While you can learn to calm your mind by intentionally creating environments that help you succeed, learning how to do this while you’re in the middle of a challenge or personal crisis takes practice.
Shirzad Chamine, author of the New York Times bestselling book Positive Intelligence calls his brain training activities “PQ Reps” which, over time, help to strengthen your brain and build resilience. He’s created a community of coaches, entrepreneurs, scientists, designers, and engineers to help “every human build mental fitness so they can fulfill their true potential for both happiness and contribution”. There’s a PQ Training programme you can join and app you can use to guide daily practice.
“Sustained change towards a more positive mind requires laying down neural pathways to form new habits through consistent daily practice.”
Positive Intelligence
One of Shirzad’s tips to calm your mind is to take your index finger and rub it gently against your thumb “with so much attention you can feel the fingertip ridges on both fingers. Do this for 10 seconds,” he says.
This will move your brain out of survival mode where you feel stress or panic, and activate the PQ part of your brain that calms you down.
Watch him give a demonstration of this in a clip of his talk on Quieting the Mind.
