smART: Use Your Eyes to Boost Your Brain (Adapted from the New York Times bestseller Visual Intelligence) - Hardcover

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Amy E. Herman is the New York Times bestselling author of Visual Intelligence, the written companion of the program Herman has used for eighteen years to provide leadership training to the FBI, Navy SEALs, NATO, the Peace Corps, Georgetown University Hospital, and executives at Microsoft and Google. The method has helped companies save millions of dollars, solve crimes, and even save lives, and the book has been translated into nine different languages, teaching readers how to sharpen their observation, perception, and communication skills using art. Herman, a self-proclaimed “recovering lawyer,” was also the Director of Educational Development at Thirteen/WNET and the Head of Education at The Frick Collection for over ten years. To learn more about Amy Herman, you can visit her website ArtfulPerception.com.

Heather Maclean is a Princeton graduate and the New York Times bestselling author and editor of fifteen books. Named one of the “16 Best Entrepreneurs in America” by Sir Richard Branson, she accompanied the adventurous business legend on a 50,000-mile trip around the world, alternately helping improve the lives of others (designing sustainable development initiatives in South Africa) and fearing for her own life (rappelling out of a Black Hawk helicopter in a Moroccan sandstorm). Heather began her career at Disney, where she had the distinction of being the first person ever to answer Mickey Mouse’s email. When not castle hunting in her husband’s native Scotland, she and her clan of three kids happily reside in Michigan.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1: Your Brain Is Magic



Grab something to write with and something to write on so when you see this symbol, you can play along with the activities and games in this book!

CHAPTER 1 YOUR BRAIN IS MAGIC

THE HUMAN BRAIN IS A mystery and a marvel. And maybe a little bit magical.* It tells our bodies what to do, consciously and unconsciously. It stores our thoughts and memories, regulates our emotions, and, every once in a while, comes up with really great ideas like antibiotics or waffle cones.





MAGICAL (adjective): having the power to make impossible things happen; able to create things, including illusions, without the viewer knowing how.

Much like when you practice baseball or the piano, every time you use your brain, you’re improving it. For example, look at the earlier drawing.

What do you see?

Pretend you had to describe it to someone who couldn’t see it. What would you tell them?

Would you tell them half the drawing was in black-and-white and the other half was in color? Would you mention the sketches and numbers on the left side and the colorful splatters that look like paint on the right?

Does the illustration remind you of anything? If you’re thinking “a brain,” you’re right. It was meant to look like a human brain.

Did any shapes stand out to you?

Did you find the same shape on both sides? If you saw the two stars, good for you! Your brain is tuned in to both details and patterns. If you didn’t, go look for them now.

Scientists used to believe that the brain you were born with was the brain you were stuck with and that some people were just born with smarter brains. But as people lived longer, healthier lives and technology advanced, scientists were able to learn more about the human brain. And they discovered some startling things. Such as the brain can heal itself. Or that it can make new pathways and rewire connections. And that it never stops growing. The brain’s ability to adapt and change is called “plasticity.”*

We can improve our brain’s function at any time in our lives, for all of our lives. The more you engage your brain, the quicker, smarter, and more powerful it will be. Which is helpful not just for your future—getting a job or following your passion—but also in the present. A better, faster brain can help you right now. It can help you do better in school, have better friendships, be a better judge of situations, and negotiate better deals with the adults in your life (like later bedtimes or a larger allowance). A better, faster brain can help keep you safe, help you solve difficult problems, and help you see what everyone else may have missed.



“PLASTIC” as a noun refers to the material used to make video game controllers and water bottles. “Plastic” the adjective means “capable of being molded.”

BRAINY KIDS

In 1905, an eleven-year-old named Frank Epperson was in his San Francisco backyard making his favorite drink—flavored powder stirred into water—when his mother called him inside. He set his cup down and forgot all about it. There was an unseasonal frost overnight, and the next morning Frank found his cup had completely frozen, the stirring stick standing straight up in the colored ice. He tipped the cup upside down, removed it, held the stick, and licked the delicious fruity icicle. He realized other kids might like to do the same, so he intentionally began freezing his flavored water in small cups with sticks and called them “Epsicles.” Today the company he started sells two billion “Popsicles®” a year.1



When Hannah Taylor was five years old, she saw something countless other people had seen before her: a homeless man eating out of a trash can. Instead of just shrugging it off though, Hannah decided to do something about it. Three years later, she founded the Ladybug Foundation to raise awareness and funds for the homeless community. She became a voice for the homeless, speaking to crowds of sixteen thousand people at a time, and so far, she’s raised $2 million to help the cause.2



When twelve-year-old Jessica Maple’s grandmother’s house was robbed, she was told by police that since they found no signs of forced entry, the burglar was someone who had used a key to get in. Jessica did her own detective work, though, and discovered a broken window and fingerprints the police had missed in the attached garage. She then thought about what the criminals would do with the stuff they stole and decided they might try to sell it for money. She visited a local pawnshop and found some of her grandmother’s belongings there. When she told the police, they were able to interview the shop owner about who had sold them the items, and the suspects were arrested.3



What did these three kids have in common? They all saw something everyone else had missed.

Want to be the hero in your own life, for your family, or for your community? You don’t need superpowers, just a supercharged brain.

Supercharging your brain is easy, and anyone—I mean anyone—can do it. It doesn’t matter where you go to school or how many books you’ve read. It doesn’t involve memorizing or math. All it takes to increase your brain’s capacity for thinking and problem solving, to help you become the next inventor or crime solver or great humanitarian, is three simple steps:



LEARN TO SEE

LEARN TO THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU SEE

LEARN TO TALK ABOUT WHAT YOU SEE



I’m sure you’re thinking, as I once did, “But I already know how to see! I’ve been doing that since I was born!” Followed by, “And anyway, I see with my eyes, not my brain.” It turns out that our eyes are actually part of our brain, and the eye and the brain work together in ways we probably never thought about. Let me explain.

You’ve no doubt learned, from the science teacher and from feeling them with your finger, human eyeballs are round and made up of many parts. There’s the pupil—the black circle—and the iris—the colored circle—that work together to control the amount of light let into the eye. Then there’s the retina, a thin layer of tissue that covers the back of the eye and converts images into signals for our brain to organize. The retina is a complicated structure more like a computer than a simple pathway to the brain.4 In fact, it is the brain. (So, technically, when an optometrist looks at your retina during an eye exam, they’re looking at your brain!)

When we engage our visual processing system, we’re using a...