What You Do Can Help Or Hurt Your Brain

April 27, 2010

Interview with Mark Fenske, author of the book The Winner's Brain: 8 Strategies Great Minds Use to Achieve Success

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Mike Carruthers:
How science looks at the brain has changed a lot in the past few years. It used to be thought that…

Mark Fenske:
Past adolescence that the brain was relatively hard-wired – that you had to deal with what you were dealt with.
 

Mark Fenske

Mark Fenske, author of the book The Winner's Brain, says we now know….

That what we do with our brain, even well into adulthood, can change the physical landscape of the brain, not only change the structure, but also then the function and what we’re able to do with it.

So what does that mean? As an example meditation can actually alter your brain.

Sara Lazar, who’s at Harvard Medical School, has done studies showing that people who have experience with meditation the thicker the cortex (the outer covering of our brains) in these key areas for attention and emotion regulation than people who don’t.  These people of course report reduced levels of stress, increased ability to function in terms of balance and things like that in their day-to-day life.

Another fascinating part of making your brain function better, says Mark, is self-awareness.

Often when people aren’t good at something it’s not just that they’re not good at that thing but they’re not even aware that they’re not good at that. And this is called the Kruger-Dunning effect and it’s what we call the double whammy of incompetence. For us to improve we need to identify, not only the things that we’re good at, but also areas of weakness. And unless you’re aware of those things you’re going to be able to focus on improving them.
 

To hear the complete unedited interview, click here