all of my work is important to me. i’m a black neuroscientist and a woman. i’m going to help where i can because i know how they’re playing you. and want you to be aware. that is a responsibility.

your brain doesn’t need all these pills they are trying to sell you to boost cognitive whatever. remember, the goal of products is to market. they don’t have to tell the truth.

your brain needs water. you need to be hydrated, and i’m very serious about that. drink water all throughout the day. your brain has the highest metabolic demand in your body. it needs water.

your brain needs real sugar aka fruit. eat more fruit. add in some nuts and seeds. whole foods have the best nutrients because they are meant for the body. eat all of the fruit. the sugar is not going to kill you. it’s real.

your brain needs sleep. waking up tired is not normal, sorry. waking up tired means you didn’t get restful sleep, which is slow wave sleep. slow wave sleep is also important for memory consolidation. truly restful sleep allows you to wake up refreshed, feeling mentally clear.

your brain needs silence. human beings are meant to sleep in silence and darkness. sleeping with the tv on may “help” you if you are a person that needs to be soothed, but it’s triggering brain activity via your ears. turn the tv off.

your brain needs non-digital stimulation aka books, sight seeing in nature, artistic things like coloring, drawing. activities you allow children to do, you should also do.

writing is one of the best things you can do for your brain because writing allows many regions of the brain to work in tandem. practice your penmanship. write a short story. journal.

writing with your hands if you are able*

another important thing to do for your brain: something new.

breaking your habits is REALLY good for your brain. learn a new route to work. try a new recipe. brush your teeth with your non-dominant hand. work with new scents. new chores. listening to different music.

the brain becomes more plastic (plasticity = the ability to adapt) when you introduce variety to your life. breaking out of your comfort zone has holistic benefits.

your comfort zone is the product of all the patterns you learned in childhood.

for the first few years of human life, the brain is essentially on “record” mode because the hippocampus is not done forming. that is why it is important to be mindful of what you say and do around young children because they are not “learning” what to do. they are memorizing.

those recordings become imprinted patterns. our long-term memory formation begins around 3. most of us have our memories starting from around 3-4 years of age. they may not be clear memories, but they can be recalled with vague detail.

we remember song lyrics because we repeat the songs. we remember because we have learned them. you don’t remember what you ate for dinner last week because you were not learning about dinner. that fact does not need to be consolidated in your memory.

at any given time, we do best with remembering ~7-10 things at a time. that is why phone numbers are 7 numbers (minus the area code). i’m a millennial so when i was memorizing phone numbers, i didn’t have to worry about the area code. we had landlines.

let’s talk about distractions.

distractions are very detrimental to the learning process, if your intentions are to learn. you have to determine what is a “worthy” distraction and what isn’t.

i’m going to speak on what i know and that’s spirit and working with the emotions in a fluid way.

when you are allowing yourself space to learn your emotions and how to truly feel them and use them as information, seeking distractions whenever you get uncomfortable is setting you back a few more steps each time.

becoming fluid with your emotions means you’re going to have to dedicate yourself to actually paying attention to yourself. some people are too busy diverting their attention away from themselves and do not feel at home within themselves.

how can you build a home within yourself if you are always giving attention to distractions, including other people? a lot of the time, people are not *making* you feel a way.those are just your conditioned responses to triggers & until you deal w/ them, you’re easily manipulated

when you’re triggered and seek a distraction instead of dealing with it, you’re feeding your shadow and the shadow will always find a way to show itself because it needs attention. the shadow’s a neglected child

example.

one of my triggers is people talking over me. i used to let this happen very often because i would lie to myself and think that i was being talked over because my words/voice were not important. it made me very meek & docile on top of passive aggressive.

the longer i allowed people to talk over me, the more i would store that emotional reaction, which is generally annoyance and frustration. sometimes it was anger. the way i would distract myself from feeling the anger, i would be silent.

or if i wanted to feel that anger, i’d distract myself by taking out my anger on people that did nothing to me.

or i’d distract myself from doing the work to develop my personal confidence and autonomy by complaining.

distractions come in many many forms but they all function the same. distractions serve to take you away from the moment to experience what came to be experienced.

so when you are feeling something and it needs to be addressed and you reach for a distraction, for example, scrolling on twitter when you’re mad instead of feeling your anger fully, that energy gets redirected into your distraction.

and when the distractions become addictions, you’ve tricked your brain into thinking this is a “need” when in reality, it is a dependency.

“i don’t need to feel this feeling. i just need to retweet cat memes for this temporary boost of dopamine and when it wears off, i’ll just go back and now i have been online for two hours and now i’m angry at myself for wasting time on top of already feeling sad.”

rinse repeat.

running away from your feelings is only adding to your workload. they’re just feelings and that is how you need to look at them. as just something to feel. a message for you to pay attention to. every feeling has a trigger. all of them.

how many times a day are you reaching for your phone because you don’t want to think about something even though thinking through what you’re feeling is often the fastest route to the solution?

distractions inhibit intimacy and vulnerability because both require your presence.

how many times have you been in someone’s presence and they were on the phone the entire time? it’s not about you.

you will not learn yourself if you reach for a distraction every time you find/feel something uncomfortable. you’re just teaching yourself to be avoidant of anything that is slightly uncomfortable. it all starts with self.

the journey to self-awareness is not lala land. so let that go. it all has to be seen because the self is also the shadow. they are not separate. the shadow needs healing and integration.