{"id":837,"date":"2011-08-01T01:16:49","date_gmt":"2011-08-01T01:16:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sandm.ironboxconsulting.com\/?p=837"},"modified":"2011-08-01T01:16:49","modified_gmt":"2011-08-01T01:16:49","slug":"welcome-to-your-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/pandawagon.com\/index.php\/2011\/08\/01\/welcome-to-your-brain\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to your brain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>5 out of 5 stars<\/p>\n<p>An easy read and incredibly informative.\u00a0 The subtitle is: Why you lose your car keys but never forget how to drive and other puzzles of everyday life.\u00a0 One of the reasons I write book reviews and started a career oriented blog at: <a href=\"http:\/\/michaelryland.com\">MichaelRyland.com <\/a>is to make sure to retain my learning&#8217;s over the entire course of my life.\u00a0 This book enforced my reason for doing it in the chapter on memory &#8211; use it or lose it.\u00a0 Synapses in the brain can be strengthened or weakened over time, if you don&#8217;t revisit memories from time to time they can fade or completely disappear.<\/p>\n<p>Here is my top list for what I found interesting in the book:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><u>We use all our brain<\/u>: The myth that we only use 10% of our brains is complete BS.\u00a0 We use 100% of our brains &#8211; don&#8217;t you feel dumber now \ud83d\ude41<\/li>\n<li><u>Brain setup<\/u>The brain is wired like my motorcycle after I took it apart and put it back together again &#8211; except worse.\u00a0 The wiring is jacked up.\u00a0 Certain connections are handling multiple tasks.\u00a0 EG: 25% of the population sneezes when they look at a bright light b\/c their brains are wired such that the connections that handle pupil dilation also handle sneezing.\u00a0 There are lots of examples like these throughout the book!\n<ul>Our brains started out as very basic and then kept adding functionality.\u00a0 As any engineer knows, this can lead to very poor design and efficiency.\u00a0 Yep, that&#8217;s your brain.\u00a0 Incredibly complex, incredibly poorly designed.\u00a0 If we could start over, the plumbing could be made much cleaner and efficient.\u00a0 I feel for neurosurgeons.<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><u>Factors influencing intelligence: <\/u>Little geniuses &#8211; playing Mozart does not make babies smarter.\u00a0 Genetics set the upper bound for intelligence.\u00a0 Pre-natal care, diet, and opportunity for development are the environmental factors that can then decrease intelligence.\u00a0 In the US it&#8217;s not hard to ensure that your baby Einstein has all his \/ her needs met so don&#8217;t stress.<\/li>\n<li><u>Happiness:<\/u> Frequent small events have a greater cumulative impact than occasion large positive events.  Here are some exercises that can increase happiness\n<ul>\n<li>Focus on positive events.  Every evening for a month write down 3 good things that happened that day and explain what caused each of them.<\/li>\n<li>Practicing using your character strengths.  Got to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.authentichappiness.org\">authentichappiness.org<\/a> and take the VIA signature strengths questionnaire to figure out what they are.  Next, use them in one new way every day for a week.<\/li>\n<li>Remember to be grateful.  Every day write down 5 things you are thankful for.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><u>Willpower can be trained.<\/u> There is a part of your brain responsible for willpower and the dendrites \/ synapses \/ etc. can be strengthened.<\/li>\n<li><u>Meditation works.<\/u> Brain scans further prove that practitioners of meditation are able to change their mental state.  This can be finding inner peace or removing feelings of physical pain.  It&#8217;s pretty cool what we can do when we put our minds to it.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>5 out of 5 stars An easy read and incredibly informative.\u00a0 The subtitle is: Why you lose your car keys but never forget how to drive and other puzzles of everyday life.\u00a0 One of the reasons I write book reviews and started a career oriented blog at: MichaelRyland.com is to make sure to retain my [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pandawagon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pandawagon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pandawagon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pandawagon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pandawagon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=837"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/pandawagon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":838,"href":"http:\/\/pandawagon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837\/revisions\/838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pandawagon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pandawagon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pandawagon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}