The twenty-first century is the beginning of the Millennium of the Mind. In this new era, humanity will come to realize and apply the extraordinary power of the human brain. Over the past fifty years, I’ve devoted my life to helping create a world in which every child is raised with full knowledge of his or her astounding potential and how to utilize it. Mental literacy is the term I coined to refer to a practical understanding of every individual’s capacity for information processing, memory development, creative thinking, problem solving, and continuous learning. The “king of literacies,” it includes knowledge of the fundamentals of the physical structure and nature of the brain, and an understanding of the alphabet of the brain’s behavioral repertoire.
About twenty years ago, during dinner, Ted Hughes, the former poet laureate of Great Britain, and I were discussing the benefits for humanity that will be realized when we fully unleash the great natural resource of human intelligence. In a moment of inspiration, we raised our glasses in a new toast to planetary mental literacy: “Floreant dendritae!” (a hybrid of ancient Greek and Latin meaning “May your brain cells flourish!”).
Reading and applying the messages in Brain Power: Improve Your Mind as You Age will result in a remarkable flourishing of your one hundred billion brain cells. In this marvelous book, Michael J. Gelb and Kelly Howell make a profoundly valuable contribution to the field of mental literacy. Although there is considerable material on optimizing mental function as we age available on the Internet and in various publications, this book focuses in laser-like fashion on the most important, scientifically valid, and useful information on improving your mind as you age. It is immensely readable, easily accessible, and immediately applicable to every aspect of your life. Brain Power offers a practical program for increasing well-being now and for the rest of your life.
I know the value of the lessons in this book because I had the good fortune to have a mother who exemplified everything that Michael and Kelly recommend. My mom, Jean Buzan, was a tremendous inspiration to me and to just about everyone she ever met. Although she was a gifted student, Mom was forced at the age of sixteen, in 1932, to leave school. In those days, college wasn’t an option for a girl from her background.
It was not until she was in her early fifties that she decided to go to college. With her feisty, positive attitude, she persuaded the authorities, first, that she was not “too old” to start a degree and, second, that she should skip the bachelor’s degree and go straight into studying for a master’s!
Mom had an advantage that helped her excel: she was mentally literate! An accomplished speed-reader and Mind Mapper, Mom was awarded her master’s degree summa cum laude. What was her field? Gerontology! That is, the study of human beings as they age. For ten years, Mom lectured at the university on this subject, consistently making the point that you can get better in virtually all areas as you age. She was a living example of the material she was teaching.
Ironically — and displaying the outdated thinking about age that is still prevalent — her college insisted that she retire at the mandatory retirement age of sixty-five. “How ludicrous!” she exclaimed to me. “Just when I reach the age in which I’m applying everything I studied to get my degree, and have lectured on it for ten years, they decide that I am no longer qualified to teach it!” In happy rebellion, Mom printed business cards that proclaimed, “Jean M. Buzan, retired but inspired!” Mom continued writing, teaching, and inspiring others well into her nineties. As a gerontologist, Mom was devoted to overturning negative myths about aging.
One of the most common myths about aging is that memory inevitably declines. But I know from the growing body of scientific evidence and from witnessing Mom in action that this isn’t necessarily true. In reality, your memory behaves much like your body in some very important ways. If you look after your body and nurture it, it remains flexible, resilient, and strong. If you neglect it, it becomes rigid, stagnant, and weak. The good thing about your memory is that it can improve every day of your life. Your memory is not like a container that fills up. It is a network of interlinked images and data that can grow infinitely as long as you continue to use it. The older you are, the greater and more powerful your memory can become.
Many people are concerned, however, that years of bad habits will prevent them from improving mental performance. In other words, they feel that it’s “too late.” But bad habits are simply neurological patterns that build up networks of probabilities by forming “memory traces” along the pathways between your brain cells. The more you repeat the behavior, the more these networks expand and the more the probability of your repeating the behavior increases. All you have to do, therefore, to reverse this trend is to establish new and more positive patterns of connection in your brain. By repeating these, you increase the probability that they will happen, and you decrease the probability that your old bad habits will persist. This book is a manual for the creation of new, more positive patterns of connection in your brain.
Your brain is astonishingly adaptable and flexible. You can continue to learn new skills and improve for as long as you live. Even if you’ve been doing the opposite of everything that Michael and Kelly teach in these pages, you’ll still be able to turn things around and reap the benefits. I’ve been preaching the gospel of the flexible, adaptable brain since the late 1960s, and as you’ll learn in this book, scientific research has now confirmed the idea that you can improve your mind as you age.
I first met Michael in 1975 when I was invited to lecture on the brain at the School for Alexander Technique Studies in London. After my presentation, I commented to the school’s director that I was particularly impressed with the incisive questions asked by one of the students. Unbeknownst to me, Michael, the incisive questioner, had also approached the director to inquire as to how he might learn more about my work. Thus began a collaboration and friendship that continue to this day. In the late 1970s, we traveled the world together leading five-day mind and body seminars for senior managers. In 1982, Michael became the first person to be certified as a master trainer of my work, and since that time, he has evolved into one of the world’s great original thought leaders in the fields of creative thinking, innovative leadership, and development of human potential.
And this book has another exceptional feature: the Brain Sync: Improve Your Mind as You Age download that accompanies this text provides an elegant way to “tune up” your brain and optimize mental performance. This easy-to-use audio program increases mental clarity, improves memory, and allows you to enjoy many of the same benefits experienced by long-term meditators. Understanding the nature of brain waves and how to synchronize them is an important element in the curriculum of mental literacy. And Kelly Howell, creator of Brain Sync audio technology, is the world’s leading innovator in the practical application of brain wave research. Her outstanding meditation and brain optimization programs are used in hospitals and biofeed-back clinics, and by hundreds of thousands of individuals worldwide.
Together, Michael and Kelly provide you with the most valuable, life-changing knowledge and practices you can use to unleash your brain power and improve your mind as you age. Floreant dendritae!