A Year of Daily Mental Health Tips

By Daniel Amen, MD [Excerpted from Change Your Brain Every Day] Since 1991, my team at Amen Clinics and I have built the world’s largest database of brain SPECT scans related to behavior, totaling more than 225,000 scans on patients from 155 countries. We have seen patients as young as nine months and as old as 105 years. Our brain imaging work has taught us many important lessons about the daily practices and habits of brain and mental health that we teach our patients.

DAILY PRACTICES FOR BRAIN AND MENTAL HEALTH

If you sat on my neuropsychiatrist’s couch every day for a year, these are the concepts and daily practices you would learn. This book contains 366 (in case you acquired it in a leap year) short essays organized around eight major themes:

1. Major life lessons I’ve gleaned from looking at more than 225,000 brain SPECT scans.
2. How to understand and optimize the physical functioning of the brain—what I call the hardware of your soul.
3. Learning to manage your mind to support your happiness, inner peace, and success—the “software” that runs your life.
4. Developing a lifelong plan to deal with whatever stresses come your way.
5. Using your brain to improve your relationships—your network connections.
6. Developing an ongoing sense of meaning and purpose that informs your actions
7. every day.
8. Brain-focused nutrition and nutraceuticals (targeted supplements) to support
9. your brain and mind.
10. Condition-specific wisdom, such as dealing with past trauma, anxiety, depression, addictions, ADD/ADHD, and more.

TINY HABITS MAKE BIG CHANGES IN YOUR BRAIN AND MENTAL HEALTH

Each day will also have a simple practice for you to do: a tiny habit to try, a simple exercise, a question to ask yourself or others, a meditation, or an affirmation that over time will change the trajectory of your life. Tiny habits are the smallest things you can do that will make the biggest difference in your life. Several years ago, I partnered with Professor B. J. Fogg, director of the Persuasive Tech Lab at Stanford University, and his sister, Linda Fogg-Phillips, to develop tiny habits for our patients. You will find dozens of them in this book. B. J. and Linda teach that only three things change behavior in the long run:

1. An epiphany (seeing your brain scan can do it)
2. A change in the environment (what and who surrounds you)
3. Taking baby steps or creating tiny habits

TIPS TO AVOID SOCIETY’S BAD INFLUENCE ON MENTAL HEALTH

In my book The End of Mental Illness, I asked myself, if I were an evil ruler and wanted to increase the incidence of mental illness, what I would do? Society has a large impact on your brain and mind. I also asked, if I were a good ruler and wanted to decrease mental illness, what strategies I would employ? You will find dozens of good ruler versus evil ruler strategies in this book so you know how to avoid the traps society lays for us.

THE NUMBER 1 DAILY HABIT FOR BETTER BRAIN AND MENTAL HEALTH

Don’t think you must do everything. Focus on a few simple ideas you can put into your life as time allows. The most important tiny habit you’ll learn is this: Whenever you come to a decision point in your day, ask yourself, “Is this good for my brain or bad for it?” It will take only about three seconds, and if you can answer the question with information and love (love for yourself, your family, and your mission in life), you will quickly have a better brain. By using this habit, one of my patients told me, “I wake up at 100 percent every day because I stopped drinking alcohol, which was clearly not good for my brain.” It’s up to you how fast you go through this book, but I recommend you just read a page a day. It’ll only take a few minutes, but over time it’ll change your life as you learn to think about and practice brain and mental health every day for a year. Just as I encourage my patients to lose weight slowly, so they develop the lifestyle habits that will help them stay trim and healthy for the rest of their lives, establishing these brain and mental health habits one at a time will help them last. Let’s get started changing your brain in a positive way every day. In Change Your Brain Every Day, psychiatrist and clinical neuroscientist Daniel Amen, MD, draws on over 40 years of clinical practice with tens of thousands of patients to give you the most effective daily habits he has seen that can help you improve your brain, master your mind, boost your memory, and make you feel happier, healthier, and more connected to those you love. If you want to join the tens of thousands of patients at Amen Clinics who have already learned how to change their brain every day and have a better life, speak to a specialist today at 888-288-9834 or visit our contact page here.