Unleash your potential – Move the baseline

It is intriguing to read about the success stories of Einstein, Elon Musk, Warren Buffet. It leaves us puzzled and inquisitive.

Elon built game-changing businesses, as diverse as Automobile and Aerospace, with no background.

Einstein some inputs suggest his brain weighed 10% less than the average human brain.

Warren Buffet, at 89, keeps pace with advances in investing, managing his fortune well over the years, and still working as the CEO for Berkshire Hathway.

Buffet’s case makes it interesting, in the context of a frequent midlife crisis that we see people struggling.

If neither genes nor ageing acts as a deterrent then, What is it that we are missing? How do we go about it? Can we unleash our true potential?

Dr. Deepak Chopra reveals these answers in his must-read book: “Super Brain”. Each of us is bestowed with the same capability, referred to as “Baseline Brain”; so, how do we optimise it for higher levels of success?

Baseline brain is the default state, and Super brain, is what successful people make of the baseline brain.

Each of us can look at examples within our circle, and visualize how people transition to a state of Super Brain.

In some easy to correlate examples, we see how successful people react to certain aspects v/s people who are at the baseline level.

It’s a journey, and a long one, to transition to a state of excellence, to transition to Super Brain from the baseline state, and each of us can get to the state of excellence.

“I start early, and I stay late, day after day, year after year, it took me 17 years and 114 days to become an overnight success.” – Lionel Messi

How do you do this?

Without realising, we perform various roles with regards to our brain. We act as a Leader, Inventor, Teacher, and User of our brain. It’s hard to believe that we juggle through such diverse responsibilities. Let us look at scenarios about how we perform these roles and how we can use them to our advantage.

• Leader: As a leader, you give instructions to your brain and based on the type of instructions, the brain keeps evolving and developing. If you keep telling your brain to wake up in the morning to go for a stroll, it is going to act in a particular way; if you keep doing the same, it does not evolve. As you change your instructions to saying ‘I will Swim, Run, Sprint’, etc., it puts different demands, and the brain keeps evolving.

Takeaway: The brain has miraculous abilities to evolve to different instructions and stagnate with repetition.

• Inventor: Learn new skills. Life is a series of skills like walking, talking, reading, writing, etc. When you started walking for the first time as a kid, it was after several months of practice which you did unknowingly as a toddler. The key is to invest in building new skills consciously. If you were able to walk as a kid, you can cross the finish line of any Marathon effortlessly. It is about the practice and investing time in building your skillset.

Takeaway: Invest in building new skills to open new pathways in your brain.

• Teacher: Curiosity is the biggest gift you can get. A good teacher can inspire the lives of students by instilling a sense of curiosity. You are able to do the same to your brain. You are both a teacher and a student at the same time. Instilling curiosity is your responsibility which inspires your brain. Once your brain is inspired, it is able to do marvellous things, like Musk dreaming of Mission to Mars, Reusable Rockets, Electric Cars, etc.

Takeaway: Instil a sense of curiosity in your brain and inspire it for great outcomes.

• User: As a passionate user of your car, you take care of it in every possible way for it to be in prime condition. Your brain also needs to be nourished in the same way. Routine stress/ fear limits the parts of the brain that facilitates decision making causing damaging outcomes. Routine stress presses the body’s panic system, triggers chemical stress hormones and releases them into the bloodstream, impairing our overall ability take better decisions.

Takeaway: How do you nourish your brain? Minimize stress and toxicity (Both food and otherwise ?).

Summing up

Every individual is bestowed with the ability to blossom. Not all of us may end up as Musk or Einstein, but by taking cues from the framework given by Dr. Deepak Chopra, it will definitely help us to lead a more contented, happy and successful life.

So, how are you going to use the gift of nature to derive unbelievable outcomes?

Inputs

Deepak Chopra’s Super Brain; would recommend users to go through the book for a detailed understanding.