Make Your Own Miracles
USE YOUR BRAIN TO DEFINE YOUR DREAMS AND MAKE THEM A REALITY
If you go to work on your goals, your goals will go to work on you.
If you go to work on your plan, your plan will go to work on you.
Whatever good things we build end up building us.
—JIM ROHN, author and motivational speaker
Your brain is the most powerful organ in the universe. It has the ability to direct your life in a positive way or create a living hell. To harness your brain’s power it needs direction and vision. It needs a blueprint. You are more likely to be successful on your own terms if you define success clearly, specifically, in writing, with detail.
As the passion circuits supply the emotional fuel for your life, the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is the steering wheel and the brakes. The PFC has been called the executive brain and is the chief executive officer (CEO) of your life. Like a great CEO, the PFC adds direction and helps you stay the course, despite whatever obstacles are put in your path. When the PFC is healthy, we are thoughtful, goal directed, focused, exhibit good judgment, and can control our impulses. When it is low in activity we tend to get distracted, scattered, and follow the whims of the moment rather than our goals. We also have trouble controlling our passions, which may get us accused of sexual harassment, in debt from a spending frenzy, or a drunk-driving arrest. When the PFC works too hard, we micromanage our lives and get little accomplished. One simple way to help the PFC manage our lives better is to have clear, passionate, written goals—goals that sustain and motivate.
How Do You Define Success?
Given that this book is about optimizing the brain to be your best in life, it is important to have a clear definition of what success means to you. Most people want to be successful without knowing exactly what that means. When pushed to define success, most equate it with happiness, wealth, recognition, independence, friendships, achievement, or inner peace—all vague concepts. Even most dictionaries define success in ways that have little specific meaning: common phrases used are“a favorable result; the gaining of wealth, fame, etc.; or a successful person or thing.”Does this mean that success is ambiguous? Not at all. It simply means that it is a very personal thing and needs to be defined in the context of individual lives. What may be one person’s success might be another person’s failure. Defining success depends on many factors. Here are several to consider.
1. DEVELOPMENTAL STAGE OF LIFE
Success for a seventeen-year-old is often having enough money for a car, making the sports team, and having a date on most Friday nights. For someone in his early twenties it may mean having maximum fun. A person in his thirties may measure success by being on the right career track, having a home and a mortgage he can afford, and being able to give his kids the piano or dancing lessons they want. These examples are both markedly different from the way a sixty-five-year-old might look at success. To him success might involve security, health, contentment with his life, and being able to share the joys of his children and grandchildren.
2. FAMILY BACKGROUND
Family of origin is one of the most important influences on how people define individual success. Family values, traditions, religious orientations, and goals serve as the backdrop against which success is often measured. Success in one family may mean little, or even failure, in another. For example, one family might put a high emotional value on education and academic accomplishment, while another family might focus on athletic success. Some families may define success in group terms, for the married couple or for the family as a whole, while others have more individual definitions.
Success messages are given to children even before birth. It is not uncommon to hear parents voicing aspirations for their children during the mother’s pregnancy. As the child grows, these messages may be subtle: excitement when a child pretends to be a doctor or picks up his first football or apathy when he bangs on the piano or takes an interest in classifying bugs. Or the messages may be overt: ridicule when a good student brings home four A’s and three B’s, indicating acceptance only comes with perfection, or praise when a child dates the culturally acceptable person and disdain when he does not.
Initially, most children are very interested in getting their parents’ attention, and they are constantly on the lookout for ways to gain favor. If the parental messages are too harsh, however, it is not uncommon to find children defining success in ways opposite to the ideas of their parents, setting up conflict. Unfulfilled goals or dreams of parents are also transmitted to children. A parent who always wanted to go to college but could not afford it may put a strong emphasis on education. A mother who felt trapped or tied down by her marriage and children will encourage her daughters to have careers and make something of themselves, so as not to repeat her unhappy scenario.
Several other important factors originate from family background. These include identification with parents or grandparents; the wish to please, hurt, or compete with parents; and the desire to give their children things they felt lacking in their own childhoods. Someone raised in the turmoil of an alcoholic home might define success in terms of having a loving family life and being able to give his children the stability and emotional security he never had. Competition with siblings or friends is often an important factor in how a person defines success. You may define your success based on the thoughts and actions of others.
Clinically, I have found that if a child grows up in an approving and loving environment, success is much easier to find in whatever way he chooses to define it. But if a child grows up in a household where the parents were never satisfied no matter how hard the child tried, success is likely to be defined in unreachable terms.
3. PSYCHOLOGICAL MAKEUP
How a person is put together psychologically also has a great impact on how he views success. Character structure, inner life, relationships, psychological health, and brain health interact to give him feelings of contentment or turmoil. A person who has a need to be loved and admired will feel more successful with fame and achievement as opposed to wealth. Someone who is a loner will feel more successful with individual accomplishments than group ones. Likewise, an antisocial character will feel more successful breaking the law and getting away with it rather than living by the rules.
One of the most successful people I have met was a patient of mine who had a serious psychotic illness—chronic schizophrenia. Most aspects of a schizophrenic’s life are affected by this devastating illness. For Beth, however, it was different. She sought the treatment she needed, took responsibility for taking her medicine and keeping her therapy appointments, and trusted the husband who loved her. Success for her was different than it is for most people. It was defined as staying out of the hospital and being able to raise her children in a sane environment, one that was different from the torture of her own early youth. I never saw her more proud than the day she walked into my office and said she had gotten a job all by herself at a doughnut shop.
Success is individually defined according to the circumstances of your life. In the process of realizing your dreams it is critical to define success for yourself, as specifically as possible. Here are nine rules to keep in mind.
Rule 1: Your Success Is Defined Only by You
Most people look to others for examples of success. Statements like “He must be successful because he is a surgeon” (or “drives a BMW” or “lives in a rich neighborhood”) are very misleading. Unless you know how other people define success, you have very little idea whether they consider themselves successful. It’s clear from my clinical work that many, many people who others would classify as “successful” are unhappy. They lack the feeling of success. Only we can author our own success and we need to personally define its parameters.
Along a similar line, if you let someone else define your success, you’re likely to be unhappy. You may even feel as though you are living out someone else’s life, not your own. Katie, a patient of mine, lived this example.
Katie worked at her father’s publishing company. She was very good at her job and was loved by her supervisor and co-workers. Yet she felt unhappy. She had wanted to be a grammar school teacher ever since the fourth grade. She entered college majoring in primary school education. However, her father talked her out of teaching. Low pay, disruptive kids, and waning social status for teachers were the reasons he gave her. He told Katie that she should enter his business, as she had the possibility of taking it over one day. Katie followed her father’s advice, but she always felt unfulfilled in her job and found that she longed to work with kids in a classroom. In fact, she arranged her schedule to start at 10 A.M. so she could volunteer at a local school. She even spent her vacations tutoring at the school. When her father discovered what she was doing, he felt regret. He told her to go teach. He had followed his passion. He wanted the same thing for her.
Rule 2: Success Is a Feeling
Success is nothing until you feel it. I once heard a story about three umpires on how they call balls and strikes. The first one said, “I call them the way I see them.” The second umpire said, “I call them the way they are.” And the third one said, “They ain’t nothing until I call them.”
Success is a feeling, a perception on your part. Most people think of success in terms of symbols, not feelings. In the final analysis, however, it is how we feel about where we have been and where we are going that is the ultimate measure of our success in life.
We all know of people who had all of the success symbols—social status, wealth, possessions, outstanding achievements, admiration—but who considered themselves failures. The symbols did not prevent Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Jimi Hendrix, River Phoenix, John Belushi, Robert Downey Jr., Owen Wilson and countless other so-called successful people, from feeling like failures who needed drugs or alcohol or who turned to self-destruction to be rid of the painful feelings. I call this the empty success syndrome—the outward appearance of success without any of the positive feelings on the inside. A word of caution: sometimes feelings lie to you. If all evidence points to success in your life, but you feel unsuccessful or like an impostor, there may be a problem with your thinking.
Rule 3: Success at Any Price May Not Be Success
Since success is a feeling, the means by which the symbols of success are obtained may be important. For most people (not everyone), the ways in which they reach their goals have an impact on how they feel about themselves in the process. If goals are reached in ways contrary to individual belief systems, conflicts over the reality or value of the success may arise. For example, if an executive made it to the top by using his friends as stepping-stones, he may feel loneliness later on that could ruin his feelings of accomplishment. Or consider the situation of someone who gets ahead by lying or cheating. People who build a career on a foundation of dishonesty may temporarily enjoy their achievement, but after a short while they are likely to feel doubt about their ability and self-worth and end up feeling more like criminals than success stories.
Rule 4: Success Is a Process
Success is not a static entity, a gold watch at the end of thirty years, or a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine. It is a process of defining and redefining, struggling toward and reaching the goals you set for yourself. It is the day-to-day feeling that accompanies your efforts that drives you on.
Most people think of success as an end point, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The end of the rainbow, however, may be a dangerous place to be. There are many examples of people who reach their pinnacles only to develop serious illnesses or depression shortly thereafter. Executive promotion depression has been known to behavioral scientists for some time. This occurs when a person has reached his major goal in work, say, to become a company’s CEO, and then becomes depressed. Unless he immediately sets new goals for himself, the feeling of “is this all there is?” may set in, leading to depression.
More insight into the dangers of reaching goals comes from the research of Dr. E. K. Gunderson and Dr. Richard Rahe, who correlated life events with the development of physical illness. Surprisingly, they found that not only did stresses like death of a spouse, divorce, job loss, and detention in jail correlate with greater physical illness, but so did positive events like marriage, outstanding personal achievements, graduating from college, job promotions, and retirement.
If success is viewed as a goal to be reached, what happens after that? Feelings of success live only for a short while after goals are reached. The ultimate satisfaction comes from attaining, not just from attainment. Successful people are not there; they are in the process of getting there, wherever there may be for them.
Rule 5: Success Occurs in Steps
No one is born with the feeling of success. In fact, we are all born a bit confused and soon learn that we are very small in a very big world. It is hard to have much sense of self-esteem and mastery when you have to crawl or walk along the furniture to get anywhere. With loving and encouraging parents, however, our sense of mastery grows day by day, not in leaps or giant steps, but in small baby steps. Hopefully, we will make progress, but there will always be days when we slip back a step or two. With support, we learn that these setbacks are part of the process, and we continue along the road of self-development.
Early successes bring positive feelings, which encourage children to want to do more to obtain more positive feelings. If the child gets enough positive feelings about himself, he will begin to believe in his abilities and be able to achieve, because it feels good to be successful. This process does not happen overnight and will not change overnight. Expecting to find success in instant solutions (instant wealth, relationships, recognition, or achievement) invites lifelong disappointment. Success, like learning to walk, is a process that occurs in tiny steps.
Rule 6: Success Is a Balancing Act
Balance is just as important to feelings of success as to a ballet dancer. We all have a personal life that no one else sees, a relational life with others, and a work life. It is very possible to feel successful in one of these areas while feeling like a failure in the others. Very few people I know have it all. But if your life becomes too unbalanced, you may find that your non-success areas drain energy from those areas you feel good about. Balance, perspective, and trade-offs are necessary for success. What good is it to make all the money in the world if the person of your dreams leaves you?
You decide how much weight to give to each area of your life. This varies for all of us, and it will even be different at different stages in your life. When you think about defining success, don’t allow yourself to become unbalanced.
Rule 7: Success Can Be Learned
Success is not something that you’re born with or something you inherit. It is something that comes from a healthy brain that is properly encouraged and programmed. In Secrets of Successful Students I describe how I went from being a mediocre high school student to summa cum laude in college. Looking back, the transformation was not a big mystery. No one in grammar school or high school ever really taught me how to study. Nor did I have much motivation or confidence to succeed. When I learned the secrets of great students and developed the maturity and passion to succeed, I was able to make it happen. Likewise, success in any endeavor occurs through a series of steps. After tending to your brain’s health, determine what steps you need to do in order to be successful. In particular, see what others have done in situations similar to yours.
Rule 8: Defining Success Too High or Too Low Will Derail You
If you aim too high you’ll quickly feel overwhelmed and your goals will dissolve into daydreams. Expecting to make a million dollars on your first real estate deal after attending a seminar or expecting your chronically conflicted marriage to turn around in three weeks of marital therapy only sets you up for failure. Change, success, and fulfillment take time. On the other hand, if you aim too low, your patience and endurance may run out before you get the positive feelings necessary to motivate you to go on. The best way to start defining and experiencing success is by setting up reasonably realistic goals that can be obtained in a foreseeable period.
Rule 9: Success Is Having the Ability to Be Honest with Yourself
To feel successful, you must be able to be honest about the things that are really important to you. Whether it has to do with acquiring money, changing careers, becoming involved in a new relationship, or discarding a destructive one, being truthful with yourself is the only way to allow the inner sense of contentment and success to exist without feeling like an impostor. Persistent dissatisfaction and frequent mind changes are clues that you aren’t being honest with yourself.
Honing Your Individual Definition of Success
The following questions are designed to help you clarify exactly, at this point in time, what success means to you. Remember that success is a process, and the answers to these questions will change over time. On a separate piece of paper, answer the questions as honestly as you can, and be prepared to be surprised by your responses.
This rest of this builds on itself. Answer the questions in sequence. It will take some time to complete, and the information it will generate is crucial to helping you define your goals for success. When you finish, go over your answers at least twice to reflect on their significance. Make it count!
1. Rank the following ten items in order of their importance to you (1 = most important, 10 = least important).
____Happiness
____Fun
____Wealth
____Health
____Fulfilling relationships
____Fame
____Individual accomplishments
____Legacy
____Making a difference in the lives of others
____Faith in a higher power
2. With the above ranking in mind, what are you now doing to accomplish or enhance the first five items you placed on the list? Success is a process. What are you doing to help that process along?
3. Think of yourself lying in your coffin at the end of your life. What was really important to you in your life? What really mattered to you? At the end of your life, what has value for you? This has always been one of my favorite questions. It helps put your life into a lifelong perspective. When you start with the end in mind, the present moment becomes much more important.
4. Are you giving enough time and effort to those people or things that really matter to you? Or are you unconsciously spending the bulk of your time on things of lesser personal value?
5. What developmental period of life are you in (adolescence, young adulthood, middle age, etc.)? How have your personal goals changed from the previous period? How do you think they’ll change ten years from now? Thinking ahead prevents events like midlife crises, empty nest syndrome, and so on.
6. List ten instances in which you felt most competent, ten instances in which you felt most confident, ten instances in which you felt most connected to others, and ten instances in which you felt the most joy in your life.
7. Name five people whom you look up to and admire. Describe the specific traits you admire and the ways you would like to be like them.
8. Name five people you know whom you do not admire. Describe the specific things about them that turn you off. Be as specific as you can.
9. List five experiences in which you felt like a failure.
10. List five experiences in which you felt successful.
11. In defining goals, there are three major areas of your life to examine:
a. relationships (with spouse or lover, children, family, friends)
b. work/finances (your job, school if you are a student, or tasks at home if you’re a housewife, current and future finances, etc.)
c. personal life (the part of your life that applies just to you outside of relationships or work: physical and emotional health, spirituality, interests, intellectual growth, etc.)
How significant/important is each to you? Rank each of them on a 1-to 10-point scale, giving 10 points to areas that are all-consuming and 1 point to areas that have little significance to you.
Relational life ____
Work/Financial life ____
Personal life ____
How much time do you give to each area? Does this reflect its importance to you?
Answering these questions will also help you answer the questions “What do you want? What matters most?” When you know what you want, you can then go take active steps toward accomplishing your goals. You mind makes happen what it sees.
Your Brain Makes Happen What It Sees
Jenny, age thirty-two, was a bus driver for the city in the Bay Area. She came to see me in her work uniform, looking very sad, and eight months pregnant. As she sat down on the sofa in my office she had tears running down both her cheeks. Her family and boyfriend had just disowned her and she felt isolated, alone, and confused.
“How can this happen?” she started. “How can I look and feel pregnant but not be? How can I make my own breasts larger? Have no periods? Have this belly?” Her voice raised as she put her hand on her distended abdomen. “How is this possible? Am I crazy?”
Jenny had been together with her boyfriend for four years. They were planning to get married when she believed she became pregnant. For the past two years she had wanted to be pregnant. Even though her initial pregnancy test was negative she was convinced that she was. All of the signs were there. The test must have been wrong, she thought. She had morning sickness and even thought she felt the baby move. As she believed she was getting closer to delivery date she went back to the doctor who, after running more tests, told her she was definitely not pregnant.
The weekend before she got the news from her doctor, her family had just given her a baby shower. The family, initially excited, now felt duped. They told her they did not want anything more to do with her. Her boyfriend, not knowing what to think, moved out.
Jenny had a condition known as pseudocyesis, or false pregnancy. Believing she was pregnant, even though she wasn’t, her brain sent the signals to the rest of her body to make the symptoms of pregnancy occur. Pseudocyesis has been known since antiquity. Hippocrates wrote of twelve women who “believed they were pregnant” in 300 B.C. In 1923 John Mason Good coined the term from the Greek words pseudes (false) and kyesis (pregnancy).
As I explained her condition, Jenny initially looked confused. Over time, however, she began to understand the power of her brain. After a family meeting, and several sessions with her boyfriend, she reconnected with the people she loved.
Believing she was pregnant even though she wasn’t, her brain changed the whole shape and function of Jenny’s body. Likewise, seeing fear in your future, even where there is none, can make you feel so panicked you end up in the emergency room. Seeing your husband or sweetheart leaving you can make you act so insecure, clingy, and dependent that it is more likely you will be left.
Negative thoughts can make negative things happen, while positive thoughts can help you reach your goals. The expectation of success is a very powerful force by itself. Skilled physicians have known for centuries that positive expectations play a crucial role in the outcome of many illnesses. Until 100 to 150 years ago, the history of medical therapeutics was largely that of the doctor-patient relationship and the placebo effect (placebos being inert substances that have no physiologic effect on the problem). Actually, most of the treatments by physicians in times past would have been more harmful than beneficial to the patient, if it weren’t for the recuperative powers of the human organism supported by the belief in the healing powers of the physician’s prescriptions. The benefits of the placebo effect are determined by the expectations and hopes shared by the patient and the doctor. Action, ritual, faith, and enthusiasm are the vital ingredients. After studying the psychotherapeutic process Johns Hopkins psychiatrist Jerome Frank, M.D., concluded that the belief of the therapist in his treatment and the belief of the patient in the therapist were the most important factors in a positive outcome to therapy.
Although a placebo is a substance that is considered pharmacologically inert, it is by no means “nothing.” It is a potent therapeutic tool, on the average about one half to two thirds as powerful as morphine in relieving severe pain. It is now recognized that one third of the general population are placebo responders in clinical situations relating to pain, whether the pain is from surgery, heart disease, cancer, or headache. It is very clear that placebo responses are not simply a result of the patient fooling or tricking himself out of the pain. Placebo administration can produce real physiologic changes. Some of the physiologic pathways through which the placebo effects work have been identified. In a study done by a University of California research team, it was found that the placebo effect of pain relief in dental patients could actually be blocked by administering these patients naloxone, a drug that neutralizes morphine. From this study and others, it has become clear that the belief in pain relief stimulates the body to secrete its own pain relieving substance, called endorphins, which act in the same manner as morphine, only they are much more potent. In a recent study, doctors at Houston’s Veterans Affairs Medical Center performed arthroscopic knee surgery on one group of patients with arthritis, scraping and rinsing their knee joints. On another group, the doctors made small cuts in the patients’ knees to mimic the incisions of a real operation and then bandaged them up. The pain relief reported by the two groups was identical. In a brain imaging study, researchers found that when placebo worked for depressed patients, brain function also changed in a positive way. Change your beliefs; change your brain.
Tell your brain what you want and match your behavior to get it. If your mind takes what it sees and makes it happen, it is critical to visualize what you want and then match your behavior over time to get it. Too many people are thrown around by the whims of the day rather than using their prefrontal cortex to plan their lives and follow through on their goals.
One-Page Miracle
One of the most powerful yet simple exercises I have designed is called the One-Page Miracle (OPM). It will help guide nearly all of your thoughts, words, and actions. It is called the OPM because I’ve seen this exercise quickly focus and change many people’s lives.
Directions: On one sheet of paper, clearly write out your major goals. Use the following main headings: Relationships, Work/Finances, and Myself. Under Relationships write the subheadings Spouse/Lover, Children, Extended Family, and Friends. Under Work/Finances write Short Term and Long Term. Under Myself write Physical Health, Emotional Health, Spirituality, and Character. Self is that part of you outside of relationships or work. Often it is the part of you that no one sees but you.
Next to each subheading succinctly write out what’s important to you in that area; write what you want, not what you don’t want. Be positive and use the first person. Write what you want with confidence and the expectation that you will make it happen. Keep the paper with you so that you can work on it over several days or weeks. After you finish with the initial draft (you’ll frequently want to update it), place this piece of paper where you can see it every day, such as on your refrigerator, by your bedside, or on the bathroom mirror. In that way, every day you focus your eyes on what’s important to you. This makes it easier to match your behavior to what you want. Your life becomes more conscious and you spend your energy on goals that are important to you.
I separate the areas of relationships, work, and self in order to encourage a more balanced approach to life. Burnout occurs when our lives become unbalanced and we overextend ourselves in one area while ignoring another. For example, in my practice I see that a common cause of divorce stems from a person’s working so much that little energy is left over for his or her spouse.
Here is an example I did with one of my patients who came to see me after a head injury at the insistence of his wife. Tony is a program developer at a local production company. He is married with one child. Since the injury he had significant impulse control problems, spent too much money, and was irritable at home.
After you look at the example, fill out the OPM for yourself. If you have PFC challenges, this exercise will be very helpful for you. If you don’t have challenges in this part of your brain, this exercise will still help keep you focused on what’s important in your life. After you complete this exercise put it up where you can see and read it every day. It is a great idea to start the day off by reading the OPM to get focused for the day.
TONY’S ONE-PAGE MIRACLE
What Do I Want for My Life?
RELATIONSHIPS—To be connected to those I love
Spouse/Lover: To maintain a close, kind, caring, loving partnership with my wife. I want her to know how much I care about her. I want to act in a way that makes her feel less worried about me.
Children: To be a firm, kind, positive, predictable presence in my child’s life. I want to help her to develop into a happy, responsible person.
Extended Family: To continue to keep close contact with my parents and siblings, to provide support and love
Friends: To take time to maintain and nurture my friendships
WORK—To be my best at work, to be the best program developer I can be, while maintaining a balanced life. Specifically, my work activities focus on taking care of my current projects, doing activities targeted at obtaining new programs, and giving back to the community by doing some charity work each month. I will focus on my goals at work and not get distracted by things not directly related to my goals.
FINANCES—To be responsible and thoughtful and help our resources grow
Short Term: To be thoughtful of how our money is spent, to ensure it is directly related to my family’s and my needs and goals. Since the injury my judgment has not been the best, so I will check with my wife before I spend more than fifty dollars.
Long Term: To save 10 percent of everything I earn. I pay myself and my family before other things. I’ll put this money away each month in a pension plan for retirement.
MYSELF—To be the healthiest person I can be, which is even more essential since the injury
Physical Health: To take care of my body on a daily basis, exercise, eat well, get good sleep, take a vitamin and fish oil, and the other supplements Dr. Amen recommends for me
Emotional Health: To feel stable, positive, and grateful
Spirituality: To live close to God, attend church regularly, and pray daily
Character: To be honest, thoughtful, kind, and trustworthy, to live with integrity
MY ONE-PAGE MIRACLE
What Do I Want? What Am I Doing to Make It Happen?
Once you clearly define what you want, meditate and focus on it, you’re ready to make your goals and desires part of your daily life. By developing specific nerve pathways for your desires, the planning and steering part of your brain, the PFC, will help you realize your dreams. Your OPM now becomes the guidepost for all of your thoughts, feelings, and actions. It is the road map of your life. As you now know what you want, it is critical to move your behavior toward your goals and away from things you do not want. Consistent, positive, congruent effort is essential to success. Clearly, this takes a healthy brain, especially in the PFC. Let your brain help you design and implement your success in life. Work toward goals that are important to you. Many other people or corporations are happy to decide what you should do with your life. Use the OPM to help you be the one who has the primary say. Your brain receives and creates reality. Give it some direction to help make your life what you want it to be. Teach yourself to be focused on what’s important to you. This auxiliary PFC will help you keep your life on track.