004 Science reveals that wellbeing is a trainable skill

Do you want to learn how to be the calmest guy in the room?

Are you curious to learn how thinking about thinking – or Metacognition – can actually help to make you healthier, safer, more engaged and more productive?

What is social genomics and does it actually make a difference to your health and productivity if you’re a nice verses a nasty person?  

Learn the answer to all of these questions and more in my value-packed interview with the cool, calm and enormously intelligent Beau Corazon. Beau Corazon brings an insider’s perspective of biomedical science, with international experience in public health as well as academic and private research. He started out as a performer with a stint on home and away, but focuses these days on raising awareness of ground-breaking science that reveal ways in which we can hack our own minds and rewire our brains to improve wellbeing and performance through metacognition, which is our higher-order thinking skills.

In this interview Beau particularly emphasizes a surprising scientific discovery linking the quality of our social interactions to our health, safety and productivity and how we can practically harness this new understanding in the workplace.

We also discuss how health habits are a trainable skill and how to increase your chances of success long-term. Beau offers some tools and techniques for giving up smoking. We explore what stress does to the body and brain and the power of mindfulness.

Stayed tuned for an absolutely brilliant interview where science is made simple…

KEYS TO ENHANCING WELLBEING AND PRODUCTIVITY

share the emerging science that shows a more encompassing picture of how health and wellbeing are results of an interconnected system of social, emotional and genetic factors, and how important it is to understand the whole picture to nourish wellbeing and productivity in the workplace.

Some practical, straightforward ways and scientifically verified techniques that can improve wellbeing, safety and productivity include:

• Being present – practising mindfulness improves safety awareness, reduces presenteeism and enhances social relations.

• Being nice – pro-social behaviour is scientifically proven to aid in psychological safety, boost immunity and increase productivity. Foster an environment where its ok to share mistakes and learn together as this will benefit the bottom line. 

• Being calm – ‘Aim to be calmest guy in the room’ Beau encourages as stress reduces the capacity of our ‘thinking brain’ and increases the activity of our ‘emotional brain’ which compromises decision making. Chronic stress actually can rewire our brains to be more emotional, reactive and to default to survival mode rather than calm and considered responses to life and business circumstances.

• Being committed – if you’re willing to contribute a medium to high level of effort to changing a behaviour, health, safety, productivity or otherwise, then this increases your chances of success long-term. Associations and ‘pairing’ behaviours with something in our physical environment can help habits stick. Neuroplasticity is reinforced the more we engage in behaviours or thoughts, so commitment to the process is essential.

• Being single focused – ditch the multi-tasking as it makes you dumber. Mono-tasking is the secret to getting the job done efficiently and effectively.

THE BIRTH OF METACOG
The values behind MetaCog’s birth are built on an altruistic sense that knowledge and understanding about how we can influence our wellbeing is a right that belongs to everyone and not just a selected few. Coming from backgrounds in cognitive neuroscience and biomedical science, psychology and cultural anthropology, Beau and Sidsel connect the dots between this complementary range of disciplines to allow for a more holistic understanding of mental, emotional, physical and social wellbeing. MetaCog is currently developing programs that will target workplaces to improve individual and team wellbeing and productivity. In addition, their vision is to make a difference also in disadvantaged groups of society.

Resources
METACOGNITION:
Metacog are currently putting together a pilot program to reproduce in Australia published workplace studies done overseas in Japan and the USA, so stay tuned for updates.
Aristotle – introduced the concept of metacognition
John Flavell – foundation researcher in metacognition

SOCIAL GENOMICS:
Project Aristotle with Google – re:work.withgoogle.com contains excellent and completely free resources for HR & leadership provided by Google.
George Slavich – Stress Response and depression
Steven Cole – Social genomics

NEUROPLASTICITY:
Richard Davidson – Center for Healthy Minds

MINDFULNESS:
The Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn is supported by a wealth of scientific research, and it’s available for free here.
There is also an excellent, free Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) available from Monash University that discusses and trains Mindfulness for Wellbeing and Peak Performance, and it’s available via FutureLearn here.

Connect with Beau
Metacog.works
info@metacog.works
Beau LinkedIn
Sidsel LinkedIn

I’m so happy to be bringing you this thought leadership and I trust you got a lot of value out of todays episode with Beau.

Until next time, continue being part of the solution in taking your workplace from good to great…

Continue the conversation at www.fitforworkaustralia.com.au, say hi on LinkedIn or flick us a personal note at sally@fitforworkaustralia.com.au.

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