Category Archives: Genius

From Stressed to Inner Peace to Flourishing

from Don’s Huffington Post article

Neuroscience has become quite adept at mapping the brain and they can actually measure your level of inner peace. And here’s what they found. We are at our creative cognitive and emotional best when we are at peace. By simply accentuating qualities of a positive peaceful attitude you produce positive changes in your brain that enable you to flourish.

A peaceful state of mind increases gray matter, making your mind stronger and able to work faster.
It improves memory, attention, and your capacity to learn.
You process emotions better, enabling you to feel vibrant and inspired, but not so emotionally charged that you become manic, chaotic, or rigid.
You are much abler to sustain your focus in a high-stress environment.
You achieve greater interpersonal resonance and attuned communication.
You are more empathic, able to see, feel, and understand a situation from someone else’s point of view.

canstockphoto14539757

As a result of all the above, you are more likely to succeed at life, with greater subjective well-being. A mind at peace generates the brain power to achieve the Good Life, which is a state of flourishing, achieving the health, wealth and love we all desire.

So what does it mean to be at peace?

Let me start by defining what it doesn’t mean. Peace doesn’t mean to be in a place where there is no noise or hard work or problems. There is a Buddhist parable about a farmer who goes to the Buddha in hopes that the saint can miraculously remove all of his problems.

“I cannot help you with that,” the Buddha said. “Everyone has problems. In fact, everyone has eighty-three problems. You may solve one now and then, but another is sure to take its place.”

“How is that supposed to help me?” the farmer retorted in frustration.

“Perhaps,” the Buddha said, “this understanding will help you with the 84^th problem, which is the problem of not wanting any problems.”

Peace is not about taking away our problems; it’s about engaging problems and stressors fearlessly, with the calm, creativity, and optimism that generates the brain power to solve them.

Some people think that a peaceful attitude makes us complacent, but inner peace is a vibrant, dynamic state of mind. It fosters in us an open, curious vitality that is fully present and able to engage life exactly as it is.

peace is 3 new copy Inner Peace

Inner peace is having a calm clear sense of our own power in any situation without the need to overpower others.

By definition, being at peace means we are unafraid, unhurried, kind, and resilient.

Inner peace is an end to worry.

It’s a disinterest in judging ourselves or others or events.

It’s an end to the need to change anyone.

It’s a compassionate understanding that is not codependent, and a willingness to forgive.

It’s a heartfelt connection with others and with life itself that engenders a sense of the sacred.

Inner peace is a dynamic choice that leads to a dynamic way of being in the world that literally changes the brain to tap its full potential. But peace of mind doesn’t happen all by itself; not in our fast paced modern world. Peace develops out of that voluntary state of mindfulness called choice. The more mindful we are about choosing to be at peace, the more we experience it. The more we experience it, the more we come to treasure it. The more we treasure our peace of mind, the more expansive it becomes.

Peace takes practice and practice takes discipline, which is simply knowing what you want to experience, and then choosing it consistently. The core choice is basic; it’s between fear and peace. It begins with mindfully asking ourselves, what do I want to experience as I face people and events each day.

Mindfulness asks: What do I want to experience?

Do I want to be stressed or calm and clear … Afraid of failing or creative … Critical or empathic … Think negative or positive … Worry or have faith … Remain stuck or let go … Angry or composed … Condemning or forgiving … Self-righteous or happy.

Byron Katie, author of Loving the Way It Is, says this about the way practice works. She says once a stressful, anxious perception is understood for what it is and met with the feeling of understanding, the next time it appears you may find it interesting. What used to be a nightmare is now just interesting. The next time after that you may find it funny and after that you may not even notice it.

The stressful fearful perception has left your mind making room for you to be peace, and your brain will reward you with the higher brain function that enables you to sustain your best self, achieving your best day, every day.

If peace has alluded you, here’s a tool that can help establish it in your daily life. It’s called the 30-Second Time Out for Peace. Use it for a couple of weeks and then add taking walks in nature two or three times a week, leaving all your troubles and problems behind you as you take the first step. A walk in the park quiets the mind and gradually rewires your brain to raise your IQ and generate great mental health. The experience from taking both of these simple steps will prove to you the power of inner peace. How could that not motivate you to move forward to develop a mindfulness practice that deepens your peace of mind. In my book The End of Stress, I present a simple step by step process that helps you build such a practice.

30-Second Time Out for Peace

Stop what you’re doing and step away from the world for a moment.

Let go of what you were thinking and allow yourself to relax a little.

Now allow yourself to relax a little more.

Let go of everything. Feel your brain relax as you let go.

No worries, no problems, no goals. Just let them all go for a moment.

Take a slow, deep breath – and as you do – let your mind and heart open wide.

Allow peace to begin to emerge as your experience, all by itself.

You can do this short exercise just about anywhere: standing in line, walking to a meeting, or looking out a window. Try it a few times throughout today and see what happens to your day.

images: canstockphoto.com

Developing Breakthrough Innovators

Click to download article

Long-term success in the global economy depends on innovation that is both original and practical. Few would argue with that statement. In fact, a recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the most crucial factor for future success. Success is not only about developing breakthrough innovators. It also hinges on cultivating creative, out-of-the-box thinkers in sales, manufacturing, and leadership to prevent the company from devolving into bureaucratic mediocrity.

Yet most companies smother the creative spark, says the Harvard Business Review, because their understanding of how innovation works is rooted in false beliefs.

Science has dispelled these false beliefs, but companies have not yet caught up with the neuroscience on how the brain generates creative intelligence (CQ). As a result, most companies are failing to facilitate the creative environment that taps and expands CQ.

Innovation is all about the brain. It’s all about meeting the neurological conditions that (a) stimulate the right hemisphere of the brain to generate creative insight, (b) captures the insight quickly, and (c) transfers it to the brain’s left hemisphere where it can be forged into something revolutionary.

The False Beliefs about Innovation

The great American psychologist, William James, described the creative process as “a seething caldron of ideas,” and now, for the first time, science is beginning to see into the cauldron itself. We are beginning to see how creative insight is actually generated inside our brain. And what’s been made clear is that our old ideas about the creative process are all wrong.

False Belief #1: We used to believe that people were most creative when stressed, anxious, and pressured, but a number of studies strongly suggests that stress undermines the creative cognitive processing that contributes to creative output in organizations (Forbes, 2012, Amabile, Mueller, 2002). Studies have found that creativity is positively associated with inner peace, joy, empathy, and optimism, and negatively associated with stress and fear (Subramaniam, Kounios, 2009). A positive mood broadens your scope and allows you to look at a problem in new ways and come up with better solutions (Fredrickson, Branigan, 2005).

False Belief #2: There is the belief that creativity takes an intense, sustained focus, and yet research has demonstrated that intense focus is not the best approach when you need a creative solution (White, Shah, 2006). People with ADHD actually score higher on creativity tests and win more awards in art and science contests.

Creativity emerges initially in a spontaneous, free-flowing, and non-linear manner. The essence of creativity is as playful as a child. Picasso said “All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once they grow up.” The way we remain an artist, according to Dr. Paul Torrance, the scientist who designed the gold standard for measuring creative talent, is to provide ample room for exploring, questioning, experimenting, manipulating, re-arranging, and stepping back to allow creative ideas to incubate.

False Belief #3: We have also tended to believe that innovation means we have to put our noses to grindstone, but the experience of 3M Corporation and Google have proven that the polar opposite is true, which research has corroborated.

For decades employees at 3M have been encouraged to use up to 15 percent of their regular work hours to pursue ideas of their own making, even if these ideas are outside 3M’s strategic pursuits. It’s called the 15-Percent Rule, and it’s credited with many of 3M’s stellar innovations, including the Post-It.

Google upped the 15-Percent-Rule to 20 percent, and founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin stated that Google’s 20% rule was instrumental to the company’s ability to innovate, leading to many of its most significant advances, including AdSense, which now accounts for a quarter of the company’s annual revenue.

False Belief #4: Perhaps the most limiting belief about creativity is the notion that
people are either genetically gifted with creative talent or not. The capacity for creativity is built into the very structure of everyone’s brain (Beeman, Bowden, 2004). It’s merely that people who become highly innovative as adults had teachers, mentors, and parents who helped them cultivate creative intelligence as children (Runco, Millar, 2010). But if we missed the leg-up as a kid, we can get it as an adult. Creativity is teachable. Research shows that those who diligently practice creative activities learn to recruit their brains’ creative networks quicker and better (Jung, Haier, 2008).

How Do Companies Develop Breakthrough Innovators?

The research on creativity indicates that raising creative intelligence begins with raising people’s emotional intelligence, and in particular their level of happiness and inner peace. In large part, this is because processes that increase positive emotional states stimulate the right hemisphere of the brain where creative insights are generated.

There are four proven approaches to facilitating the mental and emotional states that predict creative insight. Each is quite simple, and they are easily learned and applied.

1. Decrease emotional negativity by teaching people how to alleviate stress, anxiety, and pessimism. This is achieved through a practice that (a) actively interrupts patterns of stress provoking thoughts and perceptions that stressed and anxious people habitually think (Robinson, Alloy, 2003), and (b) strengthens a dynamically peaceful mindset (Davidson, Kabat-Zinn,2003).

2. Elevate the capacity for positive emotional states through an active practice of gratitude, and by teaching people to visualize their “best possible self” (Sheldon, Lyubomirsky, 2006).

Gratitude is develop through a simple practice of counting blessing in a specific manner.

Invoking one’s “best possible self” is achieved (a) by identifying qualities we experience when we perform at the top of our game at work, and when are at our best in our personal life, (b) forming these qualities into a clear mental image of who we are capable of being, and (c) making our “best possible self” the primary goal we aspire to actualize every day.”

3. Integrate 20-minute breaks into the work-day, at least one mid-morning and another mid-afternoon. Breaks improve memory consolidation, which is essential to envisioning something novel or learning something new (Tambini, 2013), and breaks increase unconscious associative processing that facilitates creative problem solving (Baird, Smallword, 2012).

4. Encourage people to take a 90-minute walk periodically through a natural environment. A 90-minute walk in nature has been shown to reduce the mental rumination associated with anxiety and depression. (Bratman, Daily 2015).

The Bridge from Creative Insights to Innovative Solutions to Actions

Last but not least, implementing the most promising creative ideas that emerge from the new creative environment involves a methodical process, such as Treffinger’s Creative Problem-Solving method (CPS). CPS helps teams move from creative insight to tangible innovation through a process that clarifies the creative problem, researches it, generates and processes ideas, turns good ideas into best solutions, and then creates a plan to bridge solutions to actions.

We Get What We Expect to Get ~ Part 2

Belief Creates the Actual Fact in Nearly Everything

Langer also conducted a study with maids who clean hotel rooms.[9] These workers were typically assigned fifteen rooms a day and spent half an hour cleaning each room. The task expends a physical effort that exceeds the level of daily exercise the Surgeon General prescribes. But the workers thought their job didn’t qualify as exercise, and since they were too tired at the end of their shift to go to the gym, they believed they weren’t getting the kind of exercise that burned calories or made them fit. Dr. Langer divided the hotel workers into two groups. In one group, she reinforced the mind-set that the physical exertion in their job achieved the recommended level for physical fitness. The second group was not given this information. After four weeks, without any change in diet or activity, people in the first group lost weight. Their body fat dropped, and even their blood pressure improved by 10 points. The only thing that had changed was the group’s mind-set. There was no improvement in the second group.

It may be hard to believe that a change in mind-set could actually improve eyesight as bad as 20/70 or even 20/160, yet in one study it did.[10] It makes one wonder if we’re all wearing mental blinders. In his memoir, Thomas Merton gets to the heart of the problem, when he wrote: “Perhaps I am stronger than I think. Perhaps I am even afraid of my strength and turn it against myself, thus making myself weak.”[11]

The strength Merton is referring to is as near to you as your own thoughts. Years ago, I knew a young man who, in his mid- twenties, was diagnosed with stage-2 adult Hodgkin’s lymphoma. His oncologist told him that he had 10 percent chance of surviving, which is virtually a death sentence. Yet my friend had misheard the doctor and he left the clinic thinking he’d been told him he had 10 percent chance of dying. During the course of his treatment, his mind-set was built on the anticipation that every step of his medical care was achieving the highly favorable result of complete remission, which is exactly what happened. It wasn’t until his case was presented during hospital grand rounds by his oncologist that he learned he’d misunderstood. He said that if he’d heard his oncologist’s prediction correctly, he would have died. He was absolutely certain that the mindset his misperception produced saved his life.

The Reshaping Reality Tool

The evidence is there and the proof is mounting that your mind can reshape your reality to align with your wishes. Harness this power and you become the master of your fate. There is a simple tool called Reshaping Reality that can generate the anticipation of the wealth, health, and love we all seek. Use this tool on a daily basis to amplify your expectancy for achieving your goals, and see what happens. You can play the recording of Don Joseph Goewey guiding you through this process by pressing the button below:

Sit in a comfortable position and close your eyes.

Select a current goal and state to yourself the outcome you wish to achieve. Imagine this outcome as you want it to happen. Pretend that it has already come to pass, and see your life as it would exist at that moment. Let go of all restraints on your thinking. Tell yourself it’s all right to imagine anything, regardless of whether you think it’s probable or even possible.

Involve the sensory parts of your brain. Hear the sounds that are present when the outcome is realized. Smell the air and feel the temperature in the environment. Picture what you will see. Now see into the periphery of the picture. What elements of life are around you? Who is with you? Make the colors and elements of your imagined outcome vivid. If people are present, what are they saying to you? What are you saying to them?

As you continue to experience the picture you have created, feel the feelings you imagine will overcome you when this outcome is realized. Do you feel joy? Do you feel satisfaction? Do you feel relief from pain or fear? And as you imagine the feelings you will have, bring them close and actually feel them as if they are your experience, right here, right now. Make these desired feelings as strong as you can. If you are happy, allow them to place a smile on your face or make you laugh out loud. If you are relieved, let the relief lift your spirits. Let the emotions become real. Sustain these desired emotions for as long as you can, up to no more than a minute.

Then let everything go. Let go of the emotions and let go of the picture.

You have now primed your thinking and emotional centers to lock your internal guidance system on your desired outcome. Believe it.

________________

[9] Alia J. Crum and Ellen J. Langer, “Mind-Set Matters: Exercise and the Placebo Effect,” Psychological Science 18, no. 2 (2007): 165–71.

[10] Believing Is Seeing: How Mindset Can Improve Vision, Association for Psychological Science, April 9, 2010, http://www.psychologicalscience.org/media/releases/2010/langer.cfm.

[11] Thomas Merton, The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals, ed. Patrick Hart and Jonathan Montaldo (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 161.

The Genome to Health, Wealth, and Love

Being Well and Doing Well on the Way to Flourishing

(Huffington Post)

There are people in the world who, outwardly, seem to be doing quite well, and yet inwardly are living an unhappy life encumbered by stress, health problems, and family dysfunction. Conversely, there are people who are far from wealthy, yet they’re joyful, at peace, and buoyed by the love they give and receive.

Then there’s those I call the Lucky Few who are living the Good Life, which is a life of being well and doing well on the way to flourishing. These folks have managed to secure the wealth, health, and love we all desire.

Was it good luck that bestows these blessings or something else that the rest of us have failed to see?

Well, science researched this very question and discovered three essential factors that combine to either thwart or support your efforts to achieve the Good Life. It turns out that the first two factors actually relate to luck, but the third factor is the one that makes the biggest impact. It can turn bad luck into good, propelling you into the Good Life, and it’s completely under your control.

1. The first factor that determines your quality of life is genetics. This relates to the type of stress gene you inherit, and it accounts for 50% of why you are either flourishing, or stressed and struggling.

If you’re lucky and the stress gene you inherited is turned-down low, your brain is more likely to maximize the analytical, emotional, and social intelligence that enables you to move through life’s ups and downs in a creative manner, and progress forward toward achieving your goals.

Conversely, if the stress gene is turned up high (as it is with many Millennials and Gen Xers), you’re more likely to over-react to stressors, struggle with negative emotions, and effort against periodic drops in your IQ caused by stress hormones. This leads to making bad decisions, the likelihood of marital problems and financial distress, an inability to sustain peak performance, and susceptibility to a long list of stress-related health problems.

2. The second factor in determining whether you live a life of stress or a happy, rewarding life is your circumstances, meaning your financial situation, your job, the condition of your health, and the quality of your close relationships. But research has found that circumstances only account for 10% of what raises or lowers your quality of life. The famous Brickman study of lottery winners and people paralyzed in traumatic accidents substantiated this. The study found that ultimately people who won the lottery were not happier because of their good fortune, and people who became paralyzed were not unhappier because of their misfortune.

In as little as three months, the elation of lottery winners disappeared as they grew accustomed to being wealthy. Equally, the initial shock and despair paraplegics felt eventually resolved as they adjusted to their injury. Similar research found that the blind, the retarded, and the malformed are no less happy than other people.

Yet most people still believe that a change in circumstances is what will put an end to a stressful, disappointing, and unhappy life, despite the research that shows it doesn’t make a big difference.

3. The change that makes the biggest difference is a change in our attitude. This was shown in the study of paraplegics I cited above. Their misfortune challenged them to elevate their attitude, and as a result they began to experience more joy from life’s simple, every day pleasures. It turns out that attitude accounts for 40% of what either perpetuates a stressful existence or actualizes a higher quality of mind that empowers a higher quality of life. How?

A positive shift in attitude turns down the volume on your stress gene, elevating the brain function that maximizes IQ, increases the capacity to learn, stimulates the creative insight that solves problems, and resets the brain’s emotional set point to positive, inspiring the optimism that fuels your passion.

A positive shift in attitude can produce an exponential shift in all three factors, changing the odds in your favor. You’re now 90 percent in charge of your life. When the stress gene stops working against you, your brain starts working for you, applying your full measure of intelligence toward achieving the Good Life.

Science has provided a number of proven methods that strengthen our capacity to relate to life through a calmer, more creative, more optimistic attitude. In my new book, The End of Stress, I’ve organized twenty of these approaches into a program that can open the way to a higher quality of life. Or attend the 4-part live webinar that begins April 28th.

Increasing the Intelligence that Predicts Your Success

There are different types of intelligence that human beings possess, but “fluid intelligence” is the one that predicts success in business and academics, when a person tests high in it.

Fluid intelligence is your capacity to solve novel problems, learn from experience, reason things out accurately, detect errors, connect the dots, and to get to the heart of the matter quickly.

Who wouldn’t want to increase their measure of that kind of intelligence?

Well, there is new evidence that suggests you can. Science once believed that fluid intelligence was inherited and couldn’t be increased, but mounting evidence has caused some in science to reconsider.

The evidence indicates that you can raise your fluid intelligence by playing a specially designed computer game called the N-back game for 15 – 25 minutes a day, five days a week. It’s found to improve scores on tests of fluid intelligence in as little as four weeks.

One version of the game is accessible for free on the internet at http://cognitivefun.net/test/4

Here’s how the test works: Every few seconds, a cartoon like image (a cat, a fish, a baseball, etc.) appears on screen and then moves to the next image. You click on the current image whenever it repeats what you saw 2 picture ago. If you get to Level 3, you click when the current picture repeats what you saw 3 pictures ago, and so on, up through higher levels of difficulty. It sounds simple and it is, but deceptively so.

Take note: not everyone agrees that the N-back test works in raising fluid intelligence. Randall Engle, a respected intelligence researcher at Georgia Tech doesn’t think so. He said in a New York Times article on intelligence, “There have been hundreds of other attempts to increase intelligence over the years, with little or no — just no — success.” However, Silvia Bunge of the University of California, Berkeley would beg to differ. Using an array of cognitive games with inner city kids, she reported a 10 point increase on nonverbal I.Q. test scores. It would seem the evidence is mounting.