About Mental Nutrition®

What is it? | Who can benefit | Bottom line results | Origins | Applications

 

Mental Nutrition® - What is it?

We know we should look after our body by eating well and exercising. But how much attention do we give to what goes on in our minds? Do we give conscious attention to what and how we think, to our beliefs, values and ways of seeing the world? Do we deliberately feed our minds to produce more fruitful results?

Probably not. Most people don't think about how they think, don't focus on what will 'strengthen' their minds to produce better results, don't choose their beliefs and attitudes. What many people do is focus their attention on the external world. They see events that happen around them as the source of their problems. What they don't do is consider that maybe the one thing they do control, the activity between their ears, they are capable of changing. And changing some of the activity that goes on between our ears can help achieve better results.

A first step towards being a mind feeder is to accept that we construct our view of the world.

Imagine this scene.

You and some friends, Margaret, Michael and Mack, decide to attend a play in which a prominent actor is performing. Afterwards Margaret says the play was inspiring and she's going to see it a second time. Michael says he's heard it all before and promptly forgets the play. Mack says he didn't get it and puzzles over the ideas before abandoning them.

What do you make of this? You all sat through the same event yet everyone's got a different interpretation of what took place.

The answer lies in how each person made sense of the event, how they managed what it meant. And they decide what it means based on their own view of how the world works. They interpret the world according to their individual mental activity.

We run into these hiccups with people all the time. The problem is, we often don't understand what is happening. Nor why. And we certainly may be left wondering what to do about it!

Here are some key points to grasp about our mental activity:

• We can't assume that our way of seeing things is the way.
• We can't assume that everyone else sees things in the same way as we do.
• We can't assume that we will always see things in the same way forever.
• Perception is selective. We are highly skilled at seeing and hearing only what we want to see and hear and seeing and hearing what supports our point of view.
• We do not respond to events as such. We respond to how we see them, interpret them, make sense of them, explain them, and what we expect to happen as a result of them. This mental activity influences how we feel about the events and how we behave as a result of experiencing the event.

Mental Nutrition® means being a skilled meaning manager and feeding the mind for more fruitful results.

The mind needs 'good nutrition' and 'exercise' as does the body. The mind-body link is a strong and complex one. It is now widely accepted that some of our experience of disease and illness is linked to what goes on in our minds. The meanings and interpretations we give life's frustrations and problems can call forth chemical and nervous system reactions. These in turn can increase our vulnerability to disease. And when it comes to food, there is a two-way link between mood and food. Moods affect what food we eat. The food we eat can affect our mood.

What goes on inside our heads also has an external impact. Our mind activity affects how we behave in response to other people's actions. If our responses are inappropriate, limiting, destructive, then the results of our actions will likely generate unhelpful responses (antagonism, frustration, rejection). If we choose our responses wisely from a wide repertoire, based on 'healthy' mental activity, then the results we achieve will be more fruitful (cooperation, cooperation, loyal customers, new business).

But how do we feed and exercise our minds? Until Mental Nutrition® is included in school curricula, gym routines and MBA programs we need to take responsibility ourselves. What we do is direct our thinking and take care of feeding our minds.

Three ingredients of Mental Nutrition®

Mental Nutrition® can be summarised as three ingredients of being and doing.

1. Understand the sense-making process and make wise choices.

2. Become a skilled meaning manager, elegantly managing what things mean for ourselves and others.

Misunderstandings often happen because there's an issue with meaning. People don't grasp what's being said. They don't like the information. They disagree with it. They misinterpret it. They relay these interpretations to others, thereby generating more misunderstandings.

And misunderstandings cost money. Invisible money. Here are some of the costs:

• Time lost due to sickness or injury
• Time spent repairing misunderstandings and misinterpretations
• Legal costs from complaints and disputes
• Project deadlines missed or delayed
• Errors in design, systems, forms, decisions ...

The person who skillfully manages what things mean reduces these negative, unproductive responses and increases positive outcomes-cooperation, support, commitment, clarity, certainty. This is particularly important when there are competing, disputed or sensitive meanings.

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Who can benefit?

Who in your organisation needs to be a meaning manager?

• Leaders, including team leaders
• Managers
• Salespeople
• Client contact staff
• Specialists including finance, IT, HR staff:

This is more than being 'better communicators'. It means having greater flexibility in how we view the world, greater willingness to consider other people's mental frameworks, and having a greater repertoire of behaviours to use in relating to people in order to produce a fruitful outcome.

3. Feed our minds regularly for more fruitful results.

Having taken the path to deliberately choose and direct what goes on between our ears and become skilled meaning managers, we also need to support our chosen mental activity. When we join a gym our level of fitness is assessed and we start a program to meet our fitness, stamina, weight or strength goals. The aim is to improve our physical well-being. This third ingredient is about developing a program to nourish our mental well-being, to support our chosen beliefs, values, rules and definitions so we can achieve more fruitful results socially, physically and emotionally.

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Bottom line results: So how do you benefit from Mental Nutrition®?

Understanding the sense-making process and making fruitful choices means you can:

• Win more business because you know how to make sense of details, information, experiences for clients, win their understanding and help them to make decisions in your favour.
• Lead organisational changes more smoothly by using more sophisticated meaning management behaviours.
• Reduce business costs by reducing misunderstandings between people.
• Gain a sense of greater control over your life because you know how to make sense of events and respond to them in appropriate, useful ways.
• Build teams that are more cooperative and productive because their understanding of each other is more profound, particularly where values and performance behaviours are critical.
• Gain more confidence to deal with the people hiccups with colleagues, staff and clients.
• Experience a more fruitful life by replacing self-sabotaging mental frameworks with ones that support your goals.
  

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Origins: What is Mental Nutrition® based on?

Mental Nutrition® draws on theories, concepts and techniques from a range of disciplines and subjects including:

• Anthropology
• Semiotics
• Linguistics
• Neurolinguistic programming
• Cognitive psychology
• Social pyschology
• Communication studies

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Applications

Business applications of Mental Nutrition® are in these capabilities:

• Interpersonal Communication
• Influencing and persuading
• Wellbeing
• Confidence building
• Employability

Details of these applications can be found under the heading Keynotes and Workshops.

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