Change Your Brain, Change Your Life (Before 25): Change Your Developing Mind for Real World Success - Softcover

Payne, Jesse

 
9780373892921: Change Your Brain, Change Your Life (Before 25): Change Your Developing Mind for Real World Success
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0373892926 ISBN 13: 9780373892921
Verlag: Harlequin Nonfiction, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

The Key to Your Future Is in Your Head 

Change Your Brain, Change Your Life has sold over 850,000 copies, spent 40 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and revolutionized the way people think about their brains and their health. And now Dr. Jesse Payne, Director of Education at the Amen Clinics, is bringing the groundbreaking science of the Change Your Brain program to a whole new generation of readers. 

The brain is particularly malleable until the age of 25, which means that even more than your parents or your teachers, you have the power to change your brain. And the things you do today—from what you eat, to how you sleep, to what you do for fun—can change your brain in drastic ways. This book provides a powerful, prescriptive program for you to avoid the common dangers and pitfalls that can jeopardize your future and train your brain for a lifetime of success.  

Discover how to 

•Improve academic performance 

•Nurture creativity 

•Treat diagnoses like ADD, ADHD and depression 

•Enhance relationship skills 

•Increase organization 

•Improve memory 

•Boost mood 

•And more! 

Featuring stories from real teens and young adults along with actual brain scans that show how effectively this program works, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life (Before 25) is perfect for teens and young adults, their parents and the professionals who work with them. Turn the page for a bright future and a successful tomorrow.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

JESSE PAYNE, Ed.D. is Director of Education at the Amen Clinics and a perfect example of someone who relied on his brain power and education to change his life. He holds a BA in business and an MA in education from Vanguard University of Southern California, and he earned his Doctorate Degree in Education with a specialization in K-12 leadership from the University of Southern California (USC). In 2009, he was awarded Researcher of the Year at Vanguard University of Southern California.

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BRAIN FACTS

For a long time, the brain has been the redheaded stepchild of the human body. Think about what you learned about the brain in school. More often than not, any lessons about the human brain entailed a long list of vocabulary words and facts about brain structures, neurons and dendrites that were boring and difficult to grasp. I would also guess that there probably wasn't any explanation of what these various brain structures actually do and how they affect you in your own life.

If this sounds similar to what you experienced in school, then get angry and prepare to start a revolution. The fact that we are not taught about the amazing complexity of the human brain, the importance of helping it work right, and the connection between our brain and our life is insane. When you begin to grasp some of the practical and easily understood brain basics, you will be amazed to learn that you have the power to improve your brain and have a better life. By understanding the inner workings of your brain and how they relate to all aspects of your life, you'll begin to understand why you are the way you are, and why you act the way you act. Your tendencies, your struggles, your personality—all of these come from your brain. But it's not like you're just born with the brain you have and you've got that brain your whole life. Once you realize that, the amount of power and influence you have over the functioning of your own brain—and, by association, your life—becomes clear. This is when the magic happens.

Of course, before you become the master of your brain, it is important to start with the brain basics. The eight brain facts in this chapter may appear absurdly simple and commonsensical. Well, this is true, and that's the beauty of it. What you will find after reviewing each of these brain basics (information that's based largely on the work I did with Dr. Amen during my time at the Amen Clinics) is that you have probably never stopped to put it all together. Perhaps you've known this information all along, but when you couple it with the powerful program in this book that will help you change the way your brain works, things will begin to click. And you will undoubtedly give your brain the respect it deserves.

Before you read any further, take the Brain Systems Quiz, which was adapted from the work I have done with Dr. Amen, to give you better insight into which parts of your brain might be contributing to some of the frustrations and/or struggles in your life. Please rate yourself honestly on each of the items in the list. Follow the instructions at the end of the quiz to determine what your answers mean. After you've analyzed your answers, put the quiz aside. We'll come back to the results later on.

Brain Fact #1: You Are Your Brain

As profound as this might sound, the simple fact is that you are a construct of your brain. Let's think about this for a second. Your heartbeat, bodily functions, organs, movements, thoughts, moods, actions, reactions, interactions, personality, memories, health, spirituality, happiness, feelings, relationships, successes, energy, focus, creativity, failures, problem-solving skills, anxieties, diet, decisions, hurts and dreams are all dependent upon the moment-by-moment functioning of the three-pound supercomputer housed within your skull. Your brain is involved in every aspect of your life. It controls everything.

Brain Fact #2: Your Brain Is Ridiculously Complex

As much as we have learned about the brain in just the past decade, we still have not even scratched the surface of understanding how incredibly complicated the human brain is. In fact, many argue that there is nothing in the universe more complicated than the human brain. Nothing.

Your brain is estimated to have more than one hundred billion neurons within it, and these neurons have trillions of supporting cells. To complicate things further, each of these trillions of supporting cells can have as many as forty thousand connections (called synapses) between them. This means that a piece of your brain tissue the size of a grain of sand has more than one hundred thousand neurons with more than one billion synapses all talking to one another. The critical consensus is that there are more connections in your brain than there are stars in the known universe.

The brain is estimated to hold the equivalent of about six million years' worth of the Wall Street Journal. Information travels through your brain at an impressive 268 miles per hour. And although your brain accounts for only about 2 percent of your body's weight, it burns nearly 30 percent of the calories you consume. When we look at the overall temperature of the organs in the human body, the brain is like a massive heat center, burning energy from the food you give it. It works faster and harder than any other organ to manage everything it is responsible for. (This means that you literally are what you eat. Chapter 14 will give you much more insight into the power of food and how it can aid in the healing or hurting of your brain.)

Brain Fact #3: Your Brain Is Not Fully Developed Until Age Twenty-Five

The title of this book was purposely chosen to highlight this critically important brain fact. We may like to assume that we are adults when we turn eighteen; however, the truth is our brain is still undergoing a significant amount of construction until our midtwenties. Research has shown that the brain is not fully developed until a person reaches about the age of twenty-five. For some males, full development can extend until age twenty-eight.

What does this mean for you? If you are under twenty-five, this means every decision you make, every thought you have, every action you take, all the food you eat, the amount of sleep you get and everything else you do throughout your day has a significant impact on your developing brain. In short, what you are doing now can affect the rest of your life.

The more effort you make in taking care of your brain and optimizing it now, the better your chances of achieving your goals and dreams. Conversely, the more you harm your brain now, the more difficult things will be in your future. (Chapter 2 will cover the developing brain in much greater detail.)

Brain Fact #4: Your Brain Is Quite Fragile

When we think of the human brain, we often imagine a rubbery, firm organ. This is probably because the brains we have seen outside of skulls are typically kept in formaldehyde, which makes the brain firmer and more rubbery than it really is. Your living brain has about the same consistency as warm butter, an egg white, soft gelatin or soft tofu. If I were able to take the top of your skull off, I could stick my hand in your brain and mush everything around to create one giant mess. Now that's a terrifying thought.

Of course, your brain is surrounded by fluid and housed in a protective skull, but this is often taken for granted. While your skull protects your brain, the brain is still quite vulnerable. When you house something that is very soft in a compartment that is very hard with ridges along the sides that can be as sharp as knives, disaster can strike if proper care is not taken.

I want you to think of some scenarios in which the phenomenon of a soft brain surrounded by liquid and encased in a hard skull would be a negative. Perhaps you thought of Newton's first law of motion: an object in motion stays in motion until acted upon by an external force. In our case, if your head is in motion and then comes to a sudden stop, your brain keeps moving until it smacks against the skull. Then, depending on the severity of the impact, your brain might also bounce the other way and smack against the opposite side of the skull....

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Verlag
Harlequin Nonfiction
Erscheinungsdatum
2014
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0373892926
ISBN 13 
9780373892921
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
304
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
HarperCollins Publishers Ireland
enquiries@harpercollins.ie

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