Brain is the most complex machine to handle and to use it effectively for our growth we need to know the brain rule of this complicated machine. Because we all know that to operate any machine or device effectively we have to read the user manual which consists of some standard rules to operate that machine. Right!
Similar is the case with our brain, it has also some standard brain rule with the help of which we can use it effectively and become mentally strong. So if you understand these brain rules properly all other things come to you automatically. This is the biggest secret nobody focuses on.
What is that one thing successful people know and those who do not succeed don’t know? what is that secret? Have you ever thought about this? Some of you may think that it could be talent, courage, confidence, or risk-taking ability, etc. which makes the difference between successful and unsuccessful people.
Well, I agree with you but more than that I think an understanding of brain rules is the differentiator between successful and unsuccessful people. These rules focus on increasing brainpower, which anyone can learn and apply in their life to become successful.
In this article, I am going to discuss the universal brain rules in detail and by understanding this you can make your brain work for you. So let’s start...
Table of Contents
Brain rules that will change your life –
Developmental molecular biologist and research consultant John Medina has said that the root cause of all our problems is the way we think.
Because we don’t fully understand how our brain works and we do dumb things. That’s the reason it is very important to understand all the important brain rules. Let’s see those rules one by one –
Brain rule-1: Exercise boosts brainpower
Daily exercise is the most important thing which increases the power of our brain. It increases the blood flow in our minds. It’s not necessary that you should join the gym and do a heavy workout, just a basic 20 min of walking can increase your brainpower.
Aerobic exercise 2 times a week can reduce the danger of diseases like dementia. Cardio exercise helps improve blood circulation in our brain which increases our memory. focus and concentration. All types of exercises have a greater impact on our brains.
Human brain evolved under constant motion which means the constant motion of the body increases the working ability of our brain like creativity, solution finding, decision making, etc. That means exercise is the number one thing that improves brain functioning without any cost.
As per one of the surveys, researchers studied 2 different types of population groups led by 2 different lifestyles. The first group is people with an active lifestyle and the second group is people with a passive lifestyle.
After the survey researchers got shocked they found that people in the active lifestyle group are good at doing their work effectively, they are good at learning new skills, on the other hand, second group people lack these skills because of passive lifestyle.
They proved that exercise has a great impact on our learning ability as well as efficiency in daily work. Exercise has two main benefits it increases the oxygen flow into the brain and reduces brain-bound free radicals. Then increase in oxygen increases mental sharpness.
Exercise increases the production of neurons and reduces stress and anxiety. So as per this brain rule start doing at least 15 min of exercise 5 times a week whether it is aerobic, cardio, gym, or yoga anything doesn’t matter, just do it consistently and make your brain strong.
(Well I know maintaining consistency in the exercise is the biggest problem for that, I have one amazing technique that makes your exercise session easy and consistent see this post – Kaizen way: Small steps make big differences)
Brain rule-2: Human brain evolved with time
Initially, Humans used to live in jungles they fight with animals and kill them for eating this was the lifestyle of humans for so many years. After that humans became adaptable to change, they came together to live in jungles and fought with the other animals for their own survival.
Then they came out of the jungle and started living in the self-created space which was far away from jungles. So that’s how the human lifestyle changed from jungles to cities which evolved the human brain too and made it stronger than other creatures of this planet.
Over a period of time, the human brain started understanding others’ emotions, their intentions easily, and because of this humans started working together easily and also cooperating with each other. Due to cooperation with each other, the human brain becomes the strongest and this helps humans live the best life.
Human abilities like solving daily life problems, learning from mistakes, and cooperating with others help them survive on the planet. Because of these abilities, our mind becomes stronger and humans now running the entire world.
Our ability to work in a team and co-operate with others are the most important things for our survival on earth and this makes our mind stronger and stronger. Hence this brain rule shows cooperation at work not only helps us grow but also makes our minds strong.
Brain rule-3: Every brain is wired differently
Every individual’s brain is designed differently, how you live your life totally depends on how is your brain. Every small part of the human brain is different for different people, no two person’s brains store the same information at the same place in the brain.
Everybody’s mind is wired differently on this planet. No two-person think and act in the same way, even twins have a different structure of the brain that separates their thought processes. This brain rule is actually the universal truth that brain wiring and its structure are completely different for all the 7 billion people on this planet.
Brain rule-4: We don’t pay attention to boring things
Human brain can’t focus on boring things and it can focus on only one thing at a time. Multitasking is impossible for the brain because naturally brain is made to focus on one thing at a time.
But in today’s, fast-growing world Multitasking is overrated in corporates, schools, in every field. People think that multitasking is a sign of intelligence but this is not true. Multitasking reduces the focus and concentration ability of the brain and also decreases the overall working efficiency of the brain.
Human brains are good at understanding things instead of just recording the details. When we do one task at a time brain automatically gets into the depth of that task to understand it fully. It could be learning a new skill or doing office work. With such a deep focus, we can easily produce great results.
Because of multitasking human brain is unable to focus on important things, its focus shift to non-important things. Most of the time important tasks looks boring and non-important task looks interesting so naturally brain focus on the interesting thing.
For example- If you are the author so while writing a book you can’t reply to emails this will distract your mind, similarly, if you are working on one important project and along with that you also checking customer feedback so definitely your mind gets confused between whether to work on the project or to focus on a customer query.
During multitasking human brain focuses on those tasks which are interesting, it doesn’t matter whether the task is important or not.
So as per this brain rule, we need to accept that multitasking is not good for our brain and also before doing any work first make that work more interesting which will automatically increase the focus of the brain.
Brain rule-5: Repeat to remember (Short term memory)
In today’s highly competitive world, everybody wants good memory. Brain science proved that memory can be improved with repetition only. The human brain has many types of memory systems that follow 4 stages of processing and whenever new information enters the brain it is immediately split into different regions.
- Encoding – Understand the information.
- Storing – Store the information.
- Retrieving – Remember the information when needed
- Forgetting – Remove unnecessary information.
Whatever things we learn from our daily experiences, it is stored in the brain within the first 30 seconds of that experience. The human brain learns within the initial moments and that learning becomes stronger and more effectively stored in the brain.
But if we want to learn more about particular things then we have to repeat them consistently because the nature of the human brain is volatile without repetition it is unable to store that information for long-term use.
For example – A mobile number of 10 digits can be memorized easily within 30 seconds but if you want to remember the one-page answer to a question then you have to repeat it consistently. To store a huge amount of important information in a brain we have to repeat it with a consistent pattern.
With repetition, the human brain creates new neural pathways and when we continuously understand that information those neural pathways become stronger and stronger, then that information is permanently stored in the brain.
Hence as per this brain rule, whether you are a student or working professional to remember the important information you have to repeat it at a regular interval of time. With repetition you can crack any exam, you can learn any skill and master it.
Brain rule-6: Remember to repeat (Long term memory)
Most of the memories brain automatically forgets and those that survive in the fragile period strengthen with time. Long-term memories are formed in a two-way conversation between Hippocampus and cortex. The hippocampus and cortex have a major role in brain abilities like learning and memorizing.
Read more – Know your brain: Hippocampus and Cortex
Human brain gives us only an approximate view of reality because it mixes new information/knowledge with past memories. To make long-term memory more reliable and strong, we have to add new related information continuously into the brain and repeat it with timed intervals.
The current education system does not give much importance to the repetition of learning. As per John Medina (Author of book brain rule), if schools focus on revision and revise the taught information in the classroom itself then that will help students to remember all the important information easily.
Now, how you can better remember the information? The best way is to repeat that information after regular time intervals and this powerful method adds all the information to brain memory permanently.
Brain rule-7: Sleep well and think well
Everybody loves to sleep but in today’s world, people prefer less amount of sleep. They think that more sleep is a waste of time but the thing is that sleep is the best method to increase the efficiency of the brain.
Throughout the 24 hrs a day, the brain is in a constant state of tension between different cells and chemicals. It tries to put us to sleep and at the same time, other cells and chemicals are trying to keep us awake. During sleep time our brain is in active mode to process the information which we have taken inside throughout the day.
Sleep time is different for different people and it is scientifically proven that proper sleep has a good impact on our brain’s attention, memory, work efficiency, mood, and skill learning.
It also has a great impact on brain logical reasoning ability. decision-making and creativity so scientists recommend the proper sleep as per age group to increase brain efficiency.
Sleep time is different for pregnant women, normal men/women, it is different for old people and youngsters also. But it is recommended that everybody should take at least 25 to 30 min of afternoon nap that increase brain efficiency and work productivity.
Read more – How much sleep do I need?
As per one of the experiment, the 7th-grade student has given some math problems to solve and there was one shortcut to solve all these problems but the teacher didn’t told that shortcut to students. Only 20% found the shortcut when they were asked to answer on the same day.
But when they were asked the answer after one day, then more than 60% of students found the shortcut. A number of times this experiment was performed and every time teachers got the results that the student’s group who sleep well perform well in maths problem solving as compared to another group who sleep less.
Hence as per this brain rule, proper sleep makes your brain active and it helps your brain process information easily so that your memory will improve as well as other abilities of the brain.
Brain rule-8: Stressed brains don’t learn the same way
This brain rule shows that Stress is the most dangerous thing which destroys the human brain’s efficiency, memory, and working ability. Stressed brains do not learn new skills or gain information in the same way non-stressed brains do.
Hyper stress damages the cells of the hippocampus and cortex that will reduce your ability to learn and remember. Emotional stress is the most dangerous form of stress in which you know that this stress is not in your control you are helpless.
This type of stress reduces the learning ability of the brain as well as reduces human productivity at work. The human brain is built to deal with stress that lasts about 30 seconds, it is not designed to handle long-term stress like emotional stress.
Short-term stress is like your boss is always angry with you, a dog running behind you, when you are in the darkroom, etc. all these examples increase the stress level for a shorter period of time and our brain easily handles it.
Long-term stress is like a family member’s sudden death, stuck in a bad marriage, dangerous health issues, etc. These all are examples of long-term or emotional stress which are not in our control. This type of stress damages the overall ability of the brain.
So it is very important for individuals to get out of the emotional stress by doing exercise, meditation, or talking with a counselor. Because emotional stress will destroy your entire life.
Brain rule-9: Stimulate more of the senses
This brain rule is also called as sensory integration rule. Brain is designed to learn things easily when we use all our senses. We absorb information about any event through our senses and then translate it into electrical signals and those signals transmitted to different parts of the brain.
Our senses are developed to work together and help the brain work effectively. While doing any task or learning a new thing if we use all our senses, our brain can easily process that information and remembers it for a long time. Our senses work together so it is important to stimulate them.
Senses like touch, taste, smell, sound, and sight help the brain to work effectively. For example – Smell is unusually effective at evoking memory if you are watching a movie and at the same time smell of popcorns comes so that incident you will remember for a long term.
You will remember the exact scene in the movie at that time when that smell comes. Because whenever you try to recall the special scene of that movie your brain first remembers that smell of popcorns that’s how senses help the brain to remember things for a long time.
Similarly, in schools also students remember the words and lessons easily when teachers taught them using some pictures and good visuals. Corporations also use the power of senses to attract customers, people remember the big companies because of their attractive logos.
Again, we remember the best restaurants in our town due to the taste of the food, not because they are five-star or seven-star. That’s why everybody should use the senses to learn new skills, and to do important work so that our brain can easily remember important information for a long time.
Brain rule-10: Vision trumps all other senses
This brain rule is also called as vision rule. Vision is by far our most dominant sense taking up half of our brain’s resources. We see is what our brain tells us we see and it’s not 100% accurate.
Whatever visual analysis our brain does, there are lots of steps involved in that. Initially, Retina assembles the photons into little movie-like streams of information. The visual cortex processes these streams so that we can see that thing through our eyes.
We learn through pictures and images easily, instead of written text. If you listen to something or read something and try to recall it after 3 to 5 days, your brain remembers only 10% of that information. But when you read it with the reference of some images your brain recalls 55% to 65 % of the information.
So while learning new skills always relate conceptual information with some images so that brain can remember it easily. You can apply this rule to remember all the important information in the long term.
Rule-11: Male and female brains are different
This brain rule is also called the gender rule. Male and female brains are completely different. Mental health professionals know this rule for so long because mental disorders like depression are mostly found in females on the other hand disorders like Schizophrenia are mostly found in males.
During the time of puberty, males behave more anti-social while females feel more anxiety during this period and this happens naturally. During hyper stress, the brains of males and females react differently.
At the time of stressful situations, in the case of males, the Amygdala on the brain’s right hemisphere is activated and it helps males to understand the overall situation. In the case of females, the Amygdala on the brain’s left hemisphere is activated and it helps females to understand the details about the situation.
So male and female brains react differently to all the emotions but their combination is always useful. That’s why corporate recommend most of the project teams are combinations of male and female to produce better results.
Rule-12: We are powerful and natural explorers
We humans are the strongest and most natural researchers, and thinkers on this planet. We are best at learning things through observation, hypothesis, experiment, and conclusion with the help of these qualities we assess things and take decisions.
Even if we are so busy in schools and offices then also we don’t leave the desire to learn new things or explore new places because our brain always wants exploration. Companies like Google focus on giving time to their employees for exploration and learning new things, google believes that exploration helps people find new ideas.
We were children at that time our curiosity is so high that we always want to explore and wants to understand different things but with age, that curiosity reduces because we become so busy with daily work.
Researcher proved that if we give proper time to our brain for exploration, our brain find new ideas to solve all life problems. During exploration, the brain thinks beyond its limits and comes up with exciting ideas. So try new things, and learn new things for overall brain growth.
Conclusion –
Well, we discussed all the important brain rules which are essential for our life growth. I hope you understand the importance of these rules and how they will help your brain to learn new things easily. If you want to understand it in more detail I would suggest you check out this amazing book by john median.
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