Metacognition by Iryna S. Palamarchuk

Mental Resilience

Life is a wheel of changes; and as the things develop, challenges can be an opportunity to grow. Yet, the challenges can also be an obstacle, auto-piloting, and burden when stress is severe. The good news are that science shows that stress severity is a function of how we judge the challenge and how we perceive our ability to cope with it. What it means is that the brain has a certain power over any challenge.

The key to brain power is mindfulness, which is a present-moment awareness. Mindfulness supports metacognition (i.e., 'thinking about your own thinking') that allows understanding and regulating your thinking process. Simply put it this way: we can use emotional intelligence strategies to support cognition with boosting (1) attention span, (2) perspective-taking, and (3) cognitive flexibility. The goal is to advance objective - without judgment/bias/prejudice - attitude to see wider perspectives and concentrate on important tasks. Ultimately, emotional intelligence advances our memory, performance, and problem-solving skills.

In contrast, stress makes us to be pre-occupied with an adverse event. Initially, it is a biological necessity to stay focused on a challenge, as we face potential or actual harm to our physical, mental, or social integrity. However, prolonged preoccupation dramatically narrows our attention and restricts cognitive flexibility, which in turn can alter our memory, insight, and decision-making. All this is a prospective 'black hole', and it is better to stay away from its 'boundary of no escape' pertaining to accumulative risks of psychological and neuropsychiatric conditions.

Neuropsychological Strategies

Pivotal role in cognitive functioning belongs to attention: it is a base for memory formation, learning, and performance. Increasing attention span, i.e., seeing the bigger picture, allows better memory, perspective-taking, and problem-solving capacity. However, attention is hindered across the day as we navigate in a busy modern world. The reason is that many things we tend to manage on an autopilot mode, which is a great adaptation skill to swiftly complete familiar tasks or overcome seems-to-be familiar challenges. The pitfall is that although we are saving some mental energy, frequent auto-piloting is a road to a poor brain performance. It can manifest in a various ways including altered memory, loss of creativity and interest, apathy, bias, and cognitive inflexibility.

Principal strategy: grounding

When we start paying closer attention to our surrounding and noticing the details, we are expanding our focus. The practice is called grounding - simple but effective tool that serves cognitive functioning (please see here).

Across the day, we can have thousand thoughts that keep racing and often unnoticed, as they surf on a subliminal level. Those thoughts create our reality - they label the world per what we are paying attention to and how we judge it. To complicate the matter, negative experiences are noticed by the brain first and faster than neutral or positive ones. Sure thing, safety is a priority. Yet, such reality can be quite deceptive unless we can reappraise the facts for objectivity. To be successful in cognitive appraisal and avoid illusion trapping, we have to first label our feelings and thoughts. This is an emotional agility that allows better understand our inner world. This is the way to break through the mental barriers and expand perspective-taking ability, known as emotional intelligence.

Principal strategy: emotional agility

1. Calm your brain to drop mental restrictions with a deep breathing technic of your choice for at least 2 to 5 minutes to harmonize brain waves and heart rhythm.
2. Notice the sensations. Do not influence or ignore your thoughts but face them - let them float while you are observing them from a helicopter view.
3. Introspect: Analyze your emotions and feelings - label and accept them.
4. Appreciate: Recognize the good things in your life that often go unnoticed.
5. Use the emotions/feelings as a guide to reveal/remind what you value most.
6. Take an action on those values to evolve into our best selves!

You see, the trick is to play with imagination within a scope of our core values. This way we become more creative in finding the problem-solving possibilities. All roads lead to Rome: the achievement can be either one step at a time or cardinal, 180-degree thinking. It is about willing and daring to be open-minded. This is a form of creativity that activates right hemisphere of the brain (ventromedial prefrontal cortex) to control brain areas that are over activated following stress and in fear conditioning (such as amygdala). This, in turn, supports rational undertaking related to the left hemisphere (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) and increases cognitive flexibility. It also can increase dopamine release that can help with the detaching from self-sabotaging autopilot thinking (frontostriatal networks).

Principal strategy: imagination

1. Find a comfortable spot that feels relaxing to you.
2. Bring attention to your breath as you slowly (hence deep) inhale and exhale.
3. Savour the momentum of solitude.
4. Anchor a thought on your core values.
5. Imagine and feel your success as it is happening right now.
6. Indulge in inner peace.
7. Imagine the steps you took to reach the desired success.
8. Imagine what an advice you might offer to the present variant of yourself.

"The power of imagination is the ultimate creative power.. no doubt about that. While knowledge defines all we currently know and understand.. imagination points to all we might yet discover and create. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Your imagination is your preview of life's coming attractions." ~ Albert Einstein

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