How to Apply Revolutionary New Brain Research Discoveries to Greatly Advance Your Achievements
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Featured Expert - Doug Bench, MS JD, AAAS
Recently there has been an explosion of research explaining the intricate workings of the human brain. Neuroscientists are now able, using brand new advanced imaging equipment, to literally “see” how the brain responds to stimuli as its happening. This was never before possible and has provided brain scientists with astounding findings about how the brain works. In fact, over 96% of everything science now knows about the brain has been discovered in just the last 10 years. Further, over 60% of what used to be true about the human brain has been found to be false!
You can now learn to “Mind Your Brain” and apply techniques based on these new discoveries to greatly enhance your brain’s performance and create a lifetime of greater achievement.
Here are an important few of the most recent brain science discoveries:
Thoughts Are Things
Your thoughts are physical things. Your thinking and your thoughts are biological, electrochemical impulses; they can be seen, measured, and examined. They are real. If you understand brain function, you can learn to control your mind and control your thinking. If you control your thinking, you will control your behavior! It’s brain surgery without the scalpel!
Your attitudes are created, controlled, and influenced by your beliefs. What you believe about anything will determine your attitudes, which create your feelings, which direct your behavior. Belief neuron patterns are so powerful that they can even make something appear to be different from what it really is. Belief does not require things to be factually true; it only requires us to believe them.
Where do beliefs come from? They come from your thoughts: the interconnections of neurons that fire a given idea. Thoughts that fire the most are relied on the most to create your beliefs. Thoughts are physical things. Every thought that comes into your brain from the outside world and every thought you feed yourself is stored as a neuron pattern in your brain. These neuron pattern firings, these chain reactions, these thoughts, create your beliefs. Learn to control your thoughts, and you will learn to control your behavior.
You can learn to do this! But you have got to be careful. The scientists have learned that the brain thinks in pictures and patterns of images. These images are being produced in 6 areas of the brain. Only in one of these six areas (the conscious level) are we aware of the our brain thoughts.
In the other 5 areas of thought, images are fired at the nonconscious level and we are not aware of what they are. We cannot distinguish real from imagined-truth from a lie at these areas and these thoughts are firing involuntarily based on our most dominant thoughts at the conscious level.
Every single thought that fires at the nonconscious level is taken as real and happening in real time! That’s why a sad movie seems sad, even though we consciously know it’s just a moving picture on a screen.
Since 5/6th of our thoughts are fired at the nonconscious level, our nonconscious thoughts control 5/6th of our behavior. I call it your brain’s 500 lb gorilla! You have got to learn to control it to control your behavior. So be aware of your thinking. If you say over and over to yourself, “Do not overeat” or “Do not quit”, the images created in your 500 lb gorilla, sees only “Overeat” or “Quit”. This is the exact opposite of what you want.
Your thoughts must be phrased only in what I call a positive-positive. For example, instead of saying to yourself, “Don’t overeat” you should repeat a positive affirmation, “I am fit and thin and eat healthy foods.” Play to win! Never play “not to lose”.
Scientists have said that the average person’s self-talk is over 75% negative. You have got to change these thoughts, images and pictures into positive-positive thoughts and pictures by “Stomping the ANTS” (Automatic Negative ThoughtS)
Get yourself a rubber band for your wrist, and each time you catch yourself making a negative statement (self-talk or out loud), snap your wrist hard! After about 30 days, your thoughts will become about 80% positive, which will get your 500 lb gorilla working for you and not against you!
Brain Plasticity
Fantastic News! Your brain is not hardwired! You can change it!
One of the greatest neuroscience discoveries of all time was made just in 1997 and is known as
Neurogenesis or Brain Plasticity.
If you stimulate your brain (by trying or learning new things), no matter what your age, it will physically form and grow new connections called DSPs. These new connections will increase the total number of connections within your brain and will increase your brain’s capacity for achievement.
This fantastic news means that you and I have to destroy any neuron patterns that have been firing thoughts saying, “I can’t.” All those excuses need to go. Scientists have proven that whether you are 6 years old or 60, your brain can form new connections, and the number of new connections you have the capacity to make is greater than the number of molecules in the universe! The number of new things and new connections that you can create is the number 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 followed by 6.2 million miles of more zeros!
Just this last year (2007) researchers seeking help for Alzheimer’s have determined that you can intentionally stimulate your brain to do new things and create new connections that will build up a “neural reserve” that can be called upon to replace brain cells damaged by either pathological or atrophic Alzheimer’s, thereby reducing its negative impact!
It’s a scientific truth: there is no limit on your capacity to achieve new things. Remember, your beliefs are not necessarily based in reality. It is your perception of reality that ends up controlling your beliefs. If you allow neuron patterns to fire that put limits on your ability to achieve, those limits will become real for you. Stop firing the limiting neuron patterns! You have NO limits! Neuroscience has proven it!
Reticular Activating System
The reticular activating system (RAS) is a bundle of interconnected neurons located near the back of your brain, in the noncortex part, and is not voluntarily controlled by your thoughts. It is an automated system that functions constantly. All impulses that enter your brain for interpretation first pass through your RAS. If you are driving and a ball bounces in front of your automobile, you do not have to consciously process thoughts to hit the brake pedal; it happens automatically. Once the RAS recognizes an impulse coming in, it sends a signal directly to your conscious level, interrupting whatever you are thinking at that moment and brings you a conscious set of neuron patterns about the stimulus it has observed. You cannot stop it. You cannot keep yourself from thinking about it. It is automatic!
What if you could turn over to your RAS responsibility for taking action toward your goals? Think about how marvelous this would be. If you could turn that over to the automated portion of your brain, procrastination would be eliminated. Stimuli related to your goal would be recognized by your RAS, and you would be forced to respond either in action or reaction to those stimuli automatically.
How can you assign responsibility to your RAS? Repetition makes it your belief. Remember, your thoughts fired over and over again formulate “beliefs.” If your beliefs (goals) are on your RAS “important list,” then every time an impulse related to that goal enters your brain, it would automatically cause an instant message to go to your conscious level. You could not stop it!
Think back to when you got a new automobile. Remember how you started seeing that same car everywhere after that? What happens? The car was put on your RAS “important list.” Some magical force turns your head and makes you look when a car just like yours goes by. You cannot resist it.
This is the power of the RAS. It calls your conscious attention to anything related to neuron patterns that are on your “important list.” Determine what’s going to be on your “important list” (goals) and get it there! (It takes about 30 days of affirmations to create enough new brain connections to get something onto your “important list.”) Then, your RAS will take over and automate your achievements toward those goals.
Your Amygdala is NOT Your Achieving Friend!
In both your left and right brain at the tip of a horseshoe-shaped area called the hippocampus, sits one of the most controversial parts of your brain. It’s the amygdala. Hard to say; hard to spell; and hard to get along with!
The major function and purpose of the vast majority of the brain is not for thinking. It is to keep us safe and alive! At the center of this lies the amygdala. I call it “Myggie” for short. Myggie, is the one who orders the immediate release of adrenalin when you are faced with danger. This is a very good thing! Unfortunately, Myggie is not too bright. (It sits in your reptilian brain, not the cortex.)
When you are trying to do or learn something new, your amygdala senses the anxiety or discomfort and immediately thinks your safety is being threatened, and orders the release of hormones and neurotransmitters (and negative self-talk) trying to get you to stop this “unsafe” thing. Remember, Myggie, who sits in your nonconscious brain takes everything as real even when it’s not.
Your amygdala tries to keep you from stretching yourself and growing outside and beyond your comfort zone. But that’s how all progress and growth and achievements begin! So you have got to recognize the messages from Myggie and tell it to shut-up!
I mentioned that about 80% of self-talk is negative! This is thanks to Myggie! Not only that! Scientists have estimated that about 2/3 of your self-talk is false! This also is due to the seemingly helpful efforts of your amygdala. Stop believing everything that you think! Especially when those thoughts are negative.
It is probably not the truth but rather an effort by Myggie to keep you “safe”. Your Amygdala is NOT your achieving friend. Recognize that and adjust your thoughts (and beliefs) accordingly!
Mind Your Brain!
So, how do you apply these discoveries to achieve more?
How do you give yourself a brain transplant without the scalpel?
1. Pay attention to your thoughts. Your thoughts are real things, and they create connections in your brain that are forming your beliefs, and your beliefs control your actions. If your thought patterns are negative, they will literally create negative neuron patterns that fire the most (negative beliefs) and create your reality. Keep them positive!
2. Understand the enormity of your brain’s capacity to form new connections and to do new things. Your abilities have no limits. Neuroscientists have proven this!
3. Get your positive goals on your RAS “important list.” Write them down. Repeat them over and over until they are burned in. Use affirmations to help you. You will have turned action toward your goals over to the automatic portion of your brain and will have achieved “motivation automation.” Just watch the action! Before realizing it, your goals will be your achievements …automatically!
4. Take control of your thoughts, by taking control of the efforts of your amygdala. Learn to recognize its efforts to keep you from growing, and learn and practice small steps that you know will be outside your comfort zone, then notice but ignore Myggie’s efforts to keep you from changing, growing and achieving! Learn IVM! (Inner Voice Management)
5. Mind Your Brain! Learn all that you can about the functioning of your brain. Learn techniques based on the new research findings on the brain. Apply these techniques as habits in your life, and watch your productivity and achievements soar! UHL
Doug Bench, MS, JD, AAAS, a retired lawyer and former Applied Physiology researcher, has read and analyzed over 80,000 pages of recent brain research to create what he calls his “Mind Your Brain” Audio Textbook Guide-Home Study CD Course, which contains more than 16 recent revolutionary brain research discoveries,16 Science-Based Techniques for a lifetime of Greater Achievements, and over 110 lessons gleaned from brain research that you can apply immediately to greatly improve your achievement skills, your health, your memory and your life. Doug’s new book, “The Brain Apples Blueprint for Brain Fitness: Your Ultimate Guide for a Happy, Healthy, More Successful and Wealthy…Rest of Your Life!”, will be published later this year.
Learn more at www.scienceforsuccess.com or watch the videos at www.mind-your-brain.net
