Contents
- 52: Believe and Succeed
MASTER
YOUR BRAIN
T RAINING Y OUR M IND
for S UCCESS in L IFE
PHILLIP ADCOCK
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STERLING and the distinctive Sterling logo are registered trademarks of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.
2015 by Phillip Adcock
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.
ISBN 978-1-4549-1636-9
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CONTENTS
Believe and Succeed
Introduction
C ongratulations! Youve just taken the most important step to achieving more of everything youve always wanted in life.
If youve ever tried and failed to quit smoking, doggedly followed a diet and ended up heavier, or repeatedly crashed and burned on the dating scene, youve probably found yourself in the self-help section of your local bookstore or library. There, you likely waded through scores of titles, each promising to be better than the last at helping you achieve all that your heart desires. Sadly, 99 percent of the time they dont succeed.
Lets begin by saying that this isnt just another self-help book. Its an owners manual for your brain. In the coming chapters, youll learn to make effective and lasting changes in your life by using more of your brain in ways that will seem astonishing and yet intuitive. If you didnt notice on your way past the table of contents, this book has fifty-two chapters. To get the most from Master Your Brain, read the book all the way through once. Then go back and read one chapter a week, focusing on completing the exercises and implementing the advice.
This book is about empowering you to reach whatever goals you set for yourselfwherever, whenever, and however you want. Youll find out how millions of people have improved their lives by simply learning from real-life examples and using the techniques and tools revealed in this book. When youve finished reading it, youll be well on your way to creating a more extraordinary you.
But who am I to be making such bold claims?
As a student of human behavior and psychology for the past thirty years, Ive developed the tools to deliver actionable behavior goals and psychological insights to guide some of the largest corporate entities in the world. Shopping Behavior Xplained Ltd., the organization that I founded, specializes in studying the actions and habits of consumers. Our goal is to help retailers communicate with customers more effectively. Our analysis and interpretation of human behavior have led to sales growth, improved service, increased customer satisfaction, and a wealth of other benefits. In short, I know humans. Thats my bottom-line business. I know how we think and why we behave the way we do. Unlike pseudo-psychologists and so-called mind experts, I have tested my hypotheses rigorously over the past three decades. I use that knowledge to advise the movers and shakers of tomorrow through public speaking and university lectures designed to lead people toward more productive lifestyles.
During my professional development, I embraced and incorporated the teachings of some of the worlds leading psychologists. This book resulted from reading and digesting hundreds of scholarly books and thousands of academic papers on human psychology and behavior. Whether you have a single issue youd like to address or you want to develop an entirely new mental strategy for your life, this book contains proven strategies to help you achieve your goals easily and effectively.
Think about that for a moment.
Nowwhat are you waiting for?
PART ONE
SAY HELLO
TO YOUR
BRAIN
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( 1 )
The Human Supercomputer
S cientist and award-winning author Ray Kurzweil once wrote: The human brain is capable of making an astonishing 20 million-billion calculations per second. Thats power.
Our brains consist of around 73 percent water. A newborn babys brain weighs between 10 and 14 ounces. It will grow to between 46 and 49 ounces by adulthood. On average, our brains comprise only 2 percent of our total body weight but consume around 20 percent of all the energy we use, and between 15 and 20 percent of all the blood pumped from our hearts heads straight to our brains to supply them with the energy they need. A normal adult human brain consists of around 100 billion neurons, the basic information-processing structures that make up this amazing organ. They connect to one another via synapses, through which chemical information flows from one neuron to another. This information passes between neurons by way of tiny chemical reactions in each neuron that fire an electrical or chemical signal across the synapse to the next neuron. Trillions of these impulses take place every second.
Neural pathways within the brain develop before birth. As a growing child associates images with words, the messages that cross these pathways become routine. With increased use, the correlation between a particular sound, such as mama, and the sight of a face becomes established. As these pathways develop, they collectively become the map of how a person thinks, reasons, and remembers. The more often a person uses the same neural pathway, the stronger and more embedded that behavior becomes. Thats why, for example, its so difficult to break habits such as nail biting. On the flip side, practice makes perfect because it strengthens neural pathways, and thats how we improve ourselves.
Our brains can carry out incredible numbers of calculations in a remarkably short period of time. A neuron can fire approximately once every five milliseconds; thats about two hundred times per second. The number of cells to which each neuron connects varies, but each neuron connects to at least one thousand other neurons. So every time a neuron fires, at least one thousand other neurons receive information from that neuron. Do the math, and the number of calculations per second is astonishing:
100 billion neurons 200 signals per second 1,000 connections per signal = 20 quadrillion calculations per second
A typical 2 GHz computer processor can handle a mere two billion calculations per second.
But, as well discover, although this remarkable organ between our ears can perform almost unfathomable numbers of calculations in a single second, it isnt as advanced as we want to believe. Try this exercise:
Exercise
The Beach
Visualize waves washing onto a beach. Add the sound of the waves crashing into the sand as they ebb and flow. Now conjure the smell of the salt air.