Walter Scott offered heads up on the brain’s propensity to propel or stalemate talents, when he said,
Success or failure is caused more by mental attitude than by mental capacity.
Your brain relies on accurate perspectives to win you success.
DNA of Winning Perspectives
In contrast, one distorted outlook can cloud current opportunities, barricade you from goals, and cause deep disappointments. Inconsistency of appearances can rob your confidence and undermine your courage to lead.
Views that drag you into ruts may come from allowing past mistakes or letdowns to cloud future opportunities.
Distorted vision emerges when you narrow or restrict focus to any one angle, without consideration for the other side. Ever allowed that persistent-need-to-be-right to block you from a relationship you once enjoyed?
Shift your outlook into mental wins, such as optimism, and you soon spot the difference. In that framework, your brain leads you forward like the flash- pause-flash- pause of a lighthouse guiding ships safely away from hidden shoals during a storm.
Look at challenges with solutions in mind, and you’ll find fluidity – much like Niagra Falls dances and sprays behind magificent rainbows near my home. No wonder innovative results tend to follow those who regularly reframe perception against delightful new lights.
Redirect Perspective from Loss to Wins
We now know more about how plasticity can change one’s mental perspective to step confidently into the future. Yes, in spite of past missteps.
Imagine where peaks ahead of you today could lead – if you simply changed your route to get there. How so? Hitch your wagon to a star, so that you’re less likely to stall in ditches, if the sky darkens.
No question – your new view requires repetition, to replace stress that settled you into cortisol driven views in the first place. Thanks to the brain’s plastic ability, outlooks that once held you back, begin fade with each confident step toward rejuvenated goals. You literally alter your brain cell connections for more confident perspectives along the way. How so?
Amazingly, every act in the opposite direction of worry, negativity, or cynicism – adds chemicals and electricity for bold new paths to a calmer life.
New perspectives for winning directions take root in the brain’s basal ganglia, that storehouse of your actions and responses, which lies beneath the prefrontal cortex. Focused on a novel goal, the basal ganglia shoots an enormous number of neural signals to guide the brain toward your rewired focus.
The brain holds chemical and electrical equipment for mapping new directions – away from worry, anxiety, or self-doubt.
Your brain tends to lead you to what you focus on and do. According to neuro specialist Dr. Doidge, the brain does not distinguish well between should or should not. For instance, if you focus on “not worrying,” you literally build more neuron pathways to worry. Reason enough to choose a relaxed perspective?
Tools that draw on neuroplasticity – gain positive targets, through altering perspectives for unrealized talents.
Knowing that it starts within you rather than in others, look first look in opposite directions of anxiety that wires entire organizations for pessimism and loss. Then, focus today on one novel way of thinking, however unnatural at first, in order to rewire from anxious to calm. Let us know what challenges you win over by the day’s end, that hold back others around you.
New Perspectives for Winning Brainpower
1. Invent one refreshing solution to replace a routine that leaves you bored or in a rut. It could be as simple as driving to work along a different route. Brain fact: Boredom is more a negative perspective shaped by daily choices, and stored in brain as a reality.
2. Uplift your work area with natural lighting. Brain fact: Environments influence your perspective, and a healthy well lit workplace often inspires new outlooks.
3. Thank a cranky worker for even a small accomplishment. Brain fact: Well being comes grateful outlooks – fueled and extended by serotonin chemical hormones.
4. Give an offender the gift of forgiveness, by letting go of a grudge. Brain fact: Anger, fear, and frustration lead to incriminating perspectives fueled by dangerous cortisol chemicals.
5. Propose winning alternatives to an observed annoying habit. Brain fact: Venting leads to negative outlooks, that create new neuron pathways to more complaints.
6. Act as the person you want others to see in you, and that you’ll become. Brain fact: Dendrite brain cells use the outside world to shape positive perspectives, based on what you do in a day.
7. Vary your background sounds and add music for more motivating outlooks. Brain fact: Music changes brain wave speeds in ways that impact moods and alter perspectives.
8. Stir curiosity and engage others by tapping into their interests. Brain fact: Lectures or talks can work against listener perspectives because passive listening fails to improve listener views.
9. Shift routines up daily. Brain fact: Hebbian workers rely on unchanged perspectives that kill incentives, limit focus or even shrink human brains with narrow opinions and stilted views.
10. Enjoy differences as assets. Brain fact: Risk gaining new outlooks today from a person who differs in age, culture, gender, career or beliefs.
11. Sleep well in order to perceive your world well. Brain fact: Brain waves can bring either poor perspectives or peak performance, based on how you activate and manage them in your favor.
12. Research and open mentally to new and different ideas daily. Brain fact: Hook even difficult facts onto one thing you know already and perspectives grow and expand with learning.
13. Change on regular basis. Brain fact: Your brain’s basal ganglia stores old perspectives that can haunt you, while working memory holds new facts that upload innovative views.
14. Diversify your talent development to engage new perspectives. Brain fact: Multiple intelligences are common to all, used by few, and can be cultivated daily for mental health.
15. Create rather than criticize. Brain fact: Cynical or critical mindsets literally block creativity, limit talent in you or others, and stomp out innovative perspectives.
16. List key reminders that guide healthy perspectives. Brain fact: Memory can be outsourced by simple lists that help you remember to free your mind for finer perspectives that frame a day.
17. Inspire novel young ideas. Brain fact: Plasticity enables people of all ages and backgrounds to rewire their outlook in ways that keep the brain younger and more agile.
19. Encourage yourself and others to spot goodness. Brain fact: Encouragement changes the chemistry of a brain that frames itself for serotonin, and ratchets up good tone for profitable views.
19. Communicate with care, openness and honesty. Brain fact: Meta messages destroy relationships through implications different from message spoken, and can fog friendships.
20. Integrate from ideas and people across many fields. Brain fact: It often takes an integration of hard and soft skills to gain wider perspectives that solve problems with the brain in mind.
21. Relax and practice letting worries go. Brain fact: Stress literally shrinks the brain, narrows perspective, and kills tone for healthy communications.
22. Seek new ideas from growing relationships. Brain fact: Greet colleagues through speaking people’s names, to stoke perspectives that spread well being.
23. Risk innovation one perspective at a time. Brain fact: Inspire creativity and invention through teaching others at the same time you also learn and create yourself.
24. Collaborate to propose solutions from new outlooks. Brain fact: Create new neuron pathways collectively and you’ll add diverse solutions to workplace problems encountered.
25. Celebrate those who view the world from different lenses. Brain fact: Women’s and men’s brain differ biologically and intellectually, for instance, in ways that alter perspectives.
Listen further to these facts about your brain to add winning perspectives and move your day forward beyond mental snares that hold you back.
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Thanks Greg, what a shining example for all of us to focus more on what we could do well, if we let go of the baggage along the way.
Steve Jobs was not perfect, as we’re not either – and yet he was so willing to use and develop his amazing strengths! Imagine what our future would hold if we each focused on what we could improve by using more of our talents.
Seems to me you have unlocked a perspective I can easily buy into! What’s more – because I know how brains work – I know your ideas work! Again thanks, Greg!
These are very helpful and insight tips Ellen, thank you! One of my favourite Steve Jobs quotes is “I don’t care about being right, I care about success.” and we all saw evidence of his focus on success.
Wow – Coming from Steve Jobs these words are worth a million:
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
I agree – what an inspiration! It’s a great perspective to launch a successful venture today!
Steve Jobs was also a master of design who moved us from limited traditions as “mentors’ into unlimited communication opportunities as mindguides. See bit.ly/o4lUU0 –
Your quote here shows how so! Thanks for new challenges – Robyn!
One of Steve Job’s qualities that I admire is that he had a winning perspective about what he could accomplish. He says it so well himself, “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” He said this during his Commencement Address at Stanford. what an inspiration.