Green and red zone: the bottom line

We've covered a lot of ground on the green and red zones over the last few newsletters. So let's take a step back now and get to the thrust of this series: what can we do about it?

In short: quite a bit. Here's a quick list of activities and practices that you can use to reinforce the mental habits that keep your mind and body green, happy, and healthy. 

Minimize red zone activity

It should go without saying that the best way to keep yourself in the green zone is to do your best to reduce the amount of time you engage in high-stress activities. Of course, it's impossible to completely eliminate stress from our lives, which brings us to our next point.

Know your red zone triggers

Try to get a feel for what activities, situations, or pressures set you into the red zone or pink zone. However, the key here is not to suppress those triggers. Instead, focus on how you respond to them mentally. It can take a lot of work to re-wire those circuits, but this is one of the most effective ways of keeping your brain and body free of toxic stress.

Maximize green zone time

It may sound obvious, but sometimes keeping yourself in the green zone is as simple as making a point of staying there. Remember the golden rule of neuroplasticity: neurons that fire together, wire together. The more time you clock in the green, the stronger those neural pathways become, which then makes it easier to stay in the green zone.

Remember the negativity bias's illusion

Nature bred us mammals to always be slightly anxious, slightly dissatisfied, and slightly unsure. However, most of us can safely say that more often than not, we're OK. Keeping that simple truth in focus, and reinforcing it by taking in the good, is a simple but effective way of keeping the negativity bias at bay and staying out of the perpetual pink zone.

As you can see, there's plenty we can do to get our brains and bodies to healthy norms. Give one or two a try, and see what works best for you.

That wraps up our mini-series on the red and green zone. Stay tuned for our next Brain Bytes, when we bring the focus around to stress.