SUCCESS CENTERS-IN THE BRAIN

The marshmallow test may be the most famous behavioral science experiment in our history.

In it, a young child is presented with a marshmallow, or a similar treat. The child is told that she can wait 15 minutes before eating the marshmallow than she’ll receive a second one. Stanford University researchers conducted the original marshmallow test, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Initially, the aim of these tests was to demonstrate the age at which children develop the ability to show patience and delay gratification. (the test was originally administrated to Children between the ages of 4 and 6) however, follow up studies found that the youngsters who were able to resist gobble up the marshmallows were better able to cope with stress doing adolescence.

We are better at taking standardized test and we are more likely to excel academically professionally. Basically the kids who can muster self-resistance early in life offering turn out to be very successful teens and adults. Although groundbreaking, the Stanford marshmallow test has lately come under scrutiny. When some researchers at New York University and the University of California, Irvine, repeated the test in 2018 with a larger and more socioeconomically diverse groups of kids, what they found, was that the ability to exert impulse control, only partially predicted greater achievement later in their life.

Adjusting for variables, such as up bringing and background, reduces the effect. Still, the marshmallow test revealed that at a very early age the brain of many children may already be wired for big-time success. However, the question becomes: How did this come about? People may be born with some crude biological propensity towards delayed gratification, but I think it’s much more likely these behaviors are learned, Ian Roberson says, who is an emeritus professor of psychology at Trinity College institute of Neuroscience in Dublin.

This mixture of nature and nurture, lightly shapes many other aspects of an individual’s neurobiology, that is including traits or tendencies that lead to success. However, success can be a slippery phenomenon to define, mainly because it’s so subjective. While for some, wealth and power equals success, for others having a close relationships and harder to measure forms of personal fulfillment. Likewise, nailing down the brains characteristics that may rise or lower a person’s odds of succeeding is a very tricky task indeed.

However, my dear friends, there are some cognitive and psychological attributes such as motivation, risk taken, focus and resilience, that seems to sometime promote success across many spheres of human endeavor. And most of these, at least to an extent, can be improved on or augmented at any age. Before the advent of magnetic resonance I imagine it was thought that the brain matter you were born with, you will always live with, Ray Forbes says, who is a program chair and business psychologist at Franklin University in Ohio. But what we’ ve been learning for the past 10 or 15 years is that our brain is almost infinitely plastic.

Forbes is quick to add that portions of any individuals cognitive traits and personality characteristics are dictated by genes and your early life experiences. However, everyone has the capacity to reorganize their brain for success. Business leadership is not a hot area of scientific inquiry, and many thousands of Studies have claimed or aimed to identify the personality characteristics and brain traits that correlate with success in an environment of a corporation.

A great deal of this research is contradictory or controversial, but a 2015 Harvard Business School of male, large-company CEOs in Switzerland came to the conclusion that has turned up again and again in the literature on corporate success: That executives tend to score high on tests of intelligence and “noncognitive” aptitude but that they are definitely not extraordinary.

Although the traits of CEOs compared favorably with the population, they are hardly exceptionally,” the author of that Harvard analysis write. There are more than one hundred times as many men in managerial roles in the corporate sector who has better traits combinations than the medium large company CEO.” That analyst, like many others, has found that a man’s noncognitive ability was more closely tied to his odds of Landing a leadership role than was his IQ.

Noncognitive ability refers to a number of different qualities, but some examples are cooperation self-control, a “growing mindset” and social competence. Another way to put it, CEOs tend to be utility players individuals with a range of above-average skills rather than a single standout ability. The most successful CEOs are what some have called whole brained, Forbes says, who has studied the neuroscience of leadership. He says some of the research in this field indeed, breakdown the brain’s cognitive and noncognitive skills into four quadrants of activity that roughly map onto the actual structure of the human brain. For an illustration, the lower left quadrant is heavily active during planning and organizing tasks, while the lower-right fires up during emotional or interpersonal activities.

The four major brain sections identified in this research appears to be better integrated and accessible in CEOs than in other populations, Forbes says. Research has tied other brain characteristics to success through context is important. For example, there is evidence that individuals who tend to be risk-takers and reward Seekers may be more likely to succeed as entrepreneurs. However, at the same time, these behavioral tendencies also raise a person’s risks for substance abuse and addictions, or for a lack of fulfillment even if their enterprise succeeds.

Just as anyone can become addicted to drugs or sex, they can fall into a cycle of addictions where there’s never enough power or money, and that can be very punishing, in a big way, Robertson says, who is the author of The Winning Effect, a book about the neuroscience of success. Most cognitive or behavioral traits, Roberson adds, are “two-edged sword.” For instance: a lot of research suggests that individuals who possess some narcissistic personality, characteristics egocentrism entitlement, lack of empathy for others may be more likely to land in a leadership role, but there is evidence that narcissists makes poor CEOs. Although a hint of narcissists could boost a person’s self-confidence or Christmas in a manner that helps them succeed, too much could hold them back.

While the usefulness of some brain traits or tendencies is context dependent, other traits increases a person’s odds of success in almost any situation. And it’s possible to retain the brain in ways that encourage some of these helpful patterns of thinking. Here is an example, individuals who display high levels of self-compassion often score high on measures of well-being and they also tend to motivate their selves in ways that helps them achieve some of their goals.

There are two main ways people motivate their selves, first self-criticism or through self-compassion, Kristin Neff says, who is an associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas and who is also the author of the Mindful Self-compassion Workbook. Neff compares these approaches to the carrot and the stick. Self-criticism is being hard on oneself, or scaring yourself with heavy fear of failure, she explains. This kind of motivation can actually work, but it can also increase anxiety and discourage people from setting lofty goals or undertaken some new projects. To secede, you often need to keep trying after any failure she explains. However, for people who self criticize, failure can be way too scary.

Self-compassion, on the other hand, is a form of motivation that assesses the brain and bodies care system, the ones we trap into when parenting or helping friends through some hard times. Let us think about how we would talk to a child whose has failed at something, Neff advise. You would never say, you are such a loser, or you are a failure. Yet these are the kind of admonishments many people heap on their selves when they don’t succeed. Neff says self-compassion is about learning to be kind to oneself when things are not working out and recognizing that nearly all successful people struggle through failures and setbacks. When people practice self-compassion, she says, failure isn’t as scary. Removing this fear will help people to stay motivated and on track.

Neff, recommends that people write themselves supported, and encouraging letters, or the kind that one writes to a friend who is struggling. Writing to oneself compassionately is an effective way to increase motivation and reduce the fear of failure, she says. Returning to the lessons of the marshmallow test, Robertson says that kids who were able to resist gobbling the marshmallows tended to distract their selves by looking away from the treat and counting. Really, he says, the test was a measurement of the children ability to attention on something other than the marshmallows.

The ability to control attention is one of the most valuable human attributes, he says. What we pay close attention to or choose not to pay attention to, affects our move and goal motivation and a lot of other things that are without a doubt critical to our Success, and we know that attention is a muscle that can be trained. Mindfulness training and other forms of meditation has been shown to booster attention, Robertson says, while incessant detractions seems to tank it.

Taken together, the neuroscience research reveals that the human brain is endlessly complex and that the skills or traits that correlate with achievement develops from mixture of genetic and environmental variables. Just as there is no one definition of success, there is no single definition of a successful brain.

May prosperity and good health be always with you.

Humbly yours, Paul Earl.

www.Beautiflworid.com

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