Does Success Have More To Do With Luck Or IQ? Two Harvard-Trained Brain Experts Say It Has To Do With Your Brain. Do You Have A Winner's Brain Or Is Your Brain Setting You Up For Failure?
The brainpower tools necessary for success include having an opportunity radar, a talent meter, a goal laser, risk meter and effort accelerator. Mark J. Fenske, Ph.D., author of "The Winner's Brain" explains how to develop these lifechanging tools.
In their new book "The Winner's Brain: 8 Strategies Great Minds Use to Achieve Success" authors Jeff Brown, Ph.D. and Mark Fenske, Ph.D. discuss the science of training your brain for success. In this interview, Dr. Fenske and Dr. Brown explain how to create a failure-resistant brain.
Commitmentnow.com: What is a winner's brain? How does it differ from other brains?
Mark Fenske, Ph.D. and Jeff Brown, Ph.D: Winner's Brains come in all shapes and sizes. That said, a Winner's Brain is also unique in that it is optimized to excel in at least one of the areas we've identified as being key to success.
Advances in brain science have revealed that healthy brains can change as a function of how they are engaged. By learning a bit about the brain, we can be proactive and deliberate in our choices of activities to help optimize our performance. When someone decides they want to optimize their brain, they can identify the best strategies for guiding their efforts toward personal success.
Commitmentnow.com: What are five things a person can do to change their brain into a winner's brain?
Dr. Fenske and Dr. Brown: We identified five BrainPower Tools which we believe are necessary criteria for being successful. The BrainPower Tools are based on our examination of brain science research and dozens of interviews with people who are successful in their particular fields.
We interviewed leading scientists and successes such as B.B. King and Whoopi Goldberg. We went to Sesame Street and to the FBI Academy just to understand more about the successful brain in action. The Tools include:
• Opportunity Radar: The ability to spot a non-traditional path to success.
• Talent Meter: The knack for continuously and accurately evaluating your skills and abilities.
• Goal Laser: The ability to recognize a goal, lock onto it, and not be distracted by other factors.
• Risk Meter: The internal skill to know how much risk to take and when to take it in order to reach success.
• Effort Accelerator: The factor that pushes you toward your goal, even when it's difficult or challenging.
Commitmentnow.com: What are some of the characteristics of a winner's brain that brings about success and overall good outcomes in life?
Dr. Brown and Dr. Fenske: Key to winning regularly is self-awareness. How do people respond to you? How do they experience you? What do you understand about your own strengths and weakness--and what do you do about your weaknesses?
In order to improve, you need to first have a sense of the areas in which you already excel and those that need improvement.
Self-awareness is a flexible skill that can be finely tuned.
Commitmentnow.com: What is an opportunity radar? Why is this one of the five Brainpower Tools you write about? Is there a way to develop an opportunity radar?
Dr. Fenske and Dr. Brown: The Opportunity Radar is the ability to recognize a path that others may not be taking that will still lead to success.
Our culture often suggests we become successful in very prescriptive ways. However, many people are successful in non-traditional methods and that's a mark of a Winner's Brain. You may want to develop an Opportunity Radar by taking on challenges that you wouldn't ordinarily take on.
For example, take on a new project or responsibilty, even a task around your house. See if you can reach success by thinking outside of the box when it comes to getting the job done.
Indeed, innovation and creativity, often come with the ability to recognize a good prospect, and these often rely on the engagement of specific regions in the brain that allow an individual to make connections between situations and ideas that might otherwise seem unrelated.
By the way, it's OK to fail, too. The Opportunity Radar can take you into uncharted waters--and that's OK.
Commitmentnow.com: If a person has a goal they are having trouble achieving, what are some ways they can change their brain to maximize their chances of achieving their long sought-after, but not attained goal?
Dr. Brown and Dr. Fenske: First, consult a friend or colleague to make certain the goal is within reach. Next, check in on the Talent Meter. Do you have the skills and abilities to accomplish the goal or do you need to learn more and add information to your brain.
The Winner's Brain book includes strategies for increasing self-awareness and tells stories of people who've benefited from knowing themselves better.
Commitmentnow.com: If someone came to you and said, "I tend to fail at everything I do" what changes in their brain would you recommend they undertake?
Dr. Fenske and Dr. Brown: We'd encourage them to read the chapter in The Winner's Brain about being more resilient. Every person we spoke with about success was also willing to talk about failure. No one is successful all of the time, but you can be resilient most of the time.
With effort, the brain can be taught to be resilient. This is terrific news for all of us.
Commitmentnow.com: You wrote about Brain Tool #4 which is the "Effort Accelerator" that supplies the push needed to keep rolling over obstacles. How can a person bring this ability into their life, especially if they tend to give up and get discouraged when things don't work out?
Dr. Brown and Dr. Fenske: The Effort Accelerator for successful people includes tenacity, determination, and routine. Routine is necessary because it allows frequent practice that allows performance to become part of life.
Once hard work and tenacity is part of identity, effort will likely be easier.
A close examination of mind-sets and self-talk is necessary when it comes to the Effort Accerator. Many people have goals, but never get up of the sofa and strive for them. Great Goal Laser, poor Effort Accelerator.
Commitmentnow.com:.One of the factors in a winner's brain is self-awareness. You write, "By becoming more self-aware, you gain insight into why things happen to you the way they do-and how you can increase the chances of creating circumstances favorable to success." How can a person become more self-aware and better able to 'create circumstances favorable to success'?
Dr. Fenske and Dr. Brown: Again, self-awareness is about knowing personal strengths and weaknesses. Constant evaluation and understanding is necessary to be self-aware. Being obsessive and self-centered is the objective, but knowing and monitoring interactions with others, projects, family, and emotions can tell you a lot about yourself.
Commitmentnow.com: Some people in life seem to get lucky breaks, while others always seem to get the short end of the stick. Does this have more to do with having a winner's brain than actual 'luck' or 'good fortune'? If so, what advice do you have for those who seem to always end up on the losing end of things?
Dr. Brown and Dr. Fenske: In The Winner's Brain, readers learn about external and internal locus of control. Don't be scared by the psychobabble. It simply means that successful people have an internal drive to make change---they are controlled from the inside. If they get the short end of the stick, they pick up the stick and run with it.
Externals simply wait for luck to happen--or not. The Winner's Brain is full of strategies that help shape the brain for those who want to develop more control and success in their lives.
Commitmentnow.com: Win Factor #3 is Focus also known as 'locking on to what's important'. Can you explain to us what focus is and how a person can develop the ability to focus on the most important details in a situation?
Dr. Fenske and Dr. Brown: Focus is useful in most every activity of life. Brain science has been revealing numerous insights into focus and attention. For example, don't try to multi-task.
The brain prefers that we prioritize and do tasks individually, in order of priority. Also, getting mundane tasks out of the way at the beginning of the day is helpful when focus and attention are essential for other projects or daily goals.
About the Authors:
Mark Fenske, PhD, a neuroscientist and former faculty member at Harvard Medical School, is an Associate Professor in Psychology at the University of Guelph. His research combines neuroimaging and studies of human behavior to examine how the brain's attention and emotion systems can enhance performance. He lives in Guelph, Ontario.
Harvard psychologist and author Dr. Jeff Brown is a champion of cognitive-behavioral psychology. Brown not only walks along side clients who want to manage inconvenient psychological symptoms, but teaches them how to apply research-based strategies for fine-tuning their brains and optimizing life. He's board-certified in both clinical and cognitive-behavioral psychology by the American Board of Professional Psychology.
Outside of his practice, Brown is the psychologist for the Boston, Chicago and Marathon medical teams and is on Runner's World magazine's scientific advisory board. His psychology expertise has been cited by The New York Times, ESPN, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, Woman's Day magazine, FOX News, Family Circle, Boston Magazine, and ABC.com. His witty, yet meaningful messages frequently call him to the podium at various conferences and events across the country.
The Winner's Brain: 8 Strategies Great Minds Use to Achieve Success is Brown's newest book. It blends cutting-edge brain science and cognitive-behavioral psychology, all of which take aim at calibrating the brain for success. (Want to guess whose brain that is on page 12?) Co-authored with neuroscientist colleague Mark Fenske, Ph.D. and writer Liz Neporent, The Winner's Brain is available in over a half-dozen languages. His first book, The Competitive Edge: How to Win Every Time You Compete, props up personal integrity in the midst of fierce competition.
Liz Neporent: I am a truth-seeking journalist and career wellness professional who writes about health related topics. The majority of my books have been about fitness (makes sense I've been an avid runner since I was 13 years old!) In recent years I've been following another passion of mine, writing medical and science topics, like my latest book for Perseus and Harvard Medical School, The Winner's Brain (with the excellent authorsJeff Brown and Mark Fenske.) Want to read some more of my work? Check out my blog Fit or Fiction: www.thatsfit.com/bloggers/liz-neporent/ or more about my company, Wellness 360: www.w360.com. And please feel free to follow me on twitter @lizzyfit or friend me on face book. I always like to hear from readers!
To buy The Winner's Brain: 8 Strategies Great Minds Use to Achieve Success click here.
They can be reached at: www.DrJeffBrown.com or
www.TheWinnersBrainBook.com
