Limitless - Jim Kwik Page 0,52
any of us can disagree with the notion that the people around us have a meaningful influence on our lives. A recent Temple University study showed that people (specifically teenagers in this study) act differently when they are alone than they do when they are with others. In reporting on the study for The New York Times, Tara Parker-Pope said that “Dr. Steinberg [one of the authors of the study] notes that the brain system involved in reward processing is also involved in the processing of social information, explaining why peers can have such a pronounced effect on decision making.”8
Because of this influence, those you spend time with have a genuine effect on brain function. Certainly, they affect your self-talk, as most of us tie at least a part of our beliefs to the beliefs others have about us. But they can affect everything from what you eat to how much you exercise, to even how much sleep you get. There are lots of books out there dedicated to helping you distinguish people who are good for you from people who are not, but for the purposes of this chapter, just take a few minutes to think about who your peers are, how much influence they have on your life, and how this affects your desire to unlimit yourself.
KWIK START
Who is someone you need to spend more time with? Reach out and make a date with that person now.
7. BRAIN PROTECTION
This probably goes without saying, but protecting your brain is critical if you’re going to make the most of your brain. You have only one brain. If you were given only one car to use for the rest of your life, how well would you treat that car? You would take care of it as if your life depended on it. Accidents are unavoidable, but putting yourself in situations where brain injury is less likely improves your chances of avoiding the worst. Hard-contact or extreme sports are not ideal if you want to make the most of this precious asset. Driving 20 miles an hour over the speed limit all the time on your motorcycle isn’t advisable, either. If you love these things too much to give them up, at the very least take as many precautions and use as many safety tools as you can.
8. NEW LEARNING
One of the most important things you can do for the health of your brain is to keep learning. We are all capable of expanding the capacities of our brains, even as we get older, which we discussed when we talked about neuroplasticity in Chapter 3.
What this means is that, as long as we keep learning, we continue to create new pathways in our brains. We keep our brains plastic and supple, capable of processing new information in relevant ways. This is especially true if we give ourselves genuine challenges in our learning. Attempting to master a new skill, to discover a new language, to embrace parts of your culture or the cultures of others that are new to you all keep those neurons firing and creating new pathways. By increasing the ways you use your brain, you increase the capabilities of your brain.
KWIK START
Create an ongoing “To Learn” list. What are some things on that list? Write two down.
9. STRESS MANAGEMENT
We all experience some level of stress in our everyday lives, sometimes a great deal of stress. Whenever we experience stress, a hormone known as cortisol is released to alleviate the physical rigors of stress on our bodies. If this happens occasionally, it’s not a problem, but if it happens with great regularity, the buildup of cortisol in our brains can lead it to cease functioning properly.
But there’s more. “There is evidence that chronic (persistent) stress may actually rewire your brain,” says a piece on the Harvard Health Blog. “Scientists have learned that animals that experience prolonged stress have less activity in the parts of their brain that handle higher-order tasks—for example, the prefrontal cortex—and more activity in the primitive parts of their brain that are focused on survival, such as the amygdala. It’s much like what would happen if you exercised one part of your body and not another. The part that was activated more often would become stronger, and the part that got less attention would get weaker. This is what appears to happen in the brain when it is under continuous stress: it essentially builds up the part of the brain designed to handle threats, and the part of