When it comes to the fitness of your brain (or your body) variety is key. Your brain health depends on many factors including: everything you put in your mouth; the physical and mental activities you choose to do or not to do; the amount of rest and reflection you allow yourself; and all the stuff you tell yourself in your own head.
If I had to sum up how to get the healthiest and fittest brain possible in one word, it would have to be ‘variety’. This applies to all the things I mentioned above, which I will be getting into in detail over the next several weeks. These are the cornerstones of your brain fitness and help to improve the general intelligences of your brain. Yes, intelligences, plural.
How smart are you?
Many people think of intelligence as your IQ or ‘book smart’. Really, this is only one kind of intelligence. Other major intelligences are also your emotional intelligence (EQ) and your physical intelligence (PQ). The great thing is that you can improve all of your intelligences with effort.
Your EQ, popularized by Dr. Daniel Goleman, is your ability to control your own emotions and read the emotions of others. It is a major factor in your social skills – how well you interact with other people. Are you responsive or reactive? If you are sharp as a tack when it comes to Einstein’s theory of relativity but have no idea how to hold a conversation with another human being, you would have a high IQ but a low EQ.
Your PQ is your ability to control your own body. This breaks down into conscious control – coordination, strength, flexibility and balance, and unconscious control – how well your internal systems respond when called upon. How good of a job does your brain do at controlling your heart rate, disease-fighting immune system, and appropriate hormone responses to eating, stress, excitement, challenges, etc. Your physical intelligence is how well tuned your body machine is.
These are all important factors in leading a successful life. Your IQ will help you solve life’s challenges, your EQ will help your daily interactions with others and your PQ will help you stay healthy and fight disease of all sorts.
EPIQ Performance
Your brain is the master integrator of everything you do, feel, think and experience and the fitness of your brain determines your IQ, EQ and PQ. The more you work on the different aspects of brain fitness the better it all comes together.
Not only that, but each of these intelligences helps the others as well. For example, the better your PQ, the better your hormone stress response system works, the easier it is to keep your cool and the better your EQ gets. Also, staying calm in challenging situations gives you a better chance at clear thinking and problem solving and increases your IQ.
This is only one example of probably thousands of ways that your intelligences work together. The more you work on your brain fitness the better they all get. It all comes back to variety. Using nutrition, physical and mental activities, appropriate rest and positive thinking to improve your brain fitness and improve all of your intelligences.
Over the next several weeks I will be writing about the roles of all of these brain fitness promoting behaviors in increasing your intelligences, EQ, PQ and IQ – you can remember them as EPIQ (pronounced ‘EPIC’) performance. The goal is to increase your EPIQ performance in all aspects of your life as much as possible.
A focus on brain fitness will allow you greater success at work or business, improved relationships and improved brain and body health. Improving your brain fitness will help you move from where you are today to where you want to be.
