brain – Looking to God

Think of something you really, really want. Now, close your eyes and imagine having it. Wait, did you just close your eyes? I meant for you to close them for a second or two, not indefinitely. Go ahead and close them for a few seconds. I’m hoping you opened them again. Okay, forget about closing your eyes. Gosh. This is getting complicated. Let’s start over.

Think of something you really, really want. Now, imagine having it. Can you see it? If it’s an object, can you feel it? What’s the texture like under the pads of your fingers? Try to imagine the sensation. If it’s something you’ve wanted to do like, take that vacation you’ve been thinking about, imagine the spot. Are you feeling the water splashing over your skin while you’re lying on the beach? Can you feel the sun beat down on your head? Okay, so maybe a sunny spot is not for everyone. How about a refreshing Alaskan Vacation? You can’t beat six months of sunshine or six months of darkness.

The thing about the imagination is the brain can’t tell what is real and what is make-believe. To the mind, it’s all the same. Have you ever seen a movie where you’re on the edge of your chair wondering what will happen next? The brain is telling you that it’s firing its synapses in order for you to feel the thrill the movie is providing. The brain thinks it’s real.

Studies have proven the brain is a resilient organ. It remembers things beyond what we think it remembers. When we think about the past, it’s as if we’re reliving the experiences all over again.

Let’s go back to thinking about stuff. Are you ready? Imagine the first time you fell in love. Do you have the thought yet? If you’ve never fallen in love, then imagine your first crush. Better still, do you remember your first kiss? Really, take a moment and think about it. Remember how your heart flipped inside of you, how the center of your being burned with the pangs of wanting this person in your life. Do you feel your palms sweaty, your lips tingly and your breath speeding up? Remember how you couldn’t sleep without thinking about them? How you couldn’t eat because your stomach had a knot the size of a baseball twirling about, never leaving you alone?

If you’ve really stopped to think about it, and felt all those emotions all over again, then that’s your mind at work. It can’t tell the difference if those thoughts you’re having are real.

That’s why it’s important to think of your goals as if you have already achieved them. I’m not talking about that self-hypnosis/self-enlightenment movement going around in the entertainment industry these days. We have enough of that in the gossip columns when we read about stars who have lost touch with reality because they think they are better than everyone else.

What I’m referring to is about work and reward. Training the mind with the feeling of having attained a reward. The best way to do this is to write things down in a list and crossing the items off as you complete them. Instant reward. The other way is thinking about having already won the fight. The mind doesn’t know better, so the mind will release the same chemicals into the brain to provide that satisfaction a person would receive when achieving a goal.

When this happens, the mind will press you to want to achieve that goal.

Simple, right?

Only, you’ll have to follow through. It’s not enough to think about what you want. The mind will reward you, but that feeling in the pit of your stomach, when you see things haven’t really changed, will want you to change.

You can only go so far with the mind. Eventually, you’ll have to take steps to achieve the goal in reality in order to receive the reward in reality.

Make a list. Follow through. Win.

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What’s on your list? Does anyone know the goals you want to achieve?

My wife recently introduced me to a series of CDs by Dr. Caroline Leaf, a cognitive neuroscientist with a PhD in Communication Pathology specializing in Neuropsychology. In the series, she talks about the development of the human brain. My wife and I had an hour to kill in the car on our way for a weekend jaunt, so she thought I might enjoy listening to it. Boy, was she right.

I’m taking a moment for my Freedom Friday series to talk a bit about the human brain. By no means will I pretend to know everything about the human brain—but I’ll mention what I’ve learned.

What interested me was the idea of learning. How does the brain learn? Is there a physical change in the brain when someone decides they want to learn a subject? Or does that knowledge somehow get there because some people are smarter than others?

The brain has two hemispheres, right and left. Both hemispheres work together. Past science once suggested the two hemispheres worked independently—the left dedicated to logic (eg. science, mathematics, etc.) and the right dedicated to creativity (eg. music, art, literature, etc.) . Science has now discovered the brain works as a complete unit with both hemispheres working together. They’ve also discovered an interesting interaction that takes place between the two hemispheres they didn’t understand before.

The right hemisphere processes information from detail to big picture. The left hemisphere processes information from big picture to detail. The brain works best when the information it needs to process has a logic to it. If the information lacks organization, the brain goes into a default mode and shuts down not accepting new information. The only way I can describe this default mode is a person becomes unresponsive to the knowledge and would rather be out surfing with Beach Boys music playing in the background.

The brain also contains what’s called dendrites. Dendrites makes it possible for the brain to remember. Healthy dendrites have an actual physical appearance in the brain that is stalky, thick and branch-like. If you’ve ever seen a head of broccoli, that is what the human brain looks like underneath. Obviously the color of the brain wouldn’t be green, otherwise it would be a) weird, b) make us zombies. The thicker the dendrite, the more powerful a memory.

Short dendrites are known as floppy cells. Floppy cells occur when the brain absorbs a piece of information but then discards it. We all know the condition as short term memory. When the brain needs to remember five minutes’s worth of info, it creates floppy cells.

You must be wondering, what happens to the floppy cells when we don’t need them anymore? Good question. This is where sleep becomes comes to the rescue. When a person sleeps, the brain cleans away the floppy cells and stores them in an inaccessible part of the brain. The storage capacity of the brain is about 300 million years. I’d place a winning bet that we have enough capacity in that noggin of ours to store five minutes worth of garbage in there, don’t you think?

All right, having said that, what is the result of this brief discourse regarding the human brain?

When a student is in the process of learning a new subject, there’s an actual physical change in the brain that takes place in order to retain the new knowledge. As the student learns, dendrites grow thick. Anything not needed, the brain cleans away during sleep. As the student continues to learn, the student becomes smarter. The physical changes in the brain allow that to happen. Barring disease, the brain is the only organ that continues to grow in spite of getting older.

In other words, don’t let anyone say to you that you’re too old to learn. You’re never too old to learn.

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Have you ever studied into the human brain? If so, what do you like about it?

Tag: brain

What Is Success?

The Human Brain

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