Introduction

How does it work?

So, how does this programme work? And how much work will be involved in order to reap such amazing benefits?

We call this programme Mind Fitness. Think of it as a personal trainer for your mind. In the same way as you would work on physical fitness, the programme will give you easy to use exercises to declutter and refocus your brain. And, once you’re fit you need to stay fit, so the book will show you how to do this. We all have enormous amounts of potential that we don’t use, that become buried under the debris of our stressful lives. This really is about unlocking the best possible you.

Mind Fitness draws on cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and mindfulness to deliver an effective programme that is easy to build into your daily life. The way it works is basically this: CBT, as many of you will know, is about challenging and changing our unhelpful beliefs. But we’ve sometimes had these beliefs for a very long time and so our instinct is to defend them. What mindfulness does, because it teaches us to be reflective rather than reflexive by bringing a calm attention to the present moment, is buy us the time and the space in which to make those big changes. Very often, our first impulsive response to an event is not the one that will bring us the most benefit. But you will find that, as your new way of thinking becomes habit, this will change.

The Mind Fitness programme draws extensively upon the imagination. There is strong research to show that our imagination is closely linked to our higher thinking brain and our ability to focus and solve problems.¹ It doesn’t mean that you have to become Picasso for this to work, though there are probably worse ways of using your free time and there’s stacks of good stuff in the creative therapies. But no, we’ll just be asking you to think about things, to put images in your mind, and to imagine events and situations.

How should I work through this programme?

Is it then possible to pick and choose chapters and hone in on those that are most relevant? Well, yes you can do that and you would still get something out of it, but not nearly as much as if you follow it through chapter by chapter. You will, through the book, learn to be your own coach, even, to some extent, your own therapist. You will build up a range of tools and techniques that you can employ when times get tough, but that are equally useful in giving you that little extra push to be more confident, more willing to jump, to dance, to laugh and to love.

We hope that by the time you have read this book you will be well on the way to being Mind Fit. To consolidate these changes, the final chapter includes a six-week follow-up programme. It brings together some of the key tools from the book, with plenty of choice so that you can select the exercises that work best for you. These are structured into a few minutes of practice in the morning and a few minutes at night, with a few guided check-ins during the day to keep you aware of your new thinking. By the time you have finished the book and the six-week follow-up, the techniques will be fully embedded and you will hardly be aware of them. They will underpin a new daily routine, a new way of seeing yourself and the world. There will be times, of course, where that new world is rocked by unforeseen circumstances and events, but you will be able to cope. You’ll know what to do to get yourself back on your feet.

What else will it involve? In each chapter, there will be slices of learning followed by exercises where you can test out what you have learned and see how it makes you feel.

We don’t want you to focus on the exercises when using this book; it’s equally important to read the theory, because we want to help you to change your unhelpful thinking, and that means understanding why your thinking should change. You don’t have to take a degree in neuroscience, just to have a basic idea of the how and the why. It’s when you get the ‘aha’ feeling, the moment of ‘getting it’, that the defences go down and the new ideas and habits begin.

Scientists used to believe that the brain was hardwired by the time you became an adult and that, from then on, only a minimal amount of change was possible.² We now know that is not true. We will explain how and why in the section on neuroplasticity. So what we are doing together through this book is rewiring your brain. That is not nearly as scary as it sounds. We will be discovering all the wonderful things that make you you, and letting go of the negative thoughts, emotions and ideas that have somehow clung to you over the years. So often we aren’t even aware that it is these that are making us feel anxious or sad and impeding our progress.

So, in each chapter we will be telling you just enough about the what and the why and then you will try it out! People that we work with when we are training tell us that they come to love the science bits. Almost everyone has had moments of being fascinated by the human brain. Up to 60,000 thoughts a day.³ 100,000 chemical reactions every second!⁴ Who wouldn’t be fascinated? And we are living at an incredible time where neuroscience is pushing forward at a rate something like the IT revolution of the last two decades. Everything we do in this programme is evidenced by science. Much of that would not have been possible even 10 years ago.

We’re going to learn about CBT later in the book. We’ll look at mindfulness now.

What is mindfulness?

Mindfulness has its roots in Buddhist meditation, although the practice of meditating has been widely used in many cultures throughout the ages. The modern mindfulness movement has a spiritual side and a science-based side (although it can be said that, with the expansion of neuroscience, these two arms seem to be pulling towards each other.) This book is rooted in the science-based side of mindfulness, although we have the utmost respect for the spiritual arm. People will be coming to this book from all sorts of cultures and systems of belief. These spiritual beliefs are not necessary, but neither will they inhibit your progress.

A simple definition is that mindfulness brings our attention to the present moment in order to experience life more clearly and more fully. The benefits of mindfulness practice have been evidenced in the many research studies from the top international universities.⁵ They include a reduction in stress and an increased level of emotional control; a general and often profound sense of wellbeing and an increase in positivity and motivation.

It’s worth thinking about what we mean by ‘more clearly and more fully’. How do we experience life more clearly and more fully? First task for you, then. Tomorrow try looking out, all day, for the colour blue. Not only will you see more blue than you dreamed existed, but the colour itself will get more and more blue through the day. One of the real and valuable benefits from this programme is that your sensory input will be sharper than it has ever been, because the brain works much more effectively when it is focussed on only one task. I hear bird song and I notice butterflies and I taste my food. Andy says that the simple task of taking his dogs for a walk has been completely transformed. It’s extraordinary how much richer a world you will be living in, and how much this alone helps you on the journey towards cup half full.

Just a little bit of science before we embark on the next exercise. Two extraordinary facts about the brain that are at the core of this programme.

The first we have mentioned before – it is generally accepted that we have about 20–60,000 thoughts a day. Isn’t that incredible? Equally incredible is the fact that only a very small percentage of these are focussed on the task at hand, the activity we are doing at that moment. We’ll talk later about where the rest of those thoughts are going and learn some brilliant techniques to call more of our brain power to task.

The second is that a part of our brain, the amygdala, instigates our fight or flight stress response when we perceive threat or danger. Once we are in fight or flight, the amygdala stops passing information to our higher thinking brain, so, at times of stress, say an exam or interview, when we most need to be thinking clearly, decision making, problem solving, we literally can’t.

Through the book, you’ll learn to get yourself out of the frozen state and regain the faculties you need to use. Once you are very practised, you may even beat the amygdala to it, activating the process of relaxation before the fight or flight kicks in. We always say to people new to the programme, if there was just one reason why everyone should do this, it would be that. Most of the occasions in our personal and professional lives when we really need to think clearly are going to involve some level of stress or perceived stress. We’ll look at how the brain perceives this stress in Chapter 10. The programme has helped people with exam nerves, stage fright and presentation phobias as well as dealing with any number of other issues concerned with anxiety. Staying in a state of fight or flight leads to constant, chronic stress, the consequences of which can be life threatening.

So mindfulness-based exercises centre around the practice of being in the moment. Much mindfulness work centres around the breath. The senses are also excellent. Always remember that our senses work only in the present. If you ever need to ground yourself just for a moment, simply concentrating on any one of the senses, something you can see or hear, the sensation of something you are touching or holding, or on the breath, almost always will do the trick.

When we are training, we find that some people respond best to the exercises using hearing, others to more visual or sensory exercises. As you learn the exercises, be aware of what feels best for you.

This first exercise is called Circles of Attention. It brings your attention into the present moment by focusing on the sounds that you can hear within different circles of attention.

We are going to do a short practical recap of this foreword by revisiting five simple statements. After each statement just write the first word or phrase that comes in to your mind. It doesn’t matter if it is a factual response, an emotional response, a hope or wish, a note of how it relates to you, or anything else. It is partly to see what you remember, what stuck in your mind, but it will also get you used to having an active creative response. That is very much the ethos of this programme. The more active and creative you are, the faster and deeper it will work.

Mind Fitness, then, is a mixture of mindfulness and cognitive skills woven together by practical exercises, many of which employ the use of the imagination. It is not time-consuming, can be built into your daily life and anyone can do it.

As you move into Chapter 1, we’d like you to invest in a notebook in which you can jot down anything that seems important to you as you go along. It’s good to have notes that you can come back to as you learn more about the process. The foundations are laid and the journey begins. Have fun.