In addition to workshops and a combined phone and Internet course, I do individual, face to face coaching. On one occasion, a client was referred to me because he had “burnt out his brain”. He had been a brilliant astrophysicist with a first class degree and then had gone on to be a very successful business man, but, although he was not yet 30, he said that his memory had become so bad that he had difficulty recalling a conversation once he put the phone down. He need not have worried. A period of concentrated work may mean that a beach holiday may be deserved and advisable for your general well being, but your brain will never suffer from exercise - whatever you do.
Most of what we know about the brain has been discovered in the last 30 years and that is less than 1% of what there is to know. It is thought that most of us use about 10% of our brain, and even more interesting, what is not being actively used is not asleep but "idling" like a waiting taxi. So everyone of us has this incredibly powerful organ in our body. Our brains contain billions of neurons - more than there are stars in the sky. These connect with each other at a signal from the brain.
According to Ornstein "Right Mind" and Tony Buzan, "Use Both Sides of Your Brain" who cites the Russian Pyotr Anokhin, there are more potential connections in our brain, than there are atoms in the universe and that's a lot of connections because to quote Douglas Adams: " Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the
road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
So to return to my physicist friend: with all those possible connections and all that untapped brain, - all he needed was a little gentle exercise in memory techniques. The other cheering fact - particularly for those of us who quaff the vino, cheerfully killing off our neurons on a regular basis - although unlike most cells, neurons cannot regrow after damage, those from the hippocampus, which is where the memory resides, are an exception. Just practice making connections and you will not only have a better memory but your brain will become altogether brighter and more creative too.
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