When did you last change your habits for the sole purpose of optimizing yourself? Humans have an instinct to improve, we want to evolve and learn. Whether it is an improvement in gaming, training or at work, we are all dependent to use our mind for it.

It’s a pursue, it’s not something you achieve over a day or a week. You start somewhere, find the small changes in your life that keep you on the edge and continue to improve. That’s when you feel at your best, you find your peak. But so many get anxious about the road to human optimization, so they call bulls**t, say it’s a hoax, not worth it.

Full Potential
People tend to struggle with reaching their goals and what they call their “full potential”.

I am here to tell you, that f****ng place doesn’t exist.

There is no such place as an end destination, people will always seek for inspirational goals. It’s like when we learn something new, it feels good, so we continue to learn more things. Or when we see results at the gym, it feels good, therefore we continue to make progress and results. We always strive to reach what’s beyond ourselves.

You need to find out what actually makes you happy, it’s not having a plan and all your goals written on a paper, NO! However, what you need to think about is improvement in the way you manage your mind, its improvement in the way you manage your emotions, its understanding how you made mistakes and how you approved upon them, also understanding what you have done right and building upon that.

Ever heard of being in the zone, reaching that could either happen by accident or it means thinking like a champion.

So what’s the difference between a champion, and an average good gamer?

It’s easy to see that the difference between one second and a split-second reaction can be the difference between a champion and an average good gamer. And this is all caused by our cognitive performance or mental focus as we could call it. Mental improvement will ultimately be the way to reach the full potential we want to achieve. So what are the ways to improve cognitive performance and reach a better mental focus?

Let’s take a look at some of the ways the Nau-team improve their mental health.

Fasting – this method helps the body and brain to reboot itself. By the third or fourth day your mind starts to work like an ancient hunter, the brain starts to look for things out there. What happens is that you get over the hunger pains, all of a sudden your just in the super human time. You just go out and get done what ever there is that you need to get done. If you have the time, check out professor Mark Mattson’s TEDx Talks, he argues about why fasting bolsters your brain power.

Hydration – first thing in the morning, drink one liter of water, preferably with lemon or cucumber in it. It is the hydration in the morning that is going to keep you moving all day long. When missing one morning of hydration, you can in an instant feel it in your head, for some it could start feeling as slight headache is coming. For others, the feeling of being distracted and not getting things done. A lot of people don’t drink enough water in the morning and let me tell you that feeling dehydrated can cause the body the urge of unnecessary food, that consequently will have other bad side effects for your mind and body.

Exercise – the majority of you guys probably already heard this, but it’s still important to add this to the list. High intense activity for a short period of time during a day will boost your body’s burn activity and increase the brain power. It helps you eat better, sleep better and increases your ability to stay focused during the day. Studies say that you should at least do 30 minutes a day power walk. The impact it has on your brain is just amazing.

Hot & Cold shower – this instant change of temperature will relieve your body from fatigue and instead increase mental alertness. When standing in the shower just crank it up as hot as you can go, and then as cold as you can go. Your mind will absolutely resist the idea at first, but let me tell you, you’re going to love this routine in the morning!

Communication – the core of mental activity is letting yourself interact with people, participate in conversations and be actively engaged. The more you let go of the things surrounding you with distractions, like your phone, the more present you are, and you will experience your communication getting better and your memory will be better.

Studying in the morning – the team at Nau always encourage each other to research a subject 30-45 minutes during the day, preferably in the morning. Reading increases your mental capacity. Learning something new every single day and then immediately demonstrating it and then applying it to your life is going to help your overall mental activity. It will stimulate your brain, reduce stress, increase knowledge and improve memory. A win-win basically!

Quality sleep – sleeping is almost like when a computer defragment itself and reload and recharge its inner components in order to work better and faster, to prevent any loss of memory or other crashes. You will think better, feel better, and be better with a good quality sleep, even if it sometimes is really hard to drag yourself away from the computer during a late-night gig.

Superfoods & supplements – last but not least we have superfoods and supplements. These will be your fuel and probably the most important gain for your brain and body and are important and vital contributors to neurogenesis. What they do is that they can lower your cortisol levels in your body, boost your mental performance, help you think clear and ad mental focus to your life. One of the favorite things to incorporate into our daily activity every single day, is NOT coffee, it is NOOTROPICS. A collective of earth grown botanicals and nutrients. But here is the thing, how you consume it is not the most important part, however, that you consume it is vital for the overall improvement of your mind and body.

Thank you for reading and happy optimization!