I learned a lot about mental fitness
training as a young kid most of the time
completely unwillingly
because I grew up in a household with
really strict parents and they used to
do things like assign us book reports
over the summer months when we were out
of school and I would work on this
assignment
turn it in and I’d always get my first
try back with a grade of D or F it used
to drive me absolutely crazy but they
were trying to teach me something if I
thought I had reached excellence on my
first try I didn’t understand what it
was to train to prepare these lessons
became really useful later when I
decided to join the Marine Corps and I
needed to spend some time figuring out
how to get myself ready to do really
hard things so if I could jump a five
foot wall one day that was good but the
next day it needed to be seven feet tall
and I would bounce myself off that wall
as many times as it took until I could
clear it it became about setting up
mastery experience opportunities very
very deliberately for myself so that
eventually no wall even looked high our
current Secretary of Defense is actually
a really legendary Marine Corps general
famous for being a bit of an
intellectual and general mattis once
said the most important six inches on
any battlefield lies between a Marines
ears what he was saying is that a
bulletproof mind is just as important as
physical armor and his statement is
actually backed up by science
one study always comes to mind when I
think about this and a team trying to
illustrate mental fitness and resilience
pulled some baby chicks into the lab and
they created three distinct
subpopulations by putting them in
separate pens and treating them
differently throughout the course of the
study
so the first group they painted them
green and they fed them and let them
meander about their pen and interact
with each other
the second group they painted yellow and
these chicks they did much the same
thing except that every now and again
the lab techs would come over and pick
up the chicks and hold him too closely
and make them anxious and uncomfortable
and then they put him back in the pen
the last group kept the lab techs busy
and these they painted red and they were
constantly providing stress stimuli to
these chicks they were holding him too
closely these chicks never got a break
when it was time for the test they
pulled out a large bucket of water in a
stopwatch and they put all of the
painted chicks into the bucket and
started to time how long it took them to
drown I know stay with me the first
group to go underwater almost
immediately
worth of red chicks the chicks that had
been worn down and torn down by constant
stress they they faced that bucket of
watery hardship and and felt like they
didn’t have a shot so they drowned
almost immediately the second group to
go under might surprise you but it was
actually the green chicks it was the
happy innocence who’d never faced you
know any challenge over the course of
the study the last group that was
struggling to make it and trying to swim
were our yellow chicks what we would
call our stress adaptation chicks they
had made it past the lab tech and back
into the pen once and faced with that
bucket of water they thought there was a
chance that they could they could swim
their way out and they just kept trying
in this way stress can teach us to swim
when we talk about stress we often hear
about avoiding too much of it I’m a
college professor these days I should
teach classes on stress management but
it’s not really about managing stress
it’s about learning to harness it
learning to use challenge and adversity
as the building blocks of our own mental
fitness training program so to learn how
to do this for yourself you want to
understand a little bit about your own
wire
during the front portion of our brain
the frontal cortex houses something
called working memory capacity and
working memory capacity when it’s grown
and we can grow it changes the way we
respond to stress we react to it much
much better working memory capacity does
a couple of things one our upper-level
cognition happens here so our ability to
focus our ability to do really complex
tasks – it houses emotional regulation
so our ability to interact intelligently
with other people to respond rather than
you know react angrily when we grow our
working memory capacity we grow our
mental Fitness what’s interesting about
the stress response is that we don’t
always know what’s happening
what did stress feel like to you the
last time you noticed it the last time
you felt stress in your body so I’d like
you to picture yourself for a moment at
your awkward age so for most of us it
was back at 11 or 12 for me it was last
week but that’s not the point I want you
to think about yourself at an awkward
time of your life and you’re walking
into your school cafeteria but today you
don’t know if your friends are there you
don’t know if you have anybody to sit
with so you walk in you’re holding your
tray you start to feel a little anxious
you look around what happens in your
body maybe your heart starts to beat a
little bit harder you start to feel that
your stomach turns over you’re nervous
it’s not a big deal it’s not a huge
stimuli but your body fires off a stress
response and you have cortisol and
adrenaline and a lesser known hormone
called DHEA flooding into your
bloodstream DHEA is fascinating because
its entire job is to go to your brain
after stress grow it so that you’re
Betty better prepared to meet that
stressor next time DHEA is the prime
mover of a mental fitness training
program but there’s a catch right
there’s always a catch
DHEA can only do its job in a very
specific state of nervous system
down-regulation or relaxation so when
you’re asleep your brainwaves are long
and slow and stretched out we call that
being in Delta state when you’re doing
what I’m doing right now walking and
talking your brainwaves are tighter and
closer together up in beta relaxation
happens in the middle two states and
theta state is where DHEA does it’s
magic so this is the repetition the
heavy lifting of a mental fitness
training program taking yourself
regularly and deliberately and
repeatedly down into theta state
increases your working memory capacity
and thus your ability to respond to
stress it changes the game so I can
typically find theta state on my yoga
mat it feels like a floating down you’re
not consciously awake but you’re
definitely not asleep it’s somewhere in
between that and it might feel like a
shift I have a friend who tells me that
she can find theta state when she’s
swimming laps it’s very repetitive it’s
very slow she can feel herself get there
I don’t know about you but when I’m
swimming laps I’m praying to breathe and
just trying to stay afloat
there’s nothing relaxing happening for
me they’re getting into theta state is
by o individual what works for one
person doesn’t necessarily work for
everybody my sister is a blogger and she
was working on a piece covering these
new spas where people go in and float in
tanks of warm saltwater for ninety
minutes and she described the experience
of floating as just absolutely
out-of-body she definitely hit theta
state ninety minutes is a long time you
actually only need three minutes twice a
day to see growth of your working memory
capacity it’s not a huge commitment so
find the practice that works for you
maybe it’s going to be walking in nature
maybe it’s gonna be meditation and when
you find that practice
ritualize it make it part of your
everyday routine we don’t practice
mental fitness training just to be ready
for some battlefield but it makes every
aspect of our day-to-day life better
when you grow working memory capacity
you are smarter more focused you’re
kinder it changes day to day life you’re
also ready for a bucket of water so
commit to a mental fitness training
program of your own find your own make
the time and watch yourself become the
best student parent friend that you’re
capable of being you’ll also be teaching
yourself to swim thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
training as a young kid most of the time
completely unwillingly
because I grew up in a household with
really strict parents and they used to
do things like assign us book reports
over the summer months when we were out
of school and I would work on this
assignment
turn it in and I’d always get my first
try back with a grade of D or F it used
to drive me absolutely crazy but they
were trying to teach me something if I
thought I had reached excellence on my
first try I didn’t understand what it
was to train to prepare these lessons
became really useful later when I
decided to join the Marine Corps and I
needed to spend some time figuring out
how to get myself ready to do really
hard things so if I could jump a five
foot wall one day that was good but the
next day it needed to be seven feet tall
and I would bounce myself off that wall
as many times as it took until I could
clear it it became about setting up
mastery experience opportunities very
very deliberately for myself so that
eventually no wall even looked high our
current Secretary of Defense is actually
a really legendary Marine Corps general
famous for being a bit of an
intellectual and general mattis once
said the most important six inches on
any battlefield lies between a Marines
ears what he was saying is that a
bulletproof mind is just as important as
physical armor and his statement is
actually backed up by science
one study always comes to mind when I
think about this and a team trying to
illustrate mental fitness and resilience
pulled some baby chicks into the lab and
they created three distinct
subpopulations by putting them in
separate pens and treating them
differently throughout the course of the
study
so the first group they painted them
green and they fed them and let them
meander about their pen and interact
with each other
the second group they painted yellow and
these chicks they did much the same
thing except that every now and again
the lab techs would come over and pick
up the chicks and hold him too closely
and make them anxious and uncomfortable
and then they put him back in the pen
the last group kept the lab techs busy
and these they painted red and they were
constantly providing stress stimuli to
these chicks they were holding him too
closely these chicks never got a break
when it was time for the test they
pulled out a large bucket of water in a
stopwatch and they put all of the
painted chicks into the bucket and
started to time how long it took them to
drown I know stay with me the first
group to go underwater almost
immediately
worth of red chicks the chicks that had
been worn down and torn down by constant
stress they they faced that bucket of
watery hardship and and felt like they
didn’t have a shot so they drowned
almost immediately the second group to
go under might surprise you but it was
actually the green chicks it was the
happy innocence who’d never faced you
know any challenge over the course of
the study the last group that was
struggling to make it and trying to swim
were our yellow chicks what we would
call our stress adaptation chicks they
had made it past the lab tech and back
into the pen once and faced with that
bucket of water they thought there was a
chance that they could they could swim
their way out and they just kept trying
in this way stress can teach us to swim
when we talk about stress we often hear
about avoiding too much of it I’m a
college professor these days I should
teach classes on stress management but
it’s not really about managing stress
it’s about learning to harness it
learning to use challenge and adversity
as the building blocks of our own mental
fitness training program so to learn how
to do this for yourself you want to
understand a little bit about your own
wire
during the front portion of our brain
the frontal cortex houses something
called working memory capacity and
working memory capacity when it’s grown
and we can grow it changes the way we
respond to stress we react to it much
much better working memory capacity does
a couple of things one our upper-level
cognition happens here so our ability to
focus our ability to do really complex
tasks – it houses emotional regulation
so our ability to interact intelligently
with other people to respond rather than
you know react angrily when we grow our
working memory capacity we grow our
mental Fitness what’s interesting about
the stress response is that we don’t
always know what’s happening
what did stress feel like to you the
last time you noticed it the last time
you felt stress in your body so I’d like
you to picture yourself for a moment at
your awkward age so for most of us it
was back at 11 or 12 for me it was last
week but that’s not the point I want you
to think about yourself at an awkward
time of your life and you’re walking
into your school cafeteria but today you
don’t know if your friends are there you
don’t know if you have anybody to sit
with so you walk in you’re holding your
tray you start to feel a little anxious
you look around what happens in your
body maybe your heart starts to beat a
little bit harder you start to feel that
your stomach turns over you’re nervous
it’s not a big deal it’s not a huge
stimuli but your body fires off a stress
response and you have cortisol and
adrenaline and a lesser known hormone
called DHEA flooding into your
bloodstream DHEA is fascinating because
its entire job is to go to your brain
after stress grow it so that you’re
Betty better prepared to meet that
stressor next time DHEA is the prime
mover of a mental fitness training
program but there’s a catch right
there’s always a catch
DHEA can only do its job in a very
specific state of nervous system
down-regulation or relaxation so when
you’re asleep your brainwaves are long
and slow and stretched out we call that
being in Delta state when you’re doing
what I’m doing right now walking and
talking your brainwaves are tighter and
closer together up in beta relaxation
happens in the middle two states and
theta state is where DHEA does it’s
magic so this is the repetition the
heavy lifting of a mental fitness
training program taking yourself
regularly and deliberately and
repeatedly down into theta state
increases your working memory capacity
and thus your ability to respond to
stress it changes the game so I can
typically find theta state on my yoga
mat it feels like a floating down you’re
not consciously awake but you’re
definitely not asleep it’s somewhere in
between that and it might feel like a
shift I have a friend who tells me that
she can find theta state when she’s
swimming laps it’s very repetitive it’s
very slow she can feel herself get there
I don’t know about you but when I’m
swimming laps I’m praying to breathe and
just trying to stay afloat
there’s nothing relaxing happening for
me they’re getting into theta state is
by o individual what works for one
person doesn’t necessarily work for
everybody my sister is a blogger and she
was working on a piece covering these
new spas where people go in and float in
tanks of warm saltwater for ninety
minutes and she described the experience
of floating as just absolutely
out-of-body she definitely hit theta
state ninety minutes is a long time you
actually only need three minutes twice a
day to see growth of your working memory
capacity it’s not a huge commitment so
find the practice that works for you
maybe it’s going to be walking in nature
maybe it’s gonna be meditation and when
you find that practice
ritualize it make it part of your
everyday routine we don’t practice
mental fitness training just to be ready
for some battlefield but it makes every
aspect of our day-to-day life better
when you grow working memory capacity
you are smarter more focused you’re
kinder it changes day to day life you’re
also ready for a bucket of water so
commit to a mental fitness training
program of your own find your own make
the time and watch yourself become the
best student parent friend that you’re
capable of being you’ll also be teaching
yourself to swim thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
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