Friday Five #5

Hey, good afternoon!

Here is my Friday 5 roundup of this week’s facts, fun and f’ups… Sorry it’s a day late, there was an internet outage yesterday in Dahab so I couldn’t send!

🌊 In the brain: nature scenes vs. urban scenes?

• While reading Blue Mind by Wallace Nichols, I came across a study done in 2010 where they studied the changes in the brain as people viewed urban scenes versus nature scenes.
   
• What did they find? That the parts of the brain associated with empathy become more active when subjects viewed nature scenes, and it also increased activity in the basal ganglia, which is known to be triggered by viewing happy faces and recalling happy memories.
   
• While in contrast, urban scenes produced greater activity in the amygdala, which is the first stop in the “danger” response and is a key player in chronic stress.
   
• This goes to show that the world around us and our subconscious emotional responses to it, shapes our lives and our experiences!
   
• I am just so incredibly grateful for this AMAZING nature scene every day! And so happy to be apart of it!

🏆 What are four factors that can be linked to success in freediving?

• In my new podcast episode, Inside the Mind of the World’s Top Freedivers, I talk about five factors that can be linked to success in freediving:
   
  1. motivation and goal setting
  2. confidence
  3. experience and knowledge about freediving
  4. routines to get in the right frame of mind
  5. good at handling pressure and anxiety
      
• I’ll be doing a podcast episode on each one of those over the next weeks / months, so def tune in on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Sticher, YouTube etc!

✨ Why to NEVER give up!?

• In Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill writes a lot about the philosophies of success. This was one of my favorite parts which explains why the majority of people fail to achieve their goals!
   
• “If the first plan which you adopt does not work successfully, replace it with a new plan, if this new plan fails to work, replace it, in turn with still another, and so on, until you find a plan which DOES WORK. Right here is the point at which the majority of men meet with failure, because of their lack of PERSISTENCE in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.”

💬 What quote I’ve been thinking about –

“Man’s only limitation, within reason, lies in his development and use of his imagination.”

-Napolean Hill

💗 How to keep the desire for freediving training?

• In Specific Training for Freediving, Umberto Pelizzari’s writes about maintaining the pleasure of freediving. “Freediving should be founded on pleasure and pleasant sensations. Every training session should be taken on with enthusiasm: we must have a desire to train, training should never weigh us down”
   
• To maintain the desire to train in freediving he suggests the following:
   
  • Vary the training as much as possible (so constantly change the exercises, the equipment used and the stimuli)
     
  • Think about the quality of the training, which is more important than quantity
     
  • If you do not want to ‘suffer’ that day to fight contractions and such, you can instead devote that training session to less stressful workouts to focus on relaxation, feelings and enjoying the pleasure of being in the water. “It’s good to relive those strong and typical emotions that had you choose the sport of freediving.”

As always, it’s a pleasure and honor getting to spend some time with you, I hope you have a great weekend!

Renee