Do you want to do a better job or make a better decision? Then you need to train your brain.
When the ancient Egyptians embalmed their deceased rulers to prepare them for their next life, they carefully processed the heart and put it back into the body while the brain was discarded. A stick was inserted into the nose, the brain was stirred to a mushy state, in order to then pull it out of the head. The brain was considered useless.
Now, thousands of years after the Egyptians turned pharaohs into zombies, we know that we would not be ourselves without our brains.
There are several organs that we can live without, we can replace the heart or kidney and continue living with new organs.
But a brain transplant cannot be carried out, even if technical means appear for this over time. If your brain is transplanted into another body, then your whole personality will follow.
The body will not receive a new brain, but the brain will receive a new body. The brain is your only irreplaceable organ.
Get angry or count to ten
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400 years ago Descartes wrote his famous "I Think, So I Exist." The Cartesian connection of brain and soul was later reinforced by brain research and is reflected in our laws: if your brain is dead, then you are dead.
However, this statement is still perceived by many as strange, as if thoughts, feelings and personality are something abstract and mystical, something that is not related to the body.
Without going into the definition of "soul", we nevertheless know that personality, feelings and other properties traditionally considered "my essence" are the result of how our brain works.
Are you explosive or in control of yourself?
In the temporal lobe of our brain, there is a center of anger and fear that can cause us to curse in the presence of children. But we also have a frontal lobe that can stop us and make us count to ten.
If you can train yourself to direct the burst of feelings along the circumferential pathway of the cerebral cortex, you can focus on comforting a sick child, rather than yelling at the saliva on the leather seats in the car.
If the brain is damaged
The personality will change if the brain is damaged. If the cerebellum ceases to function, we lose control of all impulses and will go from crying to laughing uncontrollably. If the parietal lobe ceases to function, we will forget our name, and our body will become a stranger to us.
Your personality is in your brain
We brain scientists today have entered an area that was previously completely dominated by philosophers, we have become participants in the debate about what “I” is and what it means to be “yourself”.
Meanwhile, not only philosophers, but also many others must open their eyes to what we can see by studying the brain. We all need to do this. How can we understand ourselves if we cannot understand our own brain? After all, our brain is us, our very essence, myself.
The mental is physical
Your personality is a combination of a unique hereditary substance and unique experiences that have led to the unique connections of nerve cells in the brain. Illnesses that affect our feelings or personality traits are commonly referred to as mental illnesses. In this way. a sharp line is maintained between the physical and the mental.
But the personality itself and mental disorders of the personality are physical phenomena. Likewise, feelings and so-called mental illness are also physical phenomena.
The definition of depression as a mental illness, for example, is outdated and misleading.
When mood changes, so does brain chemistry. A change in mood means a change in the part of the brain that is active, the connections of the nerve cells used and the signaling substance released between the nerve cells. These are all physical changes.
Understanding this is essential to establish how best to treat depression. Just because depression is a physical change in the brain doesn't mean that you can't get rid of it. Conversation therapy and strategies for dealing with difficult thoughts in addition to medication will make the brain behave differently.
Train your brain every day
Thus, knowing about the brain will help you see a diagram of how to act on it in diseases such as depression and in completely normal everyday situations. For example, it may be helpful to learn that the brain tends to favor short-term gains over long-term ones.
If you want to get the job done, it's good to promise your brain a reward from time to time.
Don't you have enough time on weekdays to carefully read a good book? But do you know you have to start training?
Then download this book into an e-sound book and listen to it during your training run, so you will receive an immediate "reward". This means that at the same time, you are pumping dopamine, the reward substance, into your brain.
Orientation ability is your internal GPS system
Do you often make mistakes, always choose the wrong path and more than anyone else want to have a working GPS system inside you?
This GPS system is already in your brain, the ability to orientate can be trained.
If you use it a little more, and the system installed in your mobile phone a little less, then gradually you will become the one who combines the cardinal points and orientation points on the terrain into one system and immediately finds your way. This will also lead to an increase in the part of the brain.
London taxi drivers, who must learn to drive without a GPS, have recorded an increase in their "orientation field" in their brains.
Just because thoughts, personality, and other characteristics are in the brain does not mean that we cannot improve or change ourselves. Never before have we known so much about the brain as we do now. And the more we know, the more we can influence it.