How our brains hold the key to our well-being

Ruth Kudzi is on a mission to support people to enhance their wellbeing and performance through integrating Neuroscience, Positive Psychology and coaching approaches in her work as a coach and speaker.

I used to think well-being was all about our bodies: what we put into them and what we did with them and this in turn impacted our brains.

Now, I think the other way around: our brains are the centre for behavioural change, and the diet that we feed them and how we “program” them has an impact on our well-being. It’s not so much think and be well it is more about how we think and work with the brain in order to maximise our wellbeing.

If well-being isn’t about our bodies what is it about? In reality, people have been looking at alternative measures to GDP per capita for years to measure countries against each other, even a decade ago happiness indexes were reported on and then ditched. Coming out of the global pandemic well-being is now big business as we are now on the edge of a mental health crisis. Most organisations can do more to help their employees feel better.

When you look at well-being models, such as PERMA created by Martin Seligman you can understand why we have got to the place where we are. In a world where many of us were isolated our relationships changed: whether due to proximity or lack of it divorces reached an all time high and many people reported increases in loneliness, this combined with remote working meant that relationships and connection are areas which many people score as low meaning they have lower overall wellbeing.

So, how do we change this? How can we work with our brains? One of the most simple ways that you can enhance your wellbeing is by experiencing positive emotions more regularly. This doesn’t mean you are pretending things are brilliant when they aren’t, it is the propensity to feel emotions like joy, happiness and awe. The more frequently that you feel them the higher your well-being: in fact if you experience awe a couple of times a week your chances of having depression are significantly reduced.

So, what do you do? Realistically you need to get strategic about your emotions: for me I walk in a forest: experiencing the vastness makes me feel awe.

This may be one reason that being in nature has such a profound effect on our emotional wellbeing.

Another way of working with the brain is to practice daily positive visualisation: when we imagine we are at a point in the future where things are good we are preprogramming our brains neural pathways and building the foundations of a new way of being. It is pretty simple to do and whether you can imagine visual images or you can connect to emotions or words most of us can consider an optimistic future. When we do this every day we are more likely to achieve the things that we have thought about.

Finally, if we work with our brains natural reward systems especially dopamine, we start to reinforce certain behaviours. Dopamine is released when we experience pleasure and also when we anticipate it. If you have experienced pleasure by doing something previously you are more likely to do it again based on this principle.

It is why social media can be so attractive to us and it can also be used to your advantage: if you can link helpful behaviours to that feeling of pleasure you are more likely to stick at them.

A great example of this is why many gyms have spas. After a workout you can reward yourself: if you do this enough your brain will associate a workout with the pleasure and your motivation will be higher.

The more that you can work with the systems in your brain to support positive behaviours which enhance well-being the better you will feel and the better you will feel the more positive choices you make. It is a cycle we can all start to build.

Ruth is a keynote speaker on How to enhance wellbeing and performance through integrating Neuroscience, Positive Psychology and coaching.