Welcome to the first session of this Executive Functioning Skills course.
Are you ready to become an expert of your own brain and embrace your uniqueness?
Hi,
My name is Emilio José García and I am very excited to see you here.
We have a very interesting journey ahead.
Get ready to be curious,
To learn more about how your brain works and to discover new strategies to complement your Executive Functioning Skills.
I invite you to get comfortable,
Close your eyes and use your full consciousness and attention to listen to this session with curiosity and with an open mind.
Executive Functioning Skills allow you to consciously control your thoughts,
Your emotions and your actions in order to achieve goals and manage your life.
These skills allow you to manage your working memory so that you can execute plans,
Goals and specific steps needed to reach your goal,
Organize the order in which you complete activities and use your time,
Identify what you think about and help you self-regulate your feelings and your emotions.
These skills normally don't operate alone,
They work together and complement each other.
Think of Executive Functioning Skills as the CEO of your brain.
This is a practical course.
The main intention for this course is to help you become conscious of your skills one by one,
Observe how they work in your day to day life and learn strategies to improve and complement them in a way that feels good to you and to your brain.
This course doesn't look at these functions,
It rather focuses on working with your strengths and helping you complement the skills that may not come as easily to you.
I am going to introduce these skills one by one for you to start getting familiar with all of them.
You don't need to do anything yet,
Just listen and learn about these skills so that you can start noticing them in the next sessions.
There will be a full session for each skill,
So you will have plenty of time and information to understand each of them.
Are you ready?
Let's get started.
The first three skills help you control your thoughts,
How you think,
How you behave,
How you hold information and how you think flexibly.
These three skills are working memory,
Adaptable thinking also known as cognitive flexibility and metacognition.
Working memory allows you to keep key information while performing a task.
Adaptable thinking or cognitive flexibility allows you to adjust your behaviour to unexpected changes.
It also allows you to problem solve taking in account different viable options and be able to view reality from different perspectives.
Metacognition means thinking about how we think.
It's the ability to be aware of our own thoughts,
Processes and an understanding of the patterns behind them.
It's our ability to reflect about what we think,
What we do and adjust as needed to achieve our desired outcome.
The next two skills allow you to control your emotions,
How you regulate.
These two skills are emotional self-regulation and response inhibition also known as impulse control.
Emotional self-regulation is our ability to identify and self-regulate our emotions and how we react to them.
Response inhibition or impulse control is the ability to suppress actions that do not fit the current context and would interfere with goal-driven behaviour.
Possibly it means avoiding doing something that you may regret later or things that may not be appropriate in the present moment.
The next nine skills will help you control your actions,
How you plan,
How you focus and how you shift your attention.
These skills are Task initiation.
Task initiation is the skill that allows you to get started doing tasks.
Attention control and focus.
Attention control is your ability to decide what you pay attention to and what you ignore and focus is your ability to concentrate your attention into a specific task.
Time management.
Time management helps you be aware of passing time and use your time consciously,
Efficiently and intentionally.
Completing tasks.
Completing a task is the skill that will allow you to take the required actions with the required attention and focus at the required time to make sure that a task is completed according to a specific standard.
Organization.
Organization is the skill that helps you keep track of things physically and mentally.
It also helps you create structure and systems to be able to maintain order.
Planning.
Planning is the skill that will help you design and find a way to carry out tasks to reach a specific outcome.
Sequencing.
Sequencing is your ability to put tasks in the right order to be able to achieve your desired outcome.
Sequencing can help you create efficient systems and routines that you understand and are able to follow.
Prioritizing.
Prioritizing is your ability to decide what tasks or outcomes are more important and need your immediate attention,
And which ones to ignore or put on pause.
Transitioning and shifting.
Transitioning or shifting is your ability to move intentionally from task to task,
Allowing yourself enough buffer time to get ready physically,
Mentally,
And emotionally.
Well,
You have met all of the executive functioning skills that we will cover in this course.
It's okay if you are feeling a little bit overwhelmed,
Trying to remember them all.
Don't worry,
It takes a few times to get familiar with them.
This is why the next session is all about more examples of these skills in action.
Now I would like to allow some time and space for you to reflect about how you use these skills in your day to day life.
I invite you to visualize what you did today before listening to this session,
Yesterday,
Last week.
Just connect with situations and experiences and notice how you used your executive functioning skills to manage them and to manage yourself.
Notice any frustrations you may have experienced,
Any successful tasks that you were able to complete,
The way that you used your attention,
The way you transitioned from task to task,
The way you planned and organized,
The way you prioritized,
The way you regulated your emotions and controlled your impulses.
By doing this,
You are using your metacognition skill that allows you to think about how you think and to notice how you behaved and the things that you could change in the future.
Please enjoy this time with yourself.
Gently bring your attention back to the session.
Thank you so much for spending this time with yourself.
Please share in the course classroom your current relationship with your executive functioning skills.
Are you aware of them?
Are they all new to you?
Maybe you are aware of some?
Maybe you never heard of them before?
By sharing where you are at now,
You will then be able to come back in the future and reflect about how much progress you have made.
You are also welcome to ask any questions you may have.
I can't wait to read what you share.
I will see you in the next session where we will look at all of these skills in action.
Until then,
Keep noticing the way you use your executive functioning skills throughout your day.
Have an amazing rest of your day.
Adiós.
