What is Cognisthenics? Cognisthenics is a program for individuals and executives offering a series of cognitive exercises to counter scientifically proven biases and distortions that occur when subjectively unaware or allowed to persist due to the lack of effective mental tools. These distortions complicate and interfere with good leadership, executive decisions, as well as satisfying life. This service provides specific exercises to expand the efficiency of one's cognitive processes without delving into lengthy psychological therapy or weekly coaching. It provides a comprehensive mental toolbox, instructions on how to master the use of these tools, and progressive exercises to strengthen competency. Cognisthenics is a monthly service for one hour a month. Each month you are provided with one exercise, how to master the exercise, what problems with the exercise you may encounter, and how to problem solve issues that do occur. The following month we may modify the exercise, strengthen the exercise, or move on to the next exercise once mastery is achieved.
What does this mean? Cognisthenics is similar to Calisthenics. Calisthenics utilizes your own body as the tool. It requires knowledge of the body's muscular system and how the elements in your home, environment, or gym can be utilized to develop strength. This strength is built on progressive technical difficulty and increasing repetitions.
Cognisthenics is similar in that it utilizes your brain/mind as the tool. It requires knowledge of the anatomy and function of the brain, connecting body systems, and your environment. Strength, flexibility, and mastery is built by adding mental exercises with progressive technical difficulty and increased repetitions to meet current and future challenges. The workout gym is your life - family gym, work gym, social gym.
The strategy is in how strength is built. I adapt Cognisthenics to whatever happens in your day-to day experiences and apply a strategy/skill for current challenges that can be applied, modified and gradually strengthened for future experiences. Sometimes, it is difficult for an untrained eye to see the patterns or links in our behavior. Our experiences are rarely identical. The individual is often too close to the situation to understand the mental link or similarity in regards to underlying mental skills or lack thereof. My expertise is in knowing how to expand the capacity of the brain that has been underutilized by mental habits and routines or unaware of outsourcing techniques. Cognisthetics combines patterns and links that provide the precise moment to bring awareness to the connections, add the appropriate skill, and demonstrate how the nuances of the skill can be applied beyond the present moment. Through our time together these skills advance in complexity and application.
It's not an apprenticeship, since you are not mimicking me or following me. Apprenticeships can minimize your own creativity and belie your originality. No one needs to change who you were gifted to be. You are unique. It is through your daily interactions with others, the profession you attest to or aspire to, and what constructions you have made about the world that form the experiences you have had up to this point in life. Your skill level strengthens or compromises the quality of your life and the resiliency needed to manage life's perpetual change and challenge.
This is not benign education, lecture, or motivational cheerleading. Research has shown that learning by means of these methods are limited at best. We learn effectively when we can apply strategies to our experience here and now. New tools cannot be injected into a passive system. It has to be the right tool for the right challenge at the right time. You can read a book with a variety of great ideas. What is the chance that you remember precisely what to do when the time is right? But . . . can you remember a personal victory? Can you remember when you lacked a skill when it was needed? Yes! It is because the tool/lesson (or lack of) was present in your life AT THE TIME. The memory was enhanced through natural chemicals in the brain and applied to personal experiences that matters to you. Cognisthetics will enlarge your world and provide the confidence you need for achievement and resiliency.
At one hour a month, it is not a burdensome process. You have plenty of time during the month to practice and observe your life with a more objective lens. It becomes a monthly check in for preventative mental health and agility.