Jeff Brown - The Winner’s Brain: 8 Strategies Great Minds Use to Achieve Success

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Table of Contents

FROM MARK

For Karen, Jake, and Nathan, my very favorite group of Winners.

FROM JEFF

For Carolynne and Grant.
Brown Team Go!

FROM LIZ

In loving memory of my father, Lewis Marshall Neporent, M.D.

The Winners Brain

PART ONE

Understanding the Winners Brain

Introduction

PEOPLE WHO ARE SUCCESSFUL in life have one thing in common:

They all seem to be doing something different and special with their neurocircuitry to maximize their potential and achieve their goals. We believe thats what gives these people a Winners Brain.

The average brain does a pretty good job of getting by day to day. After all, it has over one hundred billion brain cells serviced by a superhighway of blood vessels to help you think your thoughts, move your body, and experience the world around you, acting with a combination of speed and efficiency that even the most advanced computers cant rival. But presumably you are reading this book because of a desire to move beyond just getting by. You want to excel in life and achieve the goals that matter to you most.

Maybe youre considering a career change or launching a new business, yet havent had the wherewithal to take the leap. Maybe you feel stuck at work and are unclear how to get ahead. Perhaps youve lost your job and are searching for a better situation. Wherever you are in life, whatever your goals, you want to expand your limits and open up your possibilities.

Contrary to popular belief, high personal achievement has very little to do with your IQ, your life circumstances, your financial resources, knowing the right people, or even luck. Take, for example, the great French sculptor Auguste Rodin, who came from a poor family and was rejected from art school three times. Despite butting up against constant rejection, he bounced back time and again, using each failure and disappointment as an opportunity to fuel his talents and his passions. As you shall see once you dive into the upcoming chapters, Resilience and Motivation are two of the critical abilities for which Winners Brains are wired.

The Partnership of Brain and Behavior

Our combined expertise as a cognitive behavioral psychologist (Jeff) and a cognitive neuroscientist (Mark) places us in a unique position to explain how the cognitive mechanisms of the human brain are associated with success. We have seen from our respective work how the strategies shared in this book can influence thoughts and behavior and help individuals push past unpleasant life circumstances, allowing them to blossom and grow. Seeing people routinely rise above challengessometimes incredibly harsh onesand consistently flourish is one of the primary reasons Jeff became so interested in the science of success. And weve also seen evidence that these same strategies can literally reshape the brain. Brains that perform successfully really do light up differently and work more efficiently, and Mark has investigated just how the structure and function of brains are altered as a result of how their owners use them.

Winners Brains actually operate differently than the average brain. We know this, in part, because of technological advances that let us see individual differences in how neural areas light up on scans of brains as they spring into action. By measuring physiological changes related to neural activity, such as increases in blood flow within the brain, techniques such as f MRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) can help us see which areas of the brain are relatively more active and participating as a corresponding thought, emotion, or behavior is playing out. (If, for example, someone sneaks up behind you and yells Boo! that instant jolt of fear that surges through your body is associated with increased activity within the amygdala, an almond-shaped structure in the medial temporal lobethe structure thats most closely associated with identifying threats and evaluating the possibility of harm.) Weve found the following:

A Winners Brain is very good at tuning out distractions and choosing the best way to focus on a task (there are different types of focus the brain is capable of) in order to get the best outcome. A study led by Daniel Weissman at the University of Michigan showed that participants were able to stop and reorient their brains processing power to help them perform better despite interruptions. We call the deliberate form of this strategy focus reinvestment. With practice, this type of skill is something you can develop for yourself to reduce your own attention-related errors. Even if previous tries to change jobs, find a mate, or attain any other objective have failed in the past, an extra dose of focus may be just what you need to get you over the hump.

Winners Brains seem to maintain a bottomless effort supply. A youngster who is forced to practice his piano lessons one hour every day, even if he doesnt want to and has no interest in playing, is unlikely to become an accomplished pianist. But a child who loves music, is interested in playing, and understands the potential of success will prioritize and complete her practice sessionseven at the end of her most tiring days. She is more likely to become a proficient, successful player because of her ability to sustain the effort.

Support for this idea comes from studies like one by Debra Gusnard and colleagues at Washington University School of Medicine, who measured peoples brain activity while they viewed a random series of images that were either emotionally stimulating or dull. These people also filled out self-assessments regarding their day-to-day level of persistence in completing tasks. Subjects with high persistence scores showed, during periods of the experiment containing mostly dull images, increased activity in brain regions known to contribute to motivational drive. Subjects with low persistence scores showed decreased activity in these regions. Winners Brains fire up Motivation to push through boredom, while brains of less tenacious individuals seem to run out of steam.

Winners Brains adapt in exceptional ways over time, harnessing a process known as neuroplasticity. Every time you think a thought, feel an emotion, or execute a behavior, there is always some sort of corresponding change within your brain. In some instances we can detect these alterations in the brains physical landscape. Later in this book, youll read about London Black Cab drivers who have regions of the hippocampusan area of the brain involved in memory and spatial navigationthat are considerably larger than that of the average person. Research by Eleanor Maguire and colleagues at University College London suggests that these cab drivers likely started out with fairly ordinary brains. But when motivated to commit routes to memory, they quite literally built a better brain, neuron by neuron. This is something virtually anyone should be able to doincluding youif you quite literally put your mind to it.

Many people view the brain as a mysterious, abstract structurealmost like a set of master controls that run on autopilot behind a locked door to which one has no real access. This simply isnt the case. You have the ability to unlock the door and consciously, deliberately, and successfully control much of your brains switchboard in order to better position yourself to achieve your goals and dreams. The brain is active and subject to change no matter what you dothis is one of the key discoveries of modern neuroscience. What sets the owner of a Winners Brain apart is the desire and the know-how to take charge of the process.

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