Boost your Brain's Output!

Most of us take breathing for granted. Take note! Sitting at a computer for long periods of time slows breathing and affects our brain. Try this little test – are your current breaths shallow and hardly noticeable? You could be in for triple trouble related to your physical health, ability to think clearly and frame of mind.

Interestingly, the subconscious act of breathing affects our mental and emotional states. “By paying attention to our breathing patterns, we can tune in to our internal condition and harness the core of our being,” according to Kara Schaad columnist for Chicago Sun-Times. Are you allowing your brain power to shrink? Why not turn that around?

To beat times when you find your mind goes around in circles or you face writers’ block here are two quick solutions:

1. Take a brisk 10-15 minute walk. Exercise brings more oxygen to your brain and optimizes functioning.
2. Take a mini-breathing break. Schaad advises, “While sitting at your desk, before a meeting, or before an important phone call, take a minute to totally immerse yourself in your breathing. The normal breathing rate for most of us is 14 to 20 times per minute. So you have 14 to 20 chances to practice effective breathing, all in just one minute.”

Suppose that prickly pear at your boardroom table just squashed your latest suggestion. What to do? Since many people hold their breath when they are hurt, nervous, anxious, scared or under stress, you can turn that around. Think about how much more effective you could be if you take a couple of very deep breaths right then. You could think clearly and take control rather than falling prey to the effects of Cortisol that floods your brain in crisis.

Do you feel a little low after working at your computer for long periods of time? By paying attention to your breathing patterns you could change that. For instance how are you breathing right now? Observe the depth and length of the breath and note the correlation to your physical state. As you continue to breathe, notice how it predicts your mood. Are you feeling calmer, yet more energized focused and relaxed? Shaad shares two easy strategies to turn our moods around.

• Try to start your day with one or two minutes of breath awareness. Set your alarm five minutes earlier than usual. Instead of batting the snooze button and rolling over, lie on your back, keep your eyes closed and pay attention to your breathing.
• Throughout the day, take mini-breathing breaks.

According to Dr. Ellen Weber our brain uses 21 percent of our body’s total oxygen intake. If your job prevents getting up for an immediate brisk walk, how about factoring in time during your lunch break! How about joining a gym or exercise club or taking up an invigorating sport like tennis? Whatever your choice, physical exercise nurtures your brain’s functionality!

How will you use breathing as a tool for your well-being?

Brain Mental Acumen Breathing

Change Comes through Colors that Attract

Color Design Change

Reading Marshall Spondor's notion about ways colors attract or repel people, led me to consider my original olive and lime color selection for Brain Based Biz. Have you considered colors either work for or against you on your blog?

Here are tips from Marshall you'd enjoy:

• the right colors can trigger positive emotions which motivate visitors
• bright bold colors tend to stir us up, while softer pastel colors calm and relax us
• strong bold colors tend to target men while women generally prefer pastels - consider your audience
• limit the colors to two or three and no more
• make sure the colors work well together and do not clash

Consider the ways color influences your audience. Let Marshall's list guide you as it did me.

Red - Action, energy, strength, passion, fire, heat, power, attention-getting. Can also mean love and romance. A strong masculine color. Red is a good color for a call-to-action. Red is cheerfulness, excitement, and warmth.

Pink is a soft version of red. It is most associated with romance, calming affect; a feminine color.

Blue - Confidence, travel, freedom, truth, professionalism, wealth and power. Also tranquility, dependable, acceptance, patience, understanding, cooperation, comfort, loyalty and security. It is one of the most calming colors and is associated with the sky and the sea, intelligence, reassurance, and trust. Blue has also been known to be an appetite suppressant, so it would not be good for cookbooks or recipes but you can consider it for diet books.

Green - Money, wealth, prosperity, calm, health, food, nature, hope, growth, freshness, soothing, sharing, and responsiveness. Green symbolizes spring, renewal, and fertility. Orange - Health and vitality, autumn, youthfulness, fire, steadfastness, courage, confidence, friendliness, cheerfulness, warmth, excitement and energy. Has been known to stimulate the appetite. Vibrant and warm, orange is associated with autumn and the earth.

Yellow - Light, purity, understanding, caution, brightness, intelligence, joy, organization, Spring. Yellow often represents sunshine, warmth, light, energy and happiness.

Purple - Dignity, sophistication, creativity, spirituality and mystery. Deep purple is associated with royalty and richness, while lavender is associated with romance and nostalgia.

Brown - Credibility, stability, the hearth, home, the earth, wood, comfort and strength. Brown can be used as a neutral or a warm color.

Black - Space, night, authority, dramatic, classy, committed, serious, power, elegance, and sophistication.

White - Purity, peace, perfection, fresh, easy, cleanliness, goodness, and spirituality. Worth noting here, white represents life and marriage in Western cultures, but it represents death and sorrow in Eastern cultures.

Grey - A conservative color, symbolizing security, maturity and reliability.

Leva Duell urges folks to think carefully before selecting:

Muddy colors - for instance, orange - tan colors promote introspection - consider instead a light blue colors, which promote lightness.

Olive colors work well for resturants - and Coffee Houses like StarBucks - but avoid them on a commerce site.

She says "companies that have spent a lot of money researching what colors work the best to their business - you won't find AOL using a TAN color anywhere - they stay with Blue and Blue Green for a reason."

Every day since reading Marshall's post and Leva's comment, I toyed with a color change for Brain Based Biz. I decided to move beyond listening to Web Analytical experts and actually do change!! How about you?

2 -3 Samsung Monitors Generate Blogging Efficiency!

Samsung Monitor Possibilities Blogging

Have you found your computer window isn't big enough to handle all you do even if it's wide? Yesterday, when I purchased a new desktop computer at Circuit City, Patrick recommended using 2-3 monitors. Skeptically, I asked, "How do you move items from one screen to the next.

Patrick responded, as most compter buffs do, "Simple -- move it with your mouse."

"How in the world would that work," I asked, wondering how something on one screen could possibly float over to the next. Patrick explained that he rigged three monitors to his desktop and it wasn't all that hard. He suggested a Samsung monitor in addition to the one that came with the new HP computer, since, "Samsung's hold up as well as top brands" and that I could save $50. I was a little skeptical that I could make this set-up work as well as Patrick's, but I decided to give it a try and start small with two. And so I ordered the extra monitor along with a Visiontek Dual Monitor graphics card, plus "installation" at my office.

At first, the ability to move an object through space between the two monitors, blew my mind. But as you see illustrated here, dual monitors create new possibilities. In teaching online courses, the flexibility of two screens is phenomenal. You can't beat it for blogging! I couldn't be happier with results unless I opt for a third monitor!!

What options can you think of to use your spatial intelligence in new ways?

Garden Your Way Past Stress

Garden Naturalistic Stress

I felt I had fallen into a trance I couldn’t come out from until the garden was completed. With Matsu’s help and patience, I had created something from the most common elements, and when the garden was finally finished I realized for the first time in my life that I had accomplished something. What I had thought would be so barren and distant was instead filled with quiet beauty.

Gail Tsukiyama, The Sumurai’s Garden

Ever consider gardening? Gardening heals as you see from Sachi above, who suffered leprosy and was shunned from her community. When my mother died, I found great contentment by working in my garden. Gardening brought me close to life, beauty and change. Or coming home from a work grind I found peace and pleasure.

The ancients built grottos and gardens into their plans because these spaces draw focus to nature and life itself. Do you find that to be true, when you take a walk through a park or a country path? Sometimes we just need space to meditate and withdraw from the world outside.

I visited this scene at Kells, an ancient priory in Kilkarny, Ireland, which thrived in the 14th and 15th century. Absolute quiet pervaded my walk through Kells, with the exception of crows and sheep, which inhabit crumbling ruins. As I walked by the grotto I thought about peace gardens bring to me.

Greenery is great to enjoy after a concrete jungle day. Planting can be done without much effort and even in small spaces. As you’ve walked through stores, no doubt you’ve noted the garden sections with fresh plants and lovely pots and urns that work well if you live in an apartment or condo. Go small at first and try plants that thrive without a lot of effort. There are lots of how-to books to help make a pleasing design. Ask gardners. They thrive on giving newbies tips.

Why plant and fit a garden? This morning I read the essence of a garden's affect on me --You have bedded me down in lush meadows; you find me quiet pools to drink from. The Message

Belly Laughs Bust Your Stress!

Humor Laugh Stress

Have you felt steam explode from your ears when that “prickly pear” at your boardroom table tries to sabotage a project? Do you sense that some folks don’t want to budge from comfort zones even if it would improve their work? Problem is, our gut gets tight and the steam shoots from our ears while the prickly pear remains calm.

Steaming ears or tightness in the belly show that you're drowning in Cortisol, a hormone which floods our brain when we need to react quickly in a crisis. Cortisol comes through emotional stress. Take NOTE! Too much Cortisol takes years off your life. So, we need strategies to step out of our emotions the minute we’re cognizant of them. But how, when we’re so-o-o consumed and so-o-o angry?

Anger or anxiety in the workplace breaks down with a belly laugh. For instance, look at this Dilbert cartoon. Ever had this feeling?

Are people more productive when Dilbert is part of the mix? Let’s sit back for a minute and think where Dilbert or Bill Belew’s, A Man Walks into an Office takes us.

Fact is, when I looked for a photo of Bill Belew on Google, all I could find was an Elvis designer. I asked Bill if these were actually his photos. He responded, "My dad was a big Elvis fan and my older sister by about 10 years once stripped naked at one of his concerts BEFORE that became the norm. So...my dad named me after Elvis' Bill Belew...who actually was Elvis' personal costume and wardrobe designer.But, then none of that is true. I was named after my grandfather and a great uncle." Just conversing with Bill is a stress buster!!

How might personal cartooning or even writing short Red Neck jokes take you and your associates beyond the prickly pear you face at work? Try your hand at portraying the prickly pear as Dilbert or Bill Belew would through absurdity. Cut to the chase and cut the Cortisol!


Best responses deserve a dinner with the boss!

Perspectives Transform Results

Perspective Design Waterford Ireland Spatial Meagher
Are you a person of habits? Routines are much like old slippers--they make us feel good. Habits work for or against us. For instance, good organizational habits keep us on target for daily work and long range plans...generating a path to success. On the other hand, habits can narrow our perspectives. Are your lenses clouded by routines? Want to change that?

Consider this scene... I saw a man, part of a tour group, point an expensive camera straight at Thomas Meagher's statue in Waterford, Ireland, to frame his shot. He was fairly close to the horseman, so he obviously had a typical tourist photo as a result, even though he had expensive equipment.

When I arrived in Waterford, I snapped a photo from my hotel window because the statue makes a statement in the midst of today's bustling traffic and economy.

At first glace, the photo looks fine, but not extraordinary. Since my view out the window is different than the tourist's at ground level, I had some advantage to capture this shot.

Not satisfied, though... I wondered how I could find an even better point of view -- one that might draw a "wow" from other folks -- even that tourist.

I thought about angles... A really close shot might give a different perspective altogether, but none were "gripping." Note the red geraniums in front of Meagher. Absoute intensity of geranium red... life in contrast to stone and steel...adds vitality my first picture lacked.

Red flowers, lifted sword--Meagher's words--Abhor the sword—stigmatize the sword? No, my lord, for at its blow, a giant nation started from the waters of the Atlantic, and by its redeeming magic, and in the quivering of its crimson light, the crippled colony sprang into the attitude of a proud Republic—prosperous, limitless, and invincible! -- Think about it!

Do you walk into your workplace with a routinized outlook? Where will that take you? Is it time for you to distinguish yourself from others in the pack?

Tap into your brain to create innovative and unique perpectives at your organization. Here's a few tips to start:

* Go overseas to explore how others accomplish similar tasks

* Discuss your process and outcomes with experts from different fields

* Ask workers what they would change if they could

* Consider your keywords in relation to competitors'

Are you in a comfort zone or already looking through a new lens?

Shut Down Your Stress

Stress Buster Brain Laughter

Like you, I have several stressors enter my life daily. Research on the brain informs us that stress eats away at our well being, and even shuts down our ability to learn. Does your mind go around in circles when you need it most? Stress in your life is likely the cause.

Cortisol fills your brain when stressors hit. Cortisol literally shuts down your brain’s ability to function well.

Today, I wanted to retrieve survey results only to find that I am unable to access them online. My back tightened and I panicked – you, no doubt, know the feeling. What to do???

Best results come by changing our focus immediately. Here are three great tips:
1. Laugh at a joke!
2. Get away from your desk, take a brisk walk and think about possibilities
3. Enjoy a quick mind game.

By changing your activity and focusing on something you enjoy, you can bring serotonin, a hormone of well being into your brain. By getting away from the stress, you can actually return to the original stressor with calm and thoughtfulness that brings solutions.