before. “That’s a trick question,” she replied. “The team plane broke down, and Pittsburgh never arrived. The game was a forfeit.”
We discussed memory in the previous chapter of this book, and hyperthymesia is the ultimate example of an ability that everyone shares being carried to superhuman lengths—only, it’s very human still. When asked whether she liked having perfect recall, one subject sighed. “I can remember every time my mother told me I was too fat.” Those with hyperthymesia agree that revisiting the past can be acutely painful. They avoid thinking about the worst experiences in their lives, which are unpleasant for anyone to recall but extraordinarily vivid for them, as vivid as actually living them. Much of the time their total recall is uncontrollable. The mere mention of a date causes a visual track to unspool in their mind’s eye, running parallel to normal visual images. (“It’s like a split screen; I’ll be talking to someone and seeing something else,” reports one subject.)
You and I don’t have hyperthymesia, so how does it relate to the goal of super brain? The problem of complexity enters the picture. Science has studied total recall and the brain’s memory centers; several are enlarged in people with hyperthymesia. The cause is unknown. Researchers suspect links to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), since people with hyperthymesia often display compulsive behaviors; or to various forms of attention deficit, since total recallers cannot shut down the memories once they start flooding in. Perhaps these are people who never developed the ability to forget. One thing can always be counted on with the human brain: you can’t look anywhere without looking everywhere.
Looking for Heroes
The way to get around the problem of complexity is to turn it on its head. If your brain is ahead of the universe, then its hidden potentialmust be far greater than anyone supposes. We can leave those quadrillion connections to the neuroscientists. Let’s pick three areas where, in a normal healthy brain, peak performance is reachable. In each area there will be someone who has led the way. These are heroes of super brain, even though you may not have seen them that way before.
HERO #1
ALBERT EINSTEIN
FOR ADAPTABILITY
Our first hero is the great physicist Albert Einstein, but we are not choosing him for his intellect. Einstein—like geniuses in general—is a paragon of success. Such people are intelligent and creative far beyond the norm. If we knew their secret, each of us would have greater success, no matter what we pursued. Highly successful people don’t merely have seven habits. They use their brain in a way that is keyed to success. If you shut yourself out from Einstein’s way of using his brain, you limit your possibilities for success. It isn’t a matter of just “good genes.” Einstein used his brain in a way that any person can learn.
The key is adaptability .
Super brain takes advantage of your innate ability to adapt. This ability is necessary for survival. Of all living things, humans have adapted to all environments on the planet. Confront us with the harshest climate, the strangest diets, the worst diseases, or the most fearsome crises presented by natural forces, and we adapt. Homo sapiens does this so incredibly well that we take it for granted until someone appears before us who carries adaptability to a new level, someone like Einstein.
Einstein adapted by facing the unknown and conquering it. His field was physics, but the unknown confronts everyone on a daily basis. Life is full of unexpected challenges. To adapt to theunknown, Einstein developed three strengths and avoided three obstacles:
Three strengths: Letting go, being flexible, hanging loose
Three obstacles: Habits, conditioning, stuckness
You can measure a person’s adaptability by how much they are able to let go, remain flexible, and hang loose in the face of difficulties. You can measure how poorly
We discussed memory in the previous chapter of this book, and hyperthymesia is the ultimate example of an ability that everyone shares being carried to superhuman lengths—only, it’s very human still. When asked whether she liked having perfect recall, one subject sighed. “I can remember every time my mother told me I was too fat.” Those with hyperthymesia agree that revisiting the past can be acutely painful. They avoid thinking about the worst experiences in their lives, which are unpleasant for anyone to recall but extraordinarily vivid for them, as vivid as actually living them. Much of the time their total recall is uncontrollable. The mere mention of a date causes a visual track to unspool in their mind’s eye, running parallel to normal visual images. (“It’s like a split screen; I’ll be talking to someone and seeing something else,” reports one subject.)
You and I don’t have hyperthymesia, so how does it relate to the goal of super brain? The problem of complexity enters the picture. Science has studied total recall and the brain’s memory centers; several are enlarged in people with hyperthymesia. The cause is unknown. Researchers suspect links to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), since people with hyperthymesia often display compulsive behaviors; or to various forms of attention deficit, since total recallers cannot shut down the memories once they start flooding in. Perhaps these are people who never developed the ability to forget. One thing can always be counted on with the human brain: you can’t look anywhere without looking everywhere.
Looking for Heroes
The way to get around the problem of complexity is to turn it on its head. If your brain is ahead of the universe, then its hidden potentialmust be far greater than anyone supposes. We can leave those quadrillion connections to the neuroscientists. Let’s pick three areas where, in a normal healthy brain, peak performance is reachable. In each area there will be someone who has led the way. These are heroes of super brain, even though you may not have seen them that way before.
HERO #1
ALBERT EINSTEIN
FOR ADAPTABILITY
Our first hero is the great physicist Albert Einstein, but we are not choosing him for his intellect. Einstein—like geniuses in general—is a paragon of success. Such people are intelligent and creative far beyond the norm. If we knew their secret, each of us would have greater success, no matter what we pursued. Highly successful people don’t merely have seven habits. They use their brain in a way that is keyed to success. If you shut yourself out from Einstein’s way of using his brain, you limit your possibilities for success. It isn’t a matter of just “good genes.” Einstein used his brain in a way that any person can learn.
The key is adaptability .
Super brain takes advantage of your innate ability to adapt. This ability is necessary for survival. Of all living things, humans have adapted to all environments on the planet. Confront us with the harshest climate, the strangest diets, the worst diseases, or the most fearsome crises presented by natural forces, and we adapt. Homo sapiens does this so incredibly well that we take it for granted until someone appears before us who carries adaptability to a new level, someone like Einstein.
Einstein adapted by facing the unknown and conquering it. His field was physics, but the unknown confronts everyone on a daily basis. Life is full of unexpected challenges. To adapt to theunknown, Einstein developed three strengths and avoided three obstacles:
Three strengths: Letting go, being flexible, hanging loose
Three obstacles: Habits, conditioning, stuckness
You can measure a person’s adaptability by how much they are able to let go, remain flexible, and hang loose in the face of difficulties. You can measure how poorly
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