I’m still finding it amazing that so few people know about how coaching and mindfulness (focus training) can actually change the physiology of your brain! This also applies to focus taught during coaching.
Coaching and mindfulness are intricately linked because they both work towards creating and maintaining focus.
Since I’ve been coaching and being coached myself I’ve noticed distinct changes and thought processes, patterns of behaviour and ways of being.
This can be scientifically attributed to changes to the physiology of my brain as I’ve changed my thought patterns, behaviour, and therefore way of being.
Some of the more distinct areas I’ve noticed improvement change have been:
Patience
Focus
Concentration
Positive outlook
Reasoning ability
Decision-making
A new study was carried out by the University of Wisconsin and Madison and completed in December 2019. Researchers created a mindfulness computer game for middle schoolers called Tenacity. The game leads players through landscapes such as ancient Greek ruins and space like scenes. The players tap when counting their breath. First counting breaths for the first four breaths and tapping the screen and then tapping every fifth breath. They earn more points by counting sequences of five breaths accurately. This is training a state of awareness in the present moment by encouraging them to focus on their breath
This was a double-blind study. A control group played another game which was also an attention focus game but didn’t teach breath counting or aspects of mindfulness.
The children played the game for 30 minutes every day for two weeks. Following this the Researchers carried out brain scans after the two week period. They found that the groups that had played Tenacity, had changes in the connectivity between the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the left inferior parietal cortex Which are two areas very important for focus. A link to the paper is HERE.
The ability to teach people to focus in this world during this time of extreme distraction around us from a variety of notifications from social media, email, as well as other sources is going to be essential moving forwards. Mindfulness and coaching are going to become more and more important in order to help train our brains to focus. Resulting in us working towards the goals which are going to make us happy and more satisfied.
Connect with us HERE to learn more about how to train your brain to focus.
Caroline Langston is the Founder of Successful Consultants Ltd, an executive, personal and career development coaching company in Hong Kong, with her partner Patrick Bennett founding the practice in New York. She is also the Founder of recruitersgiveback.org a nonprofit providing free information and coaching to people who are unemployed. Caroline is dedicated to coaching people for success and happiness in their careers and lives. She is a Certified Professional Coach at International Coaching Federation standards. Certified Team Coach and is also degree qualified with further certifications in Neuro Linguistic Programming at Master Practitioner and Coach level. www.successCL.com www.recruitersgiveback.org