Aziz Kaddan of Myndlift: 5 Things Anyone Can Do To Optimize Their Mental Wellness
First, change your perception of stress. I read a book called “The Upside of stress” and it absolutely changed mine. It shows why stress can be good for you, how it can help you grow, keep you challenged, and how to balance it out. I recommend reading that book and that’s the first step. So, embrace stress, in a balanced way of course .
As a part of my series about the “5 Things Anyone Can Do To Optimize Their Mental Wellness”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Aziz Kaddan, a mental health advocate who has been exploring the human brain for many years. He is a CEO and co-founder of Myndlift — a neurofeedback training platform. By the age of 23, Aziz was honoured on the Forbes 30 under 30 list.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?
My background is in computer science. I started my degree early on and managed to get my first qualification when I was 19 years old. That allowed me to start working in the tech industry in Israel at a very young age. There I was exposed to the world of Neuroscience through various conferences and also through my father who is a pediatric neurologist. At that time I got to understand more about the field of mental health, neuroscience and the connection between them. When I saw that EEG and neurofeedback can be used as a way to improve mental wellness but it only existed in clinical settings around the world, I decided that now is the right time to use the current technology in the market to change it. I’ve noticed that new devices were emerging on the market that offer the ability to measure or sense brain activity by using wearables instead of going to labs or clinics. At that point I understood that there is potential here to create something big by bringing neurofeedback from the clinical setting into the home setting by using wearable devices. That’s what we did with Myndlift.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
When we first started the company we wanted to get some exposure and there was a conference happening in Tel Aviv which was covering the combination of Brain and Technology. It was called Brain Tech. Participation in the conference wasn’t cheap and we didn’t have enough to invest in it when we started the company, so I contacted the head of the planning for the conference and begged her to give us tickets for free. She felt sorry for us and just let us in. She even allowed us to have our own booth and show our technology because she liked what we had to offer and our entrepreneurial spirits. As a result of that conference we managed to get a lot of exposure and PR, also, a small investment that helped us take off. The funny thing is that five years later she became an investor through her own venture funds and became a board member of Myndlift. The one who helped us, when we were beggars, is now an investor in the company.
Can you share a story with us about the most humorous mistake you made when you were first starting? What lesson or take-away did you learn from that?
Yes, when we were starting the company we were trying to get into the good tech accelerators. They get thousands of applicants, usually requiring them to record the video of themselves. We thought of ways to stand out, and we would spend days, sometimes weeks, on video production making these funny videos about the company and the founders instead of focusing on the business. Needless to say, these videos yielded no results and we didn’t get into any of these accelerators. That experience taught me to focus on the right things instead of creating funny videos for the company.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I think it’s very important to have a mentor who’s a few steps ahead of you, but at the same time, not too far ahead because you need somebody who’s been there and still has the memory of what has been done and still remembers the lessons that they learned along the way and transfer these lessons to you.
Three years ago I was at a conference and I saw a man speaking in a panel. He was one of the hotshots in the digital health field in Israel. He created an amazing company called Early Sense. Right after the conference I went up to him and asked to be my mentor. It was a very straightforward approach and he agreed to talk. Since then he kept mentoring me for free for months until one day asked him to join Myndlift as our board member. He continues helping me to this day. During the three years I have weekly calls with him and sometimes he’s not only my business Mentor but a therapist as well.
What advice would you suggest to your colleagues in your industry to thrive and avoid burnout?
I suffered burn out myself three years ago and I’m grateful for my wife who helped me along the way to get out of it.
Everyone should find their escape spot. I started doing music. After a lot of stress at work I would dedicate the day or the weekend to do some music just to get out, keep my head out, and do something very different. Some other people hike, while others do sports.
We need to get creative, move our body and just find that balance between work and other hobbies.
It’s very important to get enough sleep. It’s been three years since I had that burn out. I go to bed very early, I wake up early to have a few hours before everybody else wakes up. This also helps enormously.
What advice would you give to other leaders about how to create a fantastic work culture?
I’m still striving to build a great company culture and we still have a long way to go. Essentially, we focus on:
- Transparency. We are transparent with our employees about everything concerning the company.
- Flexibility. If an employee needs a mental health day, just go and take it, rest. No questions asked. We try to avoid monitoring work hours too much and focus more on productivity and the sense of projects or goals achieved. It gives the people in the workplace the autonomy and responsibility that they strive for.
Ok thank you for all that. Now let’s move to the main focus of our interview. Mental health is often looked at in binary terms; those who are healthy and those who have mental illness. The truth, however, is that mental wellness is a huge spectrum. Even those who are “mentally healthy” can still improve their mental wellness. From your experience or research, what are five steps that each of us can take to improve or optimize our mental wellness. Can you please share a story or example for each.
I’m going to start with the easier ones.
First, change your perception of stress. I read a book called “The Upside of stress” and it absolutely changed mine. It shows why stress can be good for you, how it can help you grow, keep you challenged, and how to balance it out. I recommend reading that book and that’s the first step. So, embrace stress, in a balanced way of course .
Secondly, everyone should have that doesn’t involve drinking alcohol, smoking or social media.
Find a positive escape, for example, mine is music. It can be art or sport, surfing or anything else you like. It can also be reading as it allows you to have a different experience.
Steps three, four, and five require some commitment, but the the moment you find your sweet spot it’s going to be smooth sailing from there.
The third one is move, and I’m not saying you should become a marathon runner, you can just start taking simple walks during the day or even doing yoga or stretching. Exercise gets more oxygen in your brain which definitely helps in your overall mental well-being. So that is a must.
The fourth one is nutrition. I’d recommend trying to cut down on things that contain sugar or carbs, with high glycemic index.These are the types of carbohydrates that turn into glucose really quickly in your blood and you get a boost of energy and then a drastic drop right after. Just like what happens when you eat a lot of chocolate, for example, you feel energetic and then an hour later you are super tired. This does not only impact your body but your brain as well. The way you feel impacts your mood. So, try to steer away from these kinds of foods as much as possible and you will see how it will impact your mental health.
The fifth one is sleep. Being able to adjust my sleeping schedule to be consistent has helped me a lot with regulating my mood or with preventing burnout. It is important to go to bed at approximately the same time every day. The more consistent your sleeping schedule is throughout the week, the more stable your circadian rhythm is which essentially plays a big role in the composition of hormones in your body throughout the day. Sleep is one of the most important, if not the most important, factors that you should keep an eye on if you want to optimize your mental well-being. It is also one of the most difficult because of all the distractions that we have around us.
Much of my expertise focuses on helping people to plan for after retirement. Retirement is a dramatic ‘life course transition’ that can impact one’s health. In addition to the ideas you mentioned earlier, are there things that one should do to optimize mental wellness after retirement? Please share a story or an example for each.
I believe the same steps that I described earlier will work for retired people and they should be even more consistent with them.
How about teens and pre teens. Are there any specific new ideas you would suggest for teens and pre teens to optimize their mental wellness?
Same here, I could also recommend them to be careful with choosing their escape activity, make sure it is something positive but not destructive.
Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story?
I have two books that have been very influential for me. One is the “The Upside of stress” by Dr Kelly McGonigal. It helped me to perceive stress in totally different way, helped me to see stress as the growth and accelerator. I got a lot of versions of this book and gave it to every single employee at my company so that they also understand that stress is not necessarily a bad thing and sometimes can be useful.
The other book is “Principles” by Ray Dalio. Ray says that whenever we make a decision we should try to understand why did we make that decision and if there’s a principle behind it, we should write it down as our basic principles. Then, each time that there’s a decision that needs to be made, we can go down to the basic principles and make the decision based on that.
I am journaling and writing down every decision that I make, big or small, and trying to extract principles to live by. It helped me a lot in trying to regulate the way that I make decisions.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
We already started the movement to help people improve their mental well-being using wearable and mobile technology. We are bringing something that existed only in the clinical setting called Neurofeedback into the home setting so that everyone can do it now at home in an accessible and affordable way. Through this we’re helping people to get directly into their brain activity and try to influence it using games or videos and, therefore, achieve better focus, lower anxiety in an objective and data-driven way. Right now there are lots of solutions that are not based on data, but on speaking, for example:
Talking to a psychologist is great, but we believe that more data needs to be added or included in mental health and that’s exactly what we’re doing: we are bringing brain data into the mental health equation in order to help people improve their mental well-being with tangible progress and information along the way.
That’s our movement and it’s already bringing good to people, and we really hope that more people will get exposed to it, understand the mission, and help us achieve this big dream to make Mental Health data-driven.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?
I guess my most important life lesson and this might be a “cliche” but I think that good deeds travel fast and it is extremely important to help other people without expecting anything in return. I want to continue building Myndlift and grow this movement of better mental health. I had people along the way helping me push through and the more help I received from them, the more I wanted to help others myself.
Now I try to help other entrepreneurs that are at earlier stages than I am just because I’m also receiving help from other entrepreneurs that are more advanced in their businesses.
So here is one simple example that has nothing to do with the entrepreneurship world of mental health but it really got me into thinking. I was driving my car in Tel Aviv, which is a city that is extremely difficult to find a parking spot, especially on a Friday. We were going down the street and somebody jumps on the street and waves to us. We stopped the car thinking that something is wrong. I lower my window to try to understand what’s going on. He says: “I’m actually leaving my parking spot right now, and I wondered if you wanted to park instead of me”.
We were shocked because this was the first time that somebody just offered the parking spot because they are leaving and they want to make sure that you don’t get stuck looking for other parking spots. He was super helpful. Obviously, we took him up on his offer and we parked then. After that I started doing the same thing just because somebody else did it to me and, ever since, every time I get my car out of the parking lot I try to see if there’s somebody there looking for a parking and propose mine.
Crazy thing about this story is that week after that the same thing happened when somebody asked me if I wanted to take his parking spot because he’s leaving. That just shows that good deeds travel fast. There was nothing like that before in Tel Aviv and just one kind act created a chain of kindness.
What is the best way our readers can follow you on social media?
Official page: https://www.myndlift.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/myndlift/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/myndlift/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/myndlift/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/myndlift?lang=eshttps://twitter.com/myndlift?lang=es
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!
