Brain Fitness for Focus and Resilience: How to Train a Stronger Brain

The brain, our most undervalued trainable resource

It’s hard to argue with Daniel and Jessica of Coach My Brain when they state that the brain is our most important muscle:

“It’s the headquarters that holds the power over our every thought, feeling, movement and decision. However, we tend to only pay it any attention when it doesn’t act in a way we like.”

Don’t fix what ain’t broke, some would say. The thing is though, the brain is trainable long before something goes wrong. Just like your body, it just needs the occasional workout.

Maybe we lost some of you there? But honestly, it’s not that hard. If we put even a fraction of the effort we dedicate to gym routines, diets or stress management once we’re already spiralling into training our heads, we’d all be far more brain-fit… and sane.

“Many people know how to get a strong body, but not how to get a strong brain. We want to change that.”

Daniel and Jessica note that a common misconception is that training your brain is hard, time-consuming or something only elite athletes do. In reality, it comes down to short, simple exercises that, over just a few weeks, can transform how we think, feel and perform.

“All you need is 15 minutes of your day.”

Under pressure, why the brain shuts down when we need it the most

As humans, we are social beings, kept safe by our herd.  When we enter situations where we feel evaluated, such as presentations, tough meetings or job interviews, the brain interprets it as a potential social threat and, obviously, to our entire existence. 

“Our brain is evolved to keep us safe from danger. Sensing risk, it will go into fight-or-flight mode, shutting down the logical, thinking part.”

Which explains the classics. Nervousness. Brain fog. Blank moments. Tunnel vision. Suddenly you cannot remember a single thing you have ever achieved in your entire life. It’s purely biological, not a lack of competence. Not very helpful though, is it now?

Our old friend, the self-esteem, plays its part too.

“With strong self-esteem, we are confident that we are good as we are… If we have weaker self-esteem, we tense up and become unnatural. This also affects our performance.”

And when that tension kicks in, it often shows up as familiar mental blockers. Overthinking. Mind reading. Impostor syndrome. Perfectionism. Comparing ourselves to others and zooming in on every tiny mistake. All the fun usual suspects.

The plot twist? Your colleague, boss or interviewer almost never notice the things you obsess over.

We’ve heard this all before, but Daniel and Jessica emphasise that these patterns are not personality traits, they are habits. And habits can be retrained. With awareness (check), nervous system tools (sure) and small daily brainy workouts (help), your brain starts interpreting situations differently (hallelujah).

Do it consistently enough and new neural pathways take over while the old stressy ones fade. Before you know it, those blockers loosen their grip and your actual competence finally gets to shine like the Grammy winning superstart it is.

Brain fitness for focus and resilience

“How?” you ask. Therapy? Working on your self-esteem with a professional can absolutely help if that’s where the trigger lies. However, just as important is strengthening your mental fitness and giving yourself the best possible conditions to perform. This is the everyday work you do yourself, the small routines that gradually build a brain that can handle pressure with more ease.

At Coach My Brain they describe this as learning to access your ideal mental state, the state where you are alert but not overwhelmed, focused but not tense. Just like athletes, we can train ourselves to use stress hormones for clarity and presence rather than letting them tip us into panic. According to Daniel and Jessica, everyone has the ability to reach this “on-demand” state, but most people have never practised how.

Mental fitness is ultimately about staying in that sweet spot under pressure, instead of watching your brain slip into fog, tunnel vision or full emotional overdrive. Here’s how:

1. Train your brain

Guided relaxation, mindfulness, practising gratitude, visualisation and reflection are tools many of us already recognise for their positive impact on mental health and resilience. They help with presence, calm the nervous system and improve focus over time.

“What many do not know is that you can also train your brain’s fitness much like a muscle, through exercises designed to build new synapses. More synapses mean a stronger and more efficient brain.”

Daniel and Jessica note that you do not need to train on the specific situations you find difficult. When you put yourself through separate cognitive workouts, such as learning something new, challenging coordination or practising unfamiliar patterns, you create new neurons that make your brain quicker, sharper and better at reading situations correctly. In some ways, this makes you “smarter”, because you strengthen the underlying system that all thinking relies on.

It works much like physical training: running does not teach you how to climb stairs, but it strengthens the cardiovascular system that helps you do it with less effort. Brain training works the same way. You are not preparing for one scenario, you are strengthening the entire system behind it. And again, you just need 15 minutes do something challenging, you can still make it fun.

“Synapses grow when we learn something new that challenges us. This could be learning a new language, playing an instrument or even mastering an elaborate dance routine.” 

Coach My Brain’s Brain Bootcamps use this principle, challenging your brain through targeted exercises to create new synapses, build resilience and develop a stronger, more adaptable cognitive foundation that carries over into many demanding parts of life. New synapses, check. Now, because we know some of you want to skip ahead, let’s talk about what happens when it’s game time.

2. Three keys for mental resilience to prepare for difficult tasks

Going in to stressful situations like a job interview, preparing is key. This is where we can take note from professional athletes and how they put themselves into their ideal mental state. It is all about using tools to navigate your nervous system. This, together with the above mentioned daily tools, will help you consciously control your thoughts, feelings, and bodily reactions at the same time as utilising the sharp focus stress hormones give you. For a job interview, it would look something like this:

Structure
“Clarify what is important to highlight beforehand and practise on concrete examples. This increases confidence in one’s own competence and helps you keep good examples top of mind, avoiding succumbing brain fog.”

Perspective
“An interview is not about being perfect, but about seeing if there is a match in both directions. What do you need to understand if this is a good fit for you?”

Recovery
“Short breathing exercises are enough to lower stress levels. Do so before entering an interview. Also giving yourself a break before answering a question in a thoughtful manner can feel scary but is worth it rather than rushing into a subpar answer to avoid silence. Using speaking cues like ‘That’s a really good question. Let me think about that for a moment before I answer.’”

To use these tools effectively in the moment, you need to practise them in your everyday life. They must become familiar habits rather than techniques you try to remember under pressure.

As Daniel and Jessica explain: “Learn to relax. Lower your basic tension. It creates a new mental normal for you to pick up at any given moment.”

Employers: How to create brain-smart recruitment processes

And a word to employers and fellow humans meeting humans: stress-filled recruitment processes are not conducive to accuracy. A candidate’s ability to handle pressure is not proven by throwing unnecessary pressure at them.

There are far better ways to assess resilience, competence and judgement. Unclear or tense processes mostly achieve one thing: candidates choosing someone else. So if you’re going for gold, we and Coach My Brain highlight three principles that make a huge difference:

• Clarity
  Tell the candidate how the interview will go and what to prepare.
• Structure
  A clear, predictable process creates security and better performance.
• Warmth
  Small talk, a human tone and normalising nervousness reduce the brain’s stress reactions.

Brainy takeaways

Great employees are not only found through good recruitment, they are built through good working conditions. And if you ask Coach My Brain, we are entering an era where brain fitness is becoming a genuine competitive advantage.

“Mental training is no longer seen as something ‘extra’, but as a central part of professional performance.”

So here is the simple truth. We all carry the most advanced system on earth inside our skulls, yet we rarely give it the training or conditions it deserves. A little mental fitness for yourself, and a little clarity and support from employers, and suddenly we’re well-oiled machines. Or at least we perform a little closer to our potential.

Being brain-smart is not complicated. It is darn practical and something both individuals and organisations benefit from. Short term (we all like quick wins, no?) as well as long term.

Personality without stress responses. Performance without burnout.

Not a bad future to aim for.

Stay tuned:
We’re turning all of this brain talk into two practical guides. One for candidates who want to show up sharp without spiralling, and one for employers who want recruitment processes that actually bring out people’s best. Coming soon.