the planned purpose and begins to wander, the brain gets vulnerable in that area, which is very sensitive to all that is uncomfortable or disagreeable.

What to do?

The brain is a muscle, let’s train it and exploit its plasticity!

Are you a procrastinator? Let me know!

Windows

Windows are thresholds for the human mind.

Windows are thresholds for the human mind. Looking out the window, leaving your gaze suspended beyond a glass pane is not synonymous with wasting your time.

Sometimes, the person looking beyond this threshold doesn’t want to see the outside world. They simply want to cross their reflection to navigate through the waves of introspection and reach inner worlds in search of new possibilities. In reality, there are few mental exercises that can be more useful than this one.

Windows are often indispensable resources for any dreamer. And also for that person who needs to rest after a stressful day and leans their head against the icy glass of a subway window. It is at this moment that the gaze relaxes and the imagination begins. At this time, we start to daydream and our brain finally finds relief, freedom, and well-being.

Windows allow daydreaming

Expert psychologists in the world of creativity like Scott Barry Kaufman and Jerome L. Singer, explain in one of their studies that today daydreaming is almost considered a stigma. Whoever chooses to look out the window for half an hour instead of continuing to work on their computer is nothing but lazy.

In addition, in another study by these psychologists, they showed that 80% of business leaders believe that creativity is enhanced by work and continuous activity. Thus, the person who, at some point, chooses to go for coffee in front of a window is someone who cannot stand the pressure, someone who may also be unproductive.

Today, we continue to associate action with productivity and passivity with laziness. We shall change these old and rusty ideas. Daydreaming is the art of going in search of the wonders hidden in our brain. It means training our mind to develop a little more introspection, curiosity, and imagination.

As Art, one of the authors of Wise and Shine, would say: Dare to dream.

Are you a daydreamer?

Do You Often Forget Things?

Do you often forget things, from the most trivial trifle to the most important thing you have in mind?

Don’t worry, as one study has found out that:

“The point of memory is not being able to remember who won the Stanley Cup in 1972 but to make you an intelligent person who can make decisions”

While shopping, you may forget one of the most important items you were supposed to buy, or in the middle of a conversation with friends, it’s impossible for you to remember the title or the name of the author of a book you were recommending.

In short, it feels like starting Alzheimer’s because you notice that you have difficulties remembering (almost) everything.

But don’t worry, because a study by two researchers at the University of Toronto (Canada) reveals how important it is to forget.

Paul Frankland and Blake Richards, researchers at the University of Toronto conducted a study that found out that people who are more likely to forget are also the smartest!

“It is of utmost importance that the brain is able to select the information it acquires and eliminates irrelevant details, thus focusing on a more general view to ensure that decisions are made in the most correct way.”

These are the words of Blake Richards denying the belief that those who can remember more things are also the smartest, and confirming almost the opposite. The elimination of unimportant information allows us to increase our analytical abilities, focusing our attention on the fundamental things and avoiding unnecessary work of our brain.

The researchers developed this study after several years of research on memory loss and brain activity, including both humans and animals.

The conclusion is that:

“If you forget occasional details,” Richards says, “it may mean your memory is healthy and doing exactly what it should be doing”.

Are you someone who often forgets things?

You can find more on brain here.

3 Tips to Keep Active Your Brain

Like the whole human body, the brain also regresses with ageing.

At birth, each human being has 100 billion neurons. At 25, your brain is at its best. Then, it gradually begins to regress and, as we age, some neurons become defective, in particular those located at the level of memory, attention and awareness of what surrounds us.

This ageing process should not be regarded as a fatality. Thanks to some activities, we can preserve the functioning of the brain longer. This will allow us to have a better life from a physical and mental point of view.

elderly man and his trainer exercising — Photo by Kampus Production on Pexels.com

Let’s see how.

1. Feed your brain well. A balanced diet is essential for good mental health. However, the brain needs specific substances to increase the connection of neurons and stimulate their regeneration. Therefore, eat food rich in antioxidants such as fruits and vegetables in general (in particular, artichokes, blueberries and ginger are really useful), fish and olive oil. Fatty fish (salmon, mackerel, herring, sardines) contains omega 3 which helps strengthen brain cells, optimizes learning and memory and contributes to the prevention of mental disorders such as depression and dementia. Remember that avocado and walnuts also contain omega 3 and that for a good brain oxygenation you need to eat glucose (bread and pasta) and food rich in iron (meat and fish).

2. Stimulates attention. Like the muscles that must be kept in motion, the brain also must be trained to keep its performance. It is therefore important to keep it active with activities such as crosswords, sudoku, reading, puzzles or even some video games that offer programs to train the brain. The more diversified the exercises, the better. Continuing to broaden one’s knowledge such as learning a new foreign language, playing an instrument, visiting exhibitions, travelling, and having a lively social life, are all activities that contribute to the training of neurons and prevent brain ageing. Also meditation is an excellent activity not only for improving the ability to concentrate but also because it reduces stress, anxiety and negative emotions. Meditating from 10 to 15 minutes a day will allow you to develop new connections between neurons and thus slow down the ageing of the brain.

3. Practice physical activity regularly. Physical activity keeps neurons active because it promotes blood circulation which therefore also reaches the brain. There is no need to become a top-level athlete to slow down the ageing of the brain. A moderate intensity sport is already effective as long as it is regular. The recommended frequency is 30 minutes a day. To keep up the pace it is advisable to find an activity that you like and that is engaging. Group physical activity (such as dance for example) is useful for the perception of bodies into space and for the relationship with others that releases endorphins, the hormones of well-being and pleasure.

What do you think about these three tips? Would they help you to slow down the ageing of the brain? Do you plan to adopt them?

pens colorful color paint — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Why Cultivating a Garden or a Vegetable Garden Is Good for Your Health

Plants improve the air we breathe and can be a place to grow vegetables. Therefore, green spaces have been increasing recently in urban spaces thanks to the creation of rooftop gardens.

For those who live in the city, the importance of having a green space close to home has become necessary during the lockdown due to Covid. From London to New York, parks and public gardens have always offered a precious refuge in the asphalt jungle of the streets, shops and offices that make up the typical urban landscape. But apart from these oases of peace, there is not much room left to become “greener”, which is why we are witnessing the development of rooftop gardens.

From improving physical and mental health to bringing communities closer passing by fighting pollution, the creation of green spaces at the top of the buildings can be truly seductive.

low angle photo of four high rise curtain wall buildings under white clouds and blue sky — Photo by Philipp Birmes on Pexels.com

Here are some benefits you can get from growing a rooftop garden.

They help purify the air

All cities in the world face the same challenge: maintaining quality of life despite the high pollution rate and rising CO2 concentrations. For this reason, planting trees or shrubs on the roofs can be useful to exchange carbon dioxide for pure oxygen. In addition, roof gardens can also improve the insulation of the building, reducing heat loss in winter and maintaining a cooler temperature in summer. In this way, besides making a gift of oxygen to the environment, you will lower the consumption of electricity and heating, paying less expensive bills.

They offer shelter to wildlife

Loss of natural habitat is a threat to wild animals in general.

A roof garden can quickly become a refuge for bees, butterflies and birds, where they can rest and nest, thus keeping the pollination cycle active, which is essential for human nutrition.

They allow you to grow your own vegetables

Tomatoes, courgettes, peas and strawberries, all organic. The fact of sowing and growing your own vegetables is an incredibly rewarding activity that allows you not only to save money but also to eat healthier.

They inspire engaging actions for communities

Why not thinking about involving the primary school close to home by inviting children to discover your garden or vegetable garden? You will be surprised to see the enthusiasm of the little boys and girls. Gardening is a real contribution to integration into the local community. Where I live in Brussels there is an association called Parck Farm that has taken over a greenhouse and created a botanical garden. In addition, it offers small plots of land to cultivate. We share the land together with Belgians of several origins, Poles, Portuguese, … The association also offers the possibility of organising team building activities there. Participants can help members of associations to remove weeds, collect garden products, prepare the soil for winter. Educational activities for boys and girls are regularly scheduled to make them discover the wonders of flowers and plants. Workshops for the preparation of creams and syrups are other events organized by the association to promote integration among the inhabitants of the neighbourhood.

They improve physical and mental health

We all know that spending time in nature revitalises the body, spirit and soul. This practice is known as shinrin-yoku (forest bath) in Japan and has been validated by scientific research. In 2019, a study revealed that spending at least 120 minutes a week (the equivalent of about 17 minutes a day) in nature can have a significant impact on our health and general well-being. Other research has established a link between regularly visiting green spaces, improving sleep and decreasing negative thoughts.

Do you think that those benefits are a good reason to launch yourself into the cultivation of a green space?

a couple in a vegetable garden — Photo by Kampus Production on Pexels.com

How to Embrace Change

Life is constant change, Buddha and Aristotle already said it: change is a fact of life. But change has also been accelerating in recent decades. Massive disruption across the social, technological, political and environmental dimensions of our lives means that we are constantly trying to figure out how best to manage uncertainty. And for someone it can be scary.

The origin of this fear can be found in biology. Our brain is the result of two and a half million years of evolution. We have lived in caves much longer than we have in cities. This means that we have “coded” automatic responses to successfully respond to everyday threats.

If absurdly you see a tiger walking down the street, you would not try to understand what breed it is but you would rather try to escape as quickly as possible (flight). Another codified reaction would be to stay still, hoping that the tiger will not see you (freeze). The last possible reaction would be to fight it (fight), with very, very limited chances of success, so your brain would immediately discard it.

Flight, Freeze or Fight are the three primal reactions to events that we perceive as dangerous to our safety.

However, the wonderful circuits that have allowed us to evolve as a species are not suited to addressing the most subtle threats of our age, such as digitization, the pandemic or the risk of losing your job.

These fears are evolutionarily new and are not always easy to manage.

bengal tiger half soak body on water during daytime — Photo by Flickr on Pexels.com

Remember that the brain is designed for your survival, not your happiness. Therefore, to face changes, you have to understand them as opportunities and learn from the potentials they entail. Moreover, this is not as automatic as running away from something dangerous. On the contrary, it takes effort and training.

Let us see how you could get started by following these four tips.

1. First of all, it is important to train your mind daily. Just as you go to the gym or practice by yourself, you need to keep your brain muscle in shape. Try to do something different every day. For example, you could change sources of information when reading the news (also useful to understand various points of view), change your route to go to work, or try a new dish.

2. Second, you can try to consider what happens to you in a different manner. For instance, a good way is reading history to realize that although we live in an age where changes happen very fast, all these progresses have allowed us, for example, to increase our life expectancy.

3. Third, try to disconnect from technology and reconnect with yourself and your surroundings. If you are always immersed in the digital world, you will not have time to integrate learning and to find a certain and needed tranquility. For example, one day during the weekend or on vacation you can put your mobile in the “don’t disturb” mode.

4. Fourth, trust. If you look at the difficulties that you have already faced in the past, you will see that now they look easy to you. If you have already been able to overcome challenging situations, why should not you be able to do it now?

Are you afraid of change or do you like new challenges?

Why You Are the Words You Use

The words you use can change your reality. Language actually generates changes in your brains and changes your perception of the environment around you.

Language is linked to emotions. Your words are constantly sending messages to your brain. According to neuroscientists Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman, negative words cause the increase of cortisol, the stress hormone. Therefore, adopting a negative attitude and using phrases like “I cannot do it”, “I will fail” or “it is impossible” could weaken your personal physical and mental health.

Nowadays, many techniques associated with changing the language to treat various psychological disorders are used. An example of this is the cognitive-behavioural therapy, which demonstrate that promoting positive thinking through the language used by the patient improves their mental state.

This therapy aims to replace patients’ negative views about themselves and their surroundings with more positive ones. The applied techniques have proven to be an effective treatment for disorders such as depression, phobias, addictions or anxiety, as the activity of the brain amygdala increases when you perceive a more prosperous future through positive words. On many occasions, these therapies have proven to be as effective as medicines.

Research has shown that the brain improves when you start using three to five positive expressions for each one negative. Language has a powerful ability to change your world. It affects you negatively when you use a poor, defeatist language but it also works the other way around, namely, when you use positive phrases they will help you change your perception of the world.

person doing thumbs up — Photo by Donald Tong on Pexels.com

Start adopting a series of simple but very effective techniques. For example, use “yet” instead of using only “not”. Saying “I cannot do it” is not the same as saying “I cannot do it yet“. “Yet” leaves the doors open, arouses hope, evokes motivation.

You should not use “but” or, at least, you should build your phrases differently. “But” does not have the same effect when you say, “You did a good job, but you gave it to me late” compared to when you say, “You gave it to me late, but you did a good job.”

Tenses also give you a great opportunity to change your emotions. Instead of using the conditional, try using the future. You change a hypothetical scenario for a true one. It is not the same as saying: “When I write a book, I would speak of happiness” rather than “When I write a book, I will speak of happiness”. Doubt lives in the conditional, certainty in the future.

At the same time, you should avoid words like failure, problem, impossible or guilt in your language and replace them by more inspiring words like challenge or responsibility. The latter not only pushes you to grow and open more doors, but also makes you interact better with others.

Words are not harmless. They can build or tear down walls. By changing your language, you will improve your image, as language is a way to reach others. Remember that the words you use also improve the environment around you.

What do you think about the language you use with others?