Right up until he passed away, Dr John Hinwood was a prolific blogger (an award-winning blogger in fact!). John’s blog’s shared musing from a rich history of experience, learnings, travel and wisdom
The Hinwood Institute is named in honour of Dr John and to continue his legacy, we’re republishing his blogs to keep his wisdom, wit and wise words alive for the world to enjoy.
You can learn more about the legacy of Dr John Hinwood HERE.
Mental or psychological resilience is defined as an individual’s ability to successfully adapt to life tasks in the face of social disadvantage or highly adverse conditions. Adversity and stress can come in the shape of family or relationship problems, health problems, or workplace or financial worries, among others.
Research studies say that intelligence only accounts for about 30% of your achievements in life and that’s at the extreme upper end. Your talent and your intelligence don’t play nearly as big of a role as most people think. Mental toughness makes a bigger impact than talent or intelligence.
The word “grit” is the term researchers are using to describe mental toughness and it plays a more important role than anything else for achieving your goals in life, business and health. And you can do a lot to develop mental toughness.
Neuroscientists are continuously discovering more about the marvel that is the human brain, in part thanks to advanced neuro-imaging techniques over the past few years.
Our lifestyles have also changed quite dramatically over the past 30 years, due largely to the advancements in technology and the internet. Dr Martin Hilbert from the University of California at Davis has calculated that we now receive five times as much information each day as we did in 1986. The amount of information we produce in a day through email, social networking sites and text messages is on average six newspapers worth, compared to two and half in the 1980s.
Some say we are living in cognitive overload and that there’s a limit to how many things our brains can cope with at the same time.
Some tips to support you to increase your mental toughness…
Stop Multi-tasking. Our brains weren’t built to multitask. Our brains are designed to focus on one thing at a time, and a barrage of information slows them down.
Focus on One Thing at a Time. Daniel Levitin, author of “The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload”, encourages Deliberate Immersion. We do this by splitting up our daily activities into time slots and immersing ourselves in a single task for a sustained period, around 30 to 50 minutes without distractions.
Getting Enough Sleep. This is often the simplest way of re-setting the brain. Your brain cleans itself out when you sleep . Sleep is vital to helping us digest and solidify the information we’ve acquired during the day. It improves our ability to integrate unassociated information for creative problem solving, and boosts memory. While you sleep, your brain will “delete” the synaptic connections you don’t use. This ability to discard useless information keeps your brain from being overwhelmed.
At the University of Haifa in Israel Researchers have discovered that, after learning a new task in the morning, one group then had a 90-minute nap were able to recall the task significantly better by the end of the day than a second group who didn’t take a nap. A nap of even 10 minutes improves cognitive function and vigor.
Ready to Strengthen Your Leadership Resilience?
Building mental toughness starts with small, intentional changes. As a leader, unlocking your potential requires tailored strategies that align with your unique strengths and challenges. Take our Resilient Leader Scorecard to gain actionable insights that will help you cultivate resilience, enhance your leadership skills, and lead with confidence.
👉 Take the Resilient Leader Scorecard Today
Transform cognitive overload into clarity and resilience, and start your journey to becoming a more focused, adaptable, and mentally tough leader today.
How well do you roll with the punches?
How it works:
- Answer 25 simple questions
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- Receive feedback to enhance your score
Listen to the Podcast here
About the Author
Dr John Hinwood has shared the stage with Dr John Demartini, Dr Deepak Chopra, Dr Wayne Dyer, Dr Joe Dispenzia, Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield (Chicken Soup for the Soul fame), Dr Bruce Lipton, Dr Masaru Emoto and others who are at the cutting edge of human behaviour and mindset change.
He has written 14 books with 4 being Amazon international best sellers. He has had papers published in academic journals and was once Captain/Coach of the Danish National Rugby Team. Dr. John’s experience as a health professional by training, successful businessman by effort and an inspiration by inclination has given him an awesome array of practical tools for success.