Therese Huston
Appearances
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
We can make motions, we can do something that doesn't require any attention. I can adjust in my seat as I'm talking, I can move my hands. Those things I can do simultaneously because moving my hands, adjusting in my seat, that doesn't take any attention. But something that does take attention away from whatever we're trying to do, that we're switching back and forth.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
We may not realize it, but we're doing these little tiny micro-switchings and all those micro-switches
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
There are fabulous techniques for reducing acute stress. So the one that people are most surprised to hear initially, but then they're like, oh, this makes sense, is affection. So researchers have found that as little as a 20 second hug from your partner or someone that you're comfortable hugging, right? You can't do this just to a random coworker.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
But if you get a 20 second hug from your partner in the morning or from your, even your pet, you hug your pet for 20 seconds, You'll have lower cortisol levels. And we think of cortisol as a bad thing. Cortisol can help you act. But if cortisol levels are high all day, that's going to be hard on your body.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
And so 20 seconds worth of hug and boom, your cortisol levels will be less when you go into that stressful event at work later that day.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
now self-affection works too so giving yourself a hug so if you wanted to grab the tops of your arms just setting your hands gently on the tops of your arms and rubbing lightly that kind of self-hug for 20 seconds will also reduce cortisol levels the other nice one the one that i actually prefer is to simply put both hands on your heart and just rest them there
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
And if you try this, you'll find that within 20 seconds you feel more relaxed. So it's a wonderful way to reduce cortisol levels, to reduce immediate stress, and you'll feel less stressed when you go into a stressful situation.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
The key thing to know about motivation is that dopamine will increase your sense of motivation. Dopamine, people think of it as the reward chemical. I think of it as the let's do this chemical. And the way to increase dopamine in your brain, there are a couple of strategies. There's a lot of talk right now about deliberate cold exposure, right? Cold plunges, cold showers.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
Those are wonderful first thing in the morning. But if you need a motivation burst at, let's say, three in the afternoon, you're like, oh, I've got two more hours. I need to work. I do not want to be here anymore. You know, a cold shower or a cold plunge isn't going to help you. So what I do, and of course, it depends on the time of year, is Go for a brisk walk outside.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
You know, if it's 30 degrees out, tie a jacket around your waist and go for a 10, 12 minute walk. And the idea is you want it to be uncomfortable. Cold exposure will do it.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
and that'll increase your dopamine you'll come back you'll feel ready for anything and you just then need to focus your attention on the task you've been dreading so deliberate cold exposure really helps my other favorite technique and this one doesn't get talked about nearly as much is to listen to music that moves you chances are mike you have some music that when you listen to it you just you get chills
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
And research shows that listening to music that gives you chills, that really moves you, makes you want to get up and move, that increases dopamine in the brain. Now, what's tricky here is that you can't just listen to what other people like, right? So this isn't listening to what's the top 40 for right now. It has to be personal to you.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
Listening to other people's favorite songs doesn't do this the way that listening to your favorite song will. And so, you know, you can make a dopamine playlist, a list of songs that when you listen to them, it moves you. And that can be something that you can turn to in those moments when you're feeling unmotivated.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
Listen to one or two songs and then dive back into that task that you need to work on, that you're dreading, and you will feel renewed focus.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
Exactly. There can be this sense that the thing we need to do needs to be on task every minute, right? That that's going to improve our motivation or focus. And in the case of both doing a brisk walk outside or listening to music that moves you, what's beautiful about them is you don't have to do them for very long. The walk can be 10 minutes. The music can just be one song, maybe two songs.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
But what's beautiful about it is because it's increasing dopamine in your brain, that is going to last for a while. And so now you get back to the task that you're dreading and you've got a burst of motivation that you didn't have. And chances are once you then start working on that task, you'll be able to stick with it.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
So I'll be going into a situation, it happened just this weekend, I was going to an event on Saturday where I knew I was gonna meet a bunch of people and I wanted to be able to remember their names.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
And sure enough, I got into the situation and I found myself saying hello to someone, they'd say their name and I would forget it instantly, in part because I was moving on to meeting the next person at the table, right? And I would just move around and each person's name, I'd say it out loud and yet still it wasn't going into the memory bank.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
we've all been there so how can you improve your memory for particularly if you know you're about to walk into a situation where you're going to want to remember as many names as possible and the strategy here is to do A 10 minute mindfulness meditation before you walk into the situation. I'm a big fan of the Healthy Minds app.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
I'm not affiliated with them whatsoever, but it's out of University of Wisconsin and it's free and it's developed by a neuroscientist and they have great 10 minute and some of them are active so you can listen to them while you walk instead of having to sit still. And you get 10 minutes, you'll be more relaxed, but more importantly, it improves memory immediately.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
Your recall goes up by on average 75% in the time that follows. So if you have the opportunity, you know you're about to walk into a situation where you're going to have to remember a bunch of names. Sit down, do a 10-minute mindfulness meditation, and then walking into that situation, you're going to be impressed. Your ability to remember those names will go way up.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
Thank you so much, Mike. It's a real treat to be here.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
Well, if there's one thing that I want people to know, it's that you can queue up your best day at a moment's notice. So often we feel like our best day is subject to whether or not we got a good night's sleep or whether everything's going well at home. But the truth is neuroscience has revealed some great strategies that help you make the most of the brain you've got given the day you've got.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
And I just want to communicate as many of those strategies as possible.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
Exactly. We all want to show up. and do our best in most situations. And yet it can feel frustrating. You know, there's this phrase, work smarter, not harder. And I say that tentatively because I've always been confused by what that means. If your manager says that to you, it can feel like extra pressure and you're not sure how to do anything differently.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
So I want to give people as many quick techniques as as possible, things you can do in five minutes or 10 minutes or less, just to ensure you have the best day you can have.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
Sure. So why don't we start? I would love to do a demonstration of a technique that actually both reduces stress and improves decision making, which seems as though those two would be very different parts of your brain or that they would require different techniques. But the beauty is neuroscience shows this one technique can actually kill two birds with one stone and be so effective.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
So would you mind, Mike, if we do a demonstration of this? It's going to be a breathing technique and people can follow along if they want to. So what we're going to do is a breathing technique that is sometimes called skewed breathing or 5-2-7 breathing. So you're going to inhale for a count of five, and I'll count out loud.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
You'll hold that breath for a count of two, and then you'll exhale for a count of seven. And if you find any of that hard, for instance, if it's tricky to inhale for a count of five, just inhale for a count of four and then hold your breath.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
then do the exhale it's the long exhale that's the most important and it can help to breathe out through little pursed lips like you're sipping through a straw that can help slow your exhale if that's tricky and we'll do it we'll do it twice two rounds of it and what you should find well I'll ask you when we're done the impact on you so are you ready to try
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
Well, if there's one thing that I want people to know, it's that you can queue up your best day at a moment's notice. Neuroscience has revealed some great strategies that help you make the most of the brain you've got, given the day you've got.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
Okay, great. So exhale. And now inhale, 2, 3, 4, 5. Hold, 2. Exhale, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. And inhale, 2, 3, 4, 5. Hold, 2, 3, 4, 5. Exhale, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Okay, how do you feel?
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
Feels good. Yeah. Well, so what the research indicates is if we just did two cycles that took less than 30 seconds, what you would want to do is about six cycles of that. So that would last about two minutes. And researchers find that that objectively improves decision making. And part of what it's doing is, as you noted, it's making you feel less stressed, more relaxed.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
It's actually activating, that slow exhale is activating part of your body called the vagus nerve. And the vagus nerve is part of your parasympathetic nervous system, which helps your body relax. And the reason, well, first of all, that's nice for relaxation, right? You can do this anytime. You can be sitting in a meeting and you can do this, you know,
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
activity without counting out loud just counting in your head but what's beautiful about it is it actually improves decision-making because it reduces activity the vagus nerve with an exercise like that reduces activity in part of your brain called the amygdala which is you know people have heard of the amygdala as a fear center but it's also related to anxiety and and Other strong emotions.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
So by reducing activity in the amygdala, suddenly your stress levels go down and it becomes easier to make decisions that were causing you stress because stress, stress impairs decision making.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
a wonderful technique for improving focus because I hear so many people are finding it hard to get focused when they need to get focused, right? You sit down to do your work or you get drawn into doing internet shopping, whatever it might be, can be hard to get your day started as quickly as you might like to. or you find it hard to get focused when you need to.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
And so one of my favorite techniques for this is to do something called binaural beats. It's Latin for two ears. And basically what you do with binaural beats is you put on a set of headphones or AirPods and you look for, YouTube has plenty of these videos, and you type in binaural beats 40 hertz, H-Z, or you can spell out hertz, H-E-R-T-Z.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
And you put on your headphones and you start the recording and you listen to it. You don't have to watch what's beautiful about it. These are videos, but they're basically audio recordings. And it will take you from scattered thinking to incredible focus within minutes.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
So if you have some task you need to do, put on your headphones, turn on the 40 hertz binaural beats, and within minutes you will be so focused you will think, wait a second, how is this working? And basically what you're going to hear are two different tones. Each ear will hear a different tone, but it will just sound like one tone because your brain will do a subtraction.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
So if one ear is hearing 410 hertz and the other ear is hearing 450 hertz, your brain does a subtraction, so you hear 40 hertz. That's why it would be called 40 hertz binaural beats. And what's almost magic about this is that 40, when you listen to binaural beats at 40 Hertz, your brain electrical activity starts to synchronize with that. And 40 Hertz is kind of an optimal focus
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
for brain activity. And so, you're basically, you know, you're getting in and you're reaching into your brain and tuning a dial so that you have optimal focus. And it helps me every time on days when I'm feeling unfocused. I've taught this technique to many people and it's the one that people write back to me most about to say, I can't believe it. This works.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
And it's now my go-to on days when I feel a little fuzzy headed.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
It's surprising. And it's one of these things that I'm not sure why more people don't know about it. The one tip I would offer on this, if you're going to try it, don't do it for longer than 20 minutes, especially the first time. For me, I'll get so caught up in a task that I'll forget to turn off the binaural beats.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
And what can happen if you listen too long, it can make you feel a little nauseous.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
yes multitasking people can have such pride around being good at multitasking and i'm not saying that they're bad at it they might they might be better than the other people in their household they might be better than they used to be but the research is very clear on this that when you're multitasking your worst
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
at the two things that you're trying to do or the three things you're trying to do, then you would be if you single-tasked, if you just focused on one thing. So if it's all right, I'd love to do a demonstration of how many mistakes we make or how hard it is when we multitask.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
So here is how this is going to work. I'm going to ask you, Mike, to count out loud from one to seven as fast as you can. Go.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
Excellent. Now I'd like you to say the alphabet out loud as fast as you can from A to the letter F. Go.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
Excellent. So that was single tasking. You were doing counting, you were focused on that, and then you did the alphabet and you were focused on that. So now we're going to multitask. So what I want you to do is say a number and then say the letter and move down from 1 to 7 and from A to F. So the first one would be 1A, go.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
There you go. Good job. It's so much harder, right?
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
But the reality is you're rapidly shifting back and forth, just like you did between the alphabet and the numbers. And the result is you don't do either task nearly as well.
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Proven Techniques for A Great Day Everyday & The Mysteries of Dog Behavior
Research indicates that your brain activity for whatever the main task is, so let's say your main task is you're trying to get this email done before dinner, but you're also talking with your partner or your kids while you do this. your brain activity for writing that email goes down by on average 37%. So you're really not performing as well and mistakes will go up by as much as 50%.