CIARAN FOX: And on that note, I think it's perfect...
Although actually, I promised one more quote specially requested
for Grant, [laughter]
And it's... because this was a good segue into Grant's introduction.
And it's an old Danish proverb which is that
life isn't about having a good hand, it's about playing a poor hand well.
It's an old Danish proverb
and I think that has some resonance with Grant's speech.
So, our final speaker is Professor Grant Schofield, professor of Public Health, at AUT
in Auckland. And we asked Grant what was one word that summed up the essence of himself
and he came up with "excited"
that's it. So that's your word. And one thing that you may not know about Grant
is that once he was a professional triathlete.
And we asked him, of course, for his sentence
to describe flourishing without using the word flourishing, and
he said, "A passion for living your dreams and enjoying the moment."
So ladies and gentlemen, Professor Grant Schofield.
[applause]
GRANT SCHOFIELD: Afternoon. So we're taking flourishing to the world.
Here's my version of that.
One which I do with business and workplaces. I like workplaces as a setting.
because we're reaching a lot of adults, and parents work,
mostly which is a little unfortunate, but that's what happens
and business pays for it. And without that resource, and it's a resource free of public health.
Which is good. So you're gonna get that version.
Three quotes... I'm gonna carry on.
People asked why I was wearing this t-shirt, and it comes from...
when I saw this it reminded me of Michelangelo, who once said
"The problem for most people is not aiming too high and missing,
"it's aiming too low and actually hitting."
The second one... this is me last week in Vanuatu, with a pig.
[laughter] It has nothing to do with the quotes.
But the second one was... isn't really a quote,
it's a principle of high performance, because I've repackaged flourishing
into what I call peak performance, and I think that's a nice way of selling it
to the population. They're not doing too bad, they're not doing too good,
they could do better and they'd have a great life if they did better.
On the whole, at least in my mind, a high performance life
is about the same amount of work, maybe even less than a low performance life
and it's at least as much fun. So just on the principle of pure laziness,
a high performance life is worth having. But there is so much more.
And finally, the final quote for the day, I promise.
I know Ciaran's gone on a bit. [laughter] But it was fun at the time.
Comes from a favourite country singer of mine.
You'll recognise the words: "Every gambler knows the secret to survival,
"is knowing what to throw away, knowing what to keep.
"because every hand's a winner, every hand's a loser."
And what was the rest of it?
"And the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep."
That's not part of it, but... [laughter]
Yeah, you gotta know when to hold them, and know when to fold them.
And it connects well with this morning where we mentioned
that it's knowing what to hang on to and knowing what to let go.
What I want to do is get into some neuroscience
and talk about you, your brain, body and mind
They are not separate things, folks.
We got that thing of a 100 billion neurones in here.
We've got another 100 million in your stomach.
You know, are as many neurones in your stomach as are in a brain of a cat.
I'm not sure what that says, but the mind, brain, body,
that integrated special system that changes itself all the time.
So your brain will be different at the end of this talk, hopefully for the better.
It will be different in the morning, it will be different the day after that.
It's changing. You can grow new neurones. New neurones will die.
But more importantly those connections, in their millions, will change every day.
It's the only system where the hardware and the software are the same thing.
It's a system that evolved in an unstable outdoor environment
in which we were more or less in constant motion.
Let's just think about that again.
This is a system that developed in an unstable outdoor environment
in which we were more or less in constant motion.
Can anyone think of something which is completely the opposite to that?
Exactly! Perfect! Your office.
A kid's classroom, an unstable outdoor environment
in more or less constant motion.
I want to put forward what I call brain rules. Three brain rules today.
There's many more where these came from but these are some of my favourites.
Because I think they underpin much of flourishing, much of peak performance.
The first brain rule is "move it". The acronym is GOYA. What might that stand for?
"Get Off Your Ass!" You are correct. [laughter]
It's the GOYA principle, and indeed what we now know...
There's a few things that we now know about the brain and the body.
The first thing is that when you move, you support the biology of learning and creating.
You do that because when you physically move,
this wonderful chemical cascade starts to happen.
And let's talk about a few of those growth factors that occur in the brain
a bit down the line.
Brain derived neurotrophic growth factor,
vaso endothelial growth factor, insulin-like growth factor.
You don't have to be a neuroscientist to figure out if something says
brain derived neurotrophic growth factor, it's probably good.
And it is. Your brain, when you move, has the chemistry that
supports brain cell growth and reconnection of synapse.
And that focusses the biology of learning and creating and thinking of new stuff
and for most of us, that's our job. Thinking of new stuff.
Solving ambiguous problems. Here's some solutions at my end.
Bottom left's my office in the university. It's a height adjustable desk.
I can spend periods of the day standing, moving.
It's particularly good... I don't know if people do those phone conferences
you know if you're sitting you're sort of gently... nod.
And this stops you doing it. You're energised.
Bottom right is the way I get to work.
which is walking, and I can laugh at the suckers on the Auckland motorway.
You're moving, you're supporting that gap between home and work,
you're solving problems. More importantly, it turns out the time in the day that
cortisol, the stress hormone, the hormone that drives a craving
for fatty, salty and sugary foods, preferably all three - donuts - is supported,
is the highest in the day, when you are driving a car.
If you can get out of your car, and stay out of it, I think you're gonna be better off.
But most of all, on the top there, you see me running.
And I admit I'm responsible partially for the national physical activity guidelines
for New Zealanders, that you should accumulate 30 minutes
of moderate walking that will be alright.
But the fact is, for brain health, if you want a high performing brain,
huffing and puffing is where's it at.
That's where that whole chemical cascade is the strongest.
You're starting to put humans in their natural element, which is in
an unstable outdoor environment in more or less constant motion.
Moving supports your brain.
Number two, who's that? Neo, from, Matrix. Yeah, I knew we had some sci-fi guys here.
It's actually nothing to do with Neo, it's about sleeping.
But let's just think about, this is a principle of recovery for the brain,
and I think interestingly, as is the moving principle,
once we start to explore how the brain best performs,
it's actually a little bit contrary to how business have set themselves up
and business can operate better and humans can reach their potential
more easily when we reengineer things a bit.
The first obvious one... this is a circadian rhythm, brain activity on the vertical thing there.
That dark bit's nighttime, hopefully when you are sleeping.
Most of you will know this, of course, that we have this change in brain activity,
we have these periods of very inactive brains.
That's where we reorganise our brain the most.
The most recent mouse model stuff, and we're more complicated than them hopefully,
2 million synapses change in that period of sleeping
on a simple motor learning task during the day.
So humans many more.
If you wake people up and don't allow them to get into that deep sleep,
they have trouble with memory. And you can artificially get that problem
if you are a snorer, you live with snorers, you get drunk before you go to bed,
you take sleeping tablets, these sorts of things.
You don't get into that deep sleep.