Priscilla Xu

• What is a Mindset? And Why We need it?
• Examples of mindset?
• Milkshake Studies
• Hotel Worker Study: Are the benefits of exercise just a placebo?
  • How to teach people benefits of exercise?
• A study that Tells People to Compare their Perceived Amount of Exercise to Other
• What is the enough for the amount of exercise?
• Sleep Deprivation and Mindset
• How to make stress your friend?
  • Is stress a challenge or threat?
• Tools to Manage with Stress?
• Where do mindsets comes form?
• Meta mindset
• Final Takeaway

What is a Mindset? And Why We need it?

Mindset: core beliefs or assumptions we have about a domain or category of things that orient us to expectations, explanations, and goals

You need simplifying frame works to live in the complex reality. They matter, and they shape your motivation and consequences.

Examples of mindset?

• How to you view stress? Is stress good or bad for you?

• Mindset changes your response to stress.

• How do you explain your occurrences?

• How do you view intelligence?

• The Growth Mindset: Do you think that your effort can change your intelligence?

• Do you think healthy food are disgusting or delicious/indulging?

• The general public views stress as very bad and detrimental
  
• How do you view cancer or side effects?

Dr. Alia Crum’s lab shows that your mindset influence how your body priorities physiologically.

Milkshake Studies

Their body responded as if they had consumed more food, but they were the same.

• Medicine has to overcome the placebo effect.
• We need to overcome because all drug tested need to overcome the placebo effect. We need data to compare placebo effect to doing nothing.
• This is important to compare because we can see how mindsets affect the body.
• A placebo sugar pill can change your physiological effect. Your mindset on the placebo sugar pill has a significant effect on the physiological effect.

Do our beliefs about what we’re eating change our body’s physiological response to that food? (holding constant objective nutrients)

Design: Within-subject design, two different time frames and one week apart. One shake is told to be healthy and One shake is told to be fatty, but in reality, they are the same amount of calories.

Result: What we found in this study was that when people thought they were consuming the high fat high-calorie indulgent milkshake, in response to the shake, their ghrelin levels dropped at a three-fold rate, more potent than when they were consuming the sensible shake.

• Ghrelin is a hormone that has stimulatory effects on food intake, fat deposition, and growth hormone release. In simple words, ghrelin is released when you are hungry.

Actionable Points from the Study

• A better mindset when you are losing weight is to believe that you are eating enough and satiate.

• Mindset on food, social context, and the actual food matters and relate to how you respond to the food.

Hotel Worker Study: Are the benefits of exercise just a placebo?

Study Design: Randomized separation of hotel housekeepers. One group were told their work and exercise is good. Other group were not told anything.

Results: The group who were told the exercise was good shows a decrease in systolic blood pressure and lost weight.

How to teach people benefits of exercise?

What we are doing currently: This is what you need to do to receive health benefits.

• You cannot just tell them that exercise is beneficial because most of them don’t even meet that amount of exercise.

A study that Tells People to Compare their Perceived Amount of Exercise to Other

Question: How do people shape the exercise they are doing already? What exercise are you receiving relative to others?

• Result: People who believe that are doing relatively less activity had a 71% higher death rate.

What is the enough for the amount of exercise?

Food and exercise has the potency to make you healthy to give you energy and can be enhanced by understanding that potency.

If you are retraining yourself from food, your brain might tell you to each more food.

• We should tell are self that Healthy Food is a type of Enjoyment, indulgence, and satisfaction.

Sleep Deprivation and Mindset

• We use fake feedback on the quality of sleep.

• If they were told they had bad quality sleep, it might be harder to push through your sleep.

How to make stress your friend?

The general public believes that stress if bad and harmful to health, productivity, reproductivity.

There is not a clear cut of whether stress being harmful or beneficial.

Stress and adversity or challenge can be encountered during one’s goal directed effort. We have to think in a stress enhancing mindset

• Stress is not debilitating.

• Stretch narrows your focus, enhances info processing and attention.

• You are physiological activating.

• True nature of stress is a paradox.

Is stress a challenge or threat?

• Do you see stress something that will kill you or something that enhances you?

Study Design: People were shown a 9 minute video about stress is good or bad. Does orient people to different mindset of stress matter how they respond?

Result: People with the mindset of stress is enhancing had better performance and sleep.

Stress is forward center mass.

• Stress enhancing mindset does not mean that you should like stress.
  • Stress enhancing mindset people will have a positive affect and lower cortisol.

• It is that experience of stress relates and can make you enhance your performances.

People with stress debilitating science freak out or check out of the activity.

• You bring is to the surface and you will be aware of it.

• You can change your brain’s default setting.

Tools to Manage with Stress?

• Decouple stress from its negative definitions.

• Stress is neutral.
  • Stress is a generic response.

• Stress is experiencing adversity or challenge in your goal-related efforts. (There are there parts of this)

• Goal-related effort: we only care about something that matters to us.

We stress because we care.

Checking out from stress means that you check form something you care about.

1. Acknowledge your stress

2. Welcome it because stress is something you care about.

3. Use that stress response to achieve something you care about. And then the effect snow balls.

• Understanding and leveraging that respond.

Where do mindsets comes form?

1. Parents

2. Culture and media (social media, podcast, movie)

The way that people talk about junk food is using words of excitement.

Health and delicious food should be the new content.

3. Conscious choice

4. Influential of others.

You need to blend the benefits of behavior and mindset.

Meta mindset

1. Be self aware of your mindset.

What is my mindset about X? – Good way to audit about your mindset.

2. Are mindset helpful or harmful?

3. Seek ways to reinforce your mindset.

Final Takeaway

• It’s easier about to teach people who have less experience. Like kids

• You cannot avoid stress, but it will make you a less happy individual.

• You are the same physical being, but your performance can vary a lot.

• Ask yourself: What can I do more about my mind and brain?