Top 10 Neuroscience-Backed Tips for a Stronger Brain | Wendy Suzuki and Amishi Jha

1. Embrace Neuroplasticity for Change

Understand that your brain is not fixed and can change through repeated activity and experience, empowering you to shape your life and well-being through dedicated effort.

2. Believe You Can Change Brain

Cultivate a belief in your ability to change your brain, recognizing that daily choices and repeated actions fundamentally shape your brain’s biology and functioning, empowering you with agency over your long-term brain health.

3. Prioritize 8 Hours of Sleep

Aim for an average of eight hours of quality sleep nightly, as it’s crucial for memory consolidation, brain cleanup (glymphatic drainage), and overall long-term brain health, and cannot be compensated for by other means.

4. Integrate Movement into Life

Actively look for opportunities to move your body throughout the day, such as taking the stairs, as every movement promotes brain plasticity, improves mood, and can grow new brain cells.

5. Aerobic Activity for Brain Growth

Engage in aerobic activity that elevates your heart rate for at least 45 minutes, 2-3 times a week, to stimulate BDNF production, which helps grow new brain cells and improve attention and memory.

6. Meditate 12 Mins, 4 Days/Week

Practice focused attention, open monitoring, and loving-kindness meditation regularly (e.g., 12 minutes, four days a week over a program) to strengthen your attention system, improve mood, and reduce loneliness.

7. Practice Monotasking

Avoid multitasking, which is actually inefficient task-switching that depletes attentional capacity; instead, focus on one task at a time and turn off notifications to maintain focus and reduce errors.

8. Cultivate Social Connection

Actively seek and nurture social connections, as loneliness acts as a biological stressor, while social interaction is vital for positive brain plasticity and overall well-being.

9. Harness Anxiety for Productivity

Reframe anxiety as activation energy rather than an enemy; acknowledge its connection to meaningful concerns, make a note of ‘what if’ worries, and use them to create an action plan for the next day, turning anxiety into a superpower for productivity.

10. Create Mental White Space

Intentionally build periods of ‘mental white space’ into your day, allowing your mind to wander without agenda (e.g., during a walk or while waiting), to improve mood, problem-solving, and self-support.

11. Cultivate Meta-Awareness

Develop meta-awareness by paying attention to your attention, observing your thoughts and mental processes in real-time, which provides greater agency to respond skillfully rather than react impulsively.

12. Implement Bedtime Rituals

Adopt a consistent wind-down ritual before bed, including screen hygiene (avoiding screens), reducing alcohol and hydration, to signal to your brain it’s time to sleep and improve sleep quality.

13. Build Daily Sleep Pressure

To facilitate falling asleep easily, wake up earlier to build sufficient sleep pressure throughout the day, ensuring you’ve been awake long enough to feel genuinely sleepy at bedtime.

14. Mindfulness for Sleep Quality

Utilize short mindfulness practices, such as focused attention or body scan meditation, before bed to quiet a racing mind and improve the ability to fall asleep and enhance overall sleep quality.

15. Pair Mindfulness with Exercise

Combine mindfulness practice with exercise to reduce the aversive aspects of intense workouts and anchor yourself to the moment-to-moment experience, making it easier to initiate and maintain an exercise routine.

16. Make Exercise Fun and Social

Increase adherence to exercise by making it enjoyable and integrating it with social activities, such as walking with friends, to leverage positive reinforcement.

17. Walk 10 Minutes for Mood

Engage in at least 10 minutes of walking daily, as this minimal amount of movement has been shown to significantly decrease depression and anxiety levels.

18. Practice Joy Conditioning

Actively recall and rehearse your most joyful memories repeatedly to strengthen them in your brain, which helps elevate your overall mood and can diminish overwhelming anxious feelings.

19. Cultivate Daily Gratitude

Regularly practice gratitude by reflecting on things you are thankful for, as this mindset shift elevates positive experiences, diminishes overwhelming feelings, and directly helps lower anxiety.

20. Practice Acts of Generosity

Engage in acts of generosity, even small, unsung ones, as they trigger dopamine release and lead to feelings of reward, providing an immediate and powerful tool for lowering anxiety.