Every man can, if he so desires, become the sculptor of his own brain.
— SANTIAGO RAMON Y CAJAL
When I was playing basketball in Spain, before every game I would take the lead and start clapping, shouting out, “Let’s go! We can do it!” half an hour before every game. My energy level zoomed up until I felt perfectly and exhilaratingly ready to play, to give my very best on the court with my team.
Now, I understand that I was instinctively using energy and exercise to alter my brain chemistry. Without brain chemistry, we wouldn’t be the thinking, feeling, falling-in-love humans that we are! That’s because the chemicals in your brain, and the complex currents between synapses that they bring about, are what regulate how you feel, how deeply you sleep, how well you focus and concentrate, and how well you manage the usual (or unusual!) stress of your everyday life.
Most of all, once you understand the chemistry of your brain, you’ll realize why you’ll want to incorporate the Super Body, Super Brain exercises into your life on a regular basis. The perfect enhanced concentration you’ll find yourself engaging in whenever you perform your circuits serves as the precise energetic wake-up call your brain needs—and the result will be improved attention, concentration, and precision throughout the day as well as a better mood and overall sense of well-being.
energy boost
• From a semi-squat-plié position (as shown on page), with your arms down at your sides, clap between your legs.
• Stand up, and then raise your heels while simultaneously raising your arms to clap overhead. Don’t forget to smile!
• Every rep count should be coordinated with a loud vocal statement. You can count from one to ten or shout out positive ideas like “Let’s do it,” “We can do it,” and “Come on.”
• Do your clapping with as much speed as possible.
Exercise and Your Brain’s Chemistry
“Exercise makes you feel better.” Oh, sure, you’ve read that or been told that countless times over the years. But do you know why it makes you feel better?
It’s all due to the cocktail of brain chemicals that help you to move, communicate, and feel just fine. One of the easiest ways to guarantee an improved balance of brain chemicals—your neurotransmitters —is through exercise. This doesn’t mean you have to run a marathon. Any regular exercise schedule stimulates their release and aids in their communication with one another.
The fact that exercise improves mental health has been proven in countless studies over the years, including a fascinating study titled “Effect of Physical Activity on Anxiety and Depression,” published by Presse Medicale in 2009. “Physical activity appears to be a nonspecific treatment with psychotherapeutic potential that should not be ignored.” According to several experts, the way to reap maximum benefits is to exercise aerobically and to make a consistent commitment to stick to a program.
Exercise Raises Neurotransmitter Levels
I was very fortunate that my fascination with brain chemistry led me to Dr. Michael Liebowitz, founder of the New York Center for Depression and Anxiety and a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University (and the Michael Jordan of psychopharmacologists). He explained to me that when we talk about brain chemistry, we’re referring to the chemistry of the synapses, those spaces between nerve cells that different chemical messengers—the neurotransmitters—must leap across in order to transmit their information to other neurons.
There are approximately thirty neurotransmitters affecting our brain chemistry. Whenever you move or do any physical activity, there are several important ones that help you get where you’re going. These are dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine.
DOPAMINE
Dopamine is similar to adrenaline and affects brain processes that regulate movement, posture, blood pressure, attention, focus, emotional response, and your ability to feel good or bad, indifferent or excited. Stimulant drugs like cocaine and amphetamines enhance dopamine activity.
SEROTONIN
Serotonin is linked to a host of critical functions and is particularly linked to the stimulation of your muscles, memory, mood, anxiety, appetite, digestion, regulation of body temperature, and sleep.
NOREPINEPHRINE
Norepinephrine is similar to adrenaline in that it helps regulate mood and manages attention, emotions, learning, and dreaming. Lower levels of norepinephrine are often associated with depression and fatigue.
Exercise Releases Endorphins
Endorphins are a unique kind of neurotransmitter. They’re our brain’s built-in chemical system that shields us from pain and stress and can also induce mild euphoria. These properties help explain why endorphin release is commonly called “runner’s high.” But the runner’s high probably results from an enhancement of several neurotransmitters in addition to endorphins. Of course, you don’t have to be running, or even exercising for a long time, to feel a rush of happiness: you can be doing any kind of exercise. The only hitch to endorphins is that although their release is a given during exercise, whether they’ll give you that euphoric feeling every single time they’re released can’t be predicted.
I discussed their role with Dr. Liebowitz, who explained that endorphins are part of your brain’s chemical system that work very quickly, because they are needed in cases of sudden injury and extreme stress. It’s the same chemical system found in painkillers like codeine and morphine and in abused drugs like heroin.
Endorphins are good for your brain and body in many ways: they improve your immune system, improve blood circulation, have an antiaging effect by fighting free radicals, reduce stress as they help bring down cortisol levels (see page for more about cortisol), and help improve your memory.
How the Power of Exercise Changes How You Feel
Exercise Helps Develop Brain Resilience
Most of us—and certainly nearly all of the people who’ve corresponded with me about my workouts—have bad memories about gym class. We were told we were uncoordinated, clumsy, unable to master simple movements, and just plain old klutzy. And after being told we were helplessly uncoordinated, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
One aspect common to most of my clients when I first start working with them is that they are constantly berating themselves about their body size or shape or (mis)perceived flaws. But after only a few sessions—when they start to feel much better and see results—little by little, they start feeling happier.
This isn’t due just to pride in their accomplishments or weight loss. It’s because their brain chemistry has been altered and improved. In addition, the factor of mental engagement—of fully using their mental capabilities when challenged by a complex mental task combined with aerobic exercise that keeps their heart rate up—triggers a release of powerful neurotransmitters.
The word Dr. Liebowitz uses for this phenomenon is resilience. Exercise can literally make your brain chemistry more resilient. The better you feel about yourself, the more resilient you’re going to be in the face of adversity.
For example, if you exercise regularly and that makes you feel consistently better, your dopamine and serotonin levels are going to remain high. Those levels will remain high week after week, as long as you consistently do the work. They will increase even more when you constantly and progressively change these exercises—which is the novelty effect discussed on page. It’s as if you’re building a neurotransmitter fortress to protect yourself from incoming attacks of self-doubt or the criticism others may throw your way.
Dr. Liebowitz explored the effect of elevated neurotransmitter and endorphin levels in his fascinating book The Chemistry of Love, in which he discusses the physical effects of meeting someone you care deeply about and all the classic feelings of a love attraction (butterflies in the stomach, accelerated heart rate, blushing cheeks, shining eyes, nervous gestures). Not surprisingly, the chemical reaction to falling in love can be similar to the excitement of creating a new you—one where you’re not just proud of your new accomplishments but willing and able to admit how much you love this new you.
Once the small, gradual changes become more substantial and significant—which should take no more than a matter of weeks when you stick to the Super Body, Super Brain program—you will begin to feel capable of conquering and defeating those obstacles that now stand in the way of your ability to increase your self-esteem.
And this has everything to do with the neuroplasticity we discussed in chapter 1. Every time you exercise, the connections along your brain’s pathways grow stronger. You may have started with the equivalent of a dirt road, which then becomes a paved road and then morphs into a four-lane highway.
In addition, you’re building not only an infrastructure, but a brain language, too. You’ve gone from learning the exercise alphabet, to mastering words, to turning them into sentences. What might have seemed endlessly complicated and difficult at first quickly becomes the physical equivalent of reciting Shakespeare at the Globe Theatre!
Playful Exercise Makes You Feel Great
Here’s another way that exercise can make you feel better: you can have fun with it. As soon as you start viewing exercise as something playful, it’s no longer a chore you need to do—it’s a joyful task you want to do!
I’ve been working for several years with the incredible Dr. Gregory Lombardo, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and expert on bipolar disorders in children, on introducing fun and play—as well as humor—into my workouts, especially those I do with children in schools around the country. In other words, we’ve made sure that the way these exercises are structured is playful. Not just for kids, for whom play is how they learn and is critical for their future development (an offshoot of studying how animals play, as it’s how they learn the most important life lessons), but for grown-ups, who have often forgotten what a kick it can be to move! I’ve noticed this on countless trips to the gym, where I’ve seen the grim, gray faces of people trudging along on the treadmills or halfheartedly pedaling the bikes as they read a magazine. What they’re doing is unwittingly sabotaging their own workouts. Not just because they’re barely concentrating on their movements or their execution, but because they’ve forgotten all about playfulness.
Exercise Brings Structure into Your Life, Too
Something I’ve often discussed with my clients who have a weight problem is why they overeat when they do. They’ve told me that they rarely eat badly at work or with their friends or peers—that their worst eating habits invariably emerge at home, after the stress of a long day, and they just don’t know what they can do to switch off the signals that lead to bingeing.
I discussed this with Dr. Lombardo, and that led us to talking about the issue of structure. When most people go to work, their days are structured around the tasks at hand and toward other people’s expectations. But when they move from a place where their attention is focused on other people’s needs to a place where there are fewer (or different) demands, those who are oriented toward service may find themselves at a loss. They get home and don’t know what to do with themselves because there’s no longer any structure to their time and/or tasks. Often, the first thing they do is turn on the television, a passive endeavor and a means to either escape feelings or substitute a set of programmed feelings for their authentic emotional state.
So, instead of falling into the two most addictive home activities (TV/computer and eating) as soon as you get home, try doing a structured routine like a Super Body, Super Brain circuit instead. It takes only ten minutes and can completely restructure your evening. If you can’t do ten minutes, do five. Or sit quietly and meditate for five minutes. The important thing is to give yourself something good to do that provides a mental and physical disconnect from the world outside your door.
Exercise Is a Great Way to Manage Stress
Hormones are chemical messengers released by your endocrine glands to support the normal functioning of your body. These hormones regulate sexual development (estrogen, progesterone, testosterone), digestion (insulin), and stress (the corticosteroids: cortisol and epinephrine).
Stress has been hardwired into us over the millennia, likely a direct descendant of our earliest origins as hunter-gatherers, where short periods of intense stress (hunting, fear for survival) were followed by hopefully slightly longer periods of less stress/relaxation (eating after the hunt, staying in a safe environment). The need for an instantaneous jolt of energy allowing you to make a snap decision—often referred to as fight-or-flight syndrome—meant the difference between survival and a swift death.
Find yourself in a stressful situation and your brain and body instantly react, releasing a stream of cortisol and epinephrine. When they are released in response to normal stress, this gives you a coping mechanism to react to the situation at hand. Normal stress can get you energized to do an important presentation at work, to manage driving through a rainstorm in rush-hour traffic, or to make smart decisions about your life. If you’ve ever found yourself in a sudden surprising or frightening situation, you’ll know the feeling of an instantaneous, uncontrollable jolt of energy, which can then be followed by the feeling that all the energy has literally been sucked out of your muscles, leaving you seemingly (and temporarily) paralyzed.
But there’s more to stress than that. It’s not just about having an instantaneous, often heated, reaction to an immediate situation. The most damaging stress is the kind that we don’t even think about—the kind of stress that creates uncertainty, that is so invidious our brains can’t let go of it since there’s no short-term solution. This is the kind of stress that can eat at you until you literally become ill. This stress is bad for your brain, is bad for your heart, and will speed up your aging process exponentially. So, the paradox with cortisol and adrenaline is that our bodies really do need to have access to them in case we find ourselves in situations of real stress—but they’re not needed for the stress we put upon ourselves. Prolonged exposure to real stress—the kind that is unrelenting, emotionally affecting, and mentally debilitating—and its attendant release of high levels of corticosteroids is what leads to stress-related problems, such as disrupted sleep, inability to focus, a short fuse, anxiety, irrational thoughts, and depression. It has been shown to directly affect many areas of the brain as well as the functioning of the neurons, particularly in the hippocampus—which is, as you know, the center of the brain responsible for memory, learning, and spatial processing.
Not only do the corticosteroids give you a jolt, elevating your heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration, but there’s a physical letdown or energy crash once the situation has resolved itself. According to Dr. Liebowitz, this is actually a very dangerous time, because the most fatal arrhythmias, or irregular heartbeats, occur when you exercise vigorously, get all that adrenaline flowing, and then stop short, which is what untrained athletes might do after a race. If you don’t cool down gradually, all that adrenaline—more than you need—is still circulating. So it’s always better to ease out of any workout and give your heart rate a chance to get back to normal gradually.
Can you control this stress-hormone release? Sure. It’s called stress management—whatever manner you choose to use so you don’t get too disturbed or worried or troubled. Many people find conscious thought or breathing routines, such as yoga and meditation, to be sublimely stress reducing, which is one of the reasons that I include simple meditation techniques as part of the Super Body, Super Brain circuits, as you’ll see in chapter 4 and in the routines in part 2. Finding a few minutes to meditate whenever you can is one of the best stress busters you can give yourself.
One of the primary reasons these practices that use conscious thought are so helpful is because—you guessed it—the power of positive thoughts affects your brain chemistry. You already know that your central nervous system is an electrically powerful mechanism, and every thought is a catalyst for the thought that follows it. Saying “I am strong and I am confident” will raise your endorphin, serotonin, and dopamine levels. Saying “I am weak and stupid” will not.
The power of exercise can measurably increase the release of your endorphins while decreasing cortisol levels, which is why exercise is such a great stress reducer. If you’ve been under a lot of stress, you should always consult your physician prior to beginning any exercise program.
And here’s something else about exercise that is often misunderstood: it can have a calming effect on your rattled nerves. Most people who’ve never followed any sort of regular exercise program often erroneously believe that exercise has only a stimulant effect. But that’s because they consider only what happens while you’re moving: you’re sweating, you’re breathing harder, you’re concentrating. They don’t know how great you can feel after you exercise. It is one of the most sublime paradoxes of movement that it is invigorating, giving you more energy, and calming at the same time.
Exercise, Anxiety, and Depression
It is a source of endless frustration for many mental health professionals that the treatment of psychiatric disorders still has so much stigma and misperception about it. Those who develop a disease like cancer or diabetes are not shunned or shamed when they seek treatment, so why should those who have a brain-centered illness be any less worthy of help? Telling someone “It’s all in your head” should not be dismissal; after all, mental illness is all in your head—but it’s there due to inherent imbalances in brain chemistry.
Even when anxiety and depression are mild, they can have a profound effect on your quality of life. Exercise can help reduce symptoms of mild anxiety and mild depression because it raises dopamine, serotonin, and endorphin levels in your brain. Seeing and feeling the results of your accomplishment—especially seeing and feeling them so soon after starting your Super Body, Super Brain regimen—will improve your self-esteem and hopefully give you the encouragement you need to stick to the program. Keeping an exercise log will also be a helpful, tangible reminder of your progress and results. (If, however, you exercise regularly but depression or anxiety symptoms still interfere with your daily living, seek professional help. Exercise isn’t meant to replace medical treatment of depression or anxiety.)
Precisely how much exercise is needed to affect these levels is not yet something that can be conclusively proven. The Mayo Clinic suggests that at least thirty minutes of exercise, at least three to five days each week, may be needed to significantly improve depression symptoms. But even smaller amounts, such as ten to fifteen minutes, which is what it takes to do one Super Body, Super Brain circuit, will help improve your mood as well as your muscles.
Dr. Lombardo, in describing how exercise can help with anxiety, says, “One of the standard expressions for anxiety is being ‘uptight’—literally, because the standard reaction when someone is frightened is to tense up. What you’re doing when you exercise is loosening your muscles, and that easing of muscular tension affects mood and irritability.”
“It’s not a magic bullet,” says Kristin Vickers-Douglas, Ph.D., a Mayo Clinic psychologist, “but increasing physical activity is a positive and active strategy to help manage depression and anxiety.”
Novelty and Brain Chemistry
As for novelty, Dr. Liebowitz tells us, “There are obviously different kinds of people. There are people who are highly disciplined who can do the same thing day after day and find it interesting and satisfying without any novelty to what they’re doing. And there are people who lose interest and motivation really quickly. They constantly crave more novelty.
“As a psychopharmacologist, I can treat patients for depression and they can feel wonderful. And then the euphoria starts to wear off. They get used to not feeling depressed, and it’s not so exciting anymore. That’s true for all of us, because whatever we have, we get accustomed to, so we then want something different or something more. It’s basic human behavior that’s hardwired into us as a species.”
The chemical systems in your brain are hardwired to thrive on change. Learn something new and exciting (or even something boring, as long as it’s new!), and more dopamine will be released in your brain. That’s a given.
This dopamine release creates new realities, new emotions, and new neural circuits in your brain. But here’s the catch: once your wonderfully adaptable brain gets used to all this new information, it adjusts to the new dopamine level and stops getting so excited. It’s as if you finally ran an eight-minute mile after training for months, and then it’s no longer a challenge. You’ve adapted. You need a new challenge.
Good exercise coaches and trainers all know the need for constant challenge, which is why they often have their athletes do progressive exercises and interval training, mixing complexity, intensity, and execution in the same way that I’ve done with the Super Body, Super Brain exercises. Moving between different kinds of exertion and tasks not only works all your muscles but keeps your brain working, too.
This is why I’ve deliberately structured the exercises in part 2 on different, endlessly progressive levels. What you’ll be doing is constantly changing, so you’re constantly learning and concentrating. And then every four weeks you switch the exercises up, gradually building upon what you already have mastered and adding more complicated movements. This progressive structure of exercises that are deceptively simple yet seem complicated to your brain—such as moving several limbs at the same time, forcing your brain to “think”—will stimulate your brain with its perpetual and deliberate novelty so your dopamine levels remain high.
The studies done by psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and Nobel-winning (for studying how memories are stored in the brain) Eric Kandel have explored how we transform short-term memories into long-term ones—and the critical role of repetition in stimulating learning and memory. Reading about his work made me understand the process whereby my clients transformed my instructions into cognitive thoughts and then into long-term neuromuscular memory. After a certain amount of repetition, these clients no longer needed to visualize me doing the exercises; something clicked in their brain, allowing them to know what to do right away, and to do it well. This was visible proof of their brain’s capacity to quickly adapt and become much more flexible.
In other words, by changing things up, you avoid getting onto one fixed pathway that then is difficult to leave. You’ll have any number of paths from which to choose. And this plasticity or versatility in your brain is hardwired into how we think and process information. “There’s a continual need, when you come upon a novel situation, to restructure it,” Dr. Lombardo explains, “so your brain can perceive it as something that it has already experienced.
“This flexibility, or the ability to change tracks, is very important. Problems with it are something I see in children with ADD [attention deficit disorder] or bipolar disorder. A child with ADD has difficulty staying on track; a bipolar child has trouble changing tracks because transitions are so hard for them.”
The Emotional Connection to Exercise
When my clients hire me, they invariably tell me that they want to change their bodies or lose weight. Those are laudable goals, of course—but they’re leaving off something that is the most important element of any exercise regimen: the emotional component.
For me, that is key to understanding the most potent value of exercise.
If you are emotionally connected to the plan, you won’t find yourself making excuses not to do it. It’s far more empowering to say, “I want to be stronger and have more energy,” or, “I’m doing this for my health, so I can feel better,” or, “I want to be powerful.” Now, with a larger goal as your mind-set, you’ll always look forward to the time spent doing your routine—not only because it makes you feel so good physically and stronger mentally, but also because you’re doing something good and vital for yourself. Every time you work out, you’re reinforcing the fact that you deserve to look and feel good, and to have a brain firing powerfully, with improved concentration and clarity.
Still, one of the excuses trainers often hear is “I don’t have time to exercise.” Which is one of the reasons I designed each Super Body, Super Brain circuit to be so short. I defy anyone not to be able to find ten minutes a day to exercise!
And remember, this is not your average workout or boring run on a treadmill; it’s designed to combine all those powerful brain and body systems into a harmonious yet potent punch.
It might help you to draw up a schedule and try to do your exercising at the same time each day (or at one time on Monday and another time on Wednesday, for example).
In the wonderful fable The Little Prince, the Fox tells the Little Prince that he must come to visit him at the same time every day. When the Little Prince asks why, the Fox tells him that it’s so he can enjoy his coming before he arrives.
Setting up a particular time to do something good for yourself can help you stay motivated. Your body and your brain will soon become accustomed to Exercise Time—and look forward to it, as the Fox anticipates his visits from the Little Prince.
Dr. Lombardo shared this unique tip: “When I’m teaching people to breathe as a way of relaxing and not holding their breath, I tell them to practice their breathing on their way to the bathroom every time they have to go. It’s not a scheduled time, but it’s a time that you know is inevitable at different times during the day.”
You can extend this concept to scheduling exercise during a time span when you know you’ll have windows of opportunity, and casually insert your workouts into circumstances that happen all the time. This could be, for example, when the baby is napping, after the kids go to school, or when you have a midmorning break at work. And because these circuits are so short, if you miss one at the scheduled time, you can find another slot later in the day.
There is no magic formula to starting. Just bear in mind that getting off the ground will require a priming of the pump—giving yourself a consistent number of sessions to get the feel of it. It’s like playing a musical instrument: Learning the new fingering patterns can be slow going, even frustrating. But then suddenly your fingers know where to go, and what had seemed at first like an incomprehensible task becomes not just easy, but deeply satisfying.
My clients have all responded to these exercises very quickly—within weeks. They all have told me how great they feel during and after each session. They don’t need me to motivate them anymore: they feel so good that they can’t imagine stopping. It’s almost as if their brains and bodies need that constant mental challenge as well as that endorphin release, which innately helps them do it better and faster but with more grace and efficiency.
Most of all, forgive yourself if you miss some sessions. Simply go back to the beginning and start again. The worst thing you can do to your psyche is beat yourself up because you missed some sessions or ate too many cookies after a particularly trying day at work. Self-sabotage is often just as potent as self-esteem.
Another powerful option to help you commit is to make Super Body, Super Brain a family endeavor. All the exercises in chapter 12 have been designed for parents to do with their children. This gets everybody not only moving—but moving together.
Finding the Right Motivation
Unfortunately, we live in a society dominated by quick fixes and instant communication: cell phones, texting, and e-mail have revolutionized how we communicate. But there is no quick fix with exercise. And the programs touting a quick fix and superrapid results never work in the long run, because they don’t teach you what to do after the initial burst. Not only that, but they often include high-impact exercises, complicated circuits, and unrealistic promises that expose untrained athletes to the real risk of injuries. For me, gradual change following a specific, easy-to-follow-and-master progression is the only way to go. That way your mind-set will gradually evolve as you master each move, giving you the impetus to continue. I was determined to design this book to be as useful to you on day 1 as on day 1001.
And here’s something else to think about: it’s not just about finding the time—it’s about finding the right motivation. You have to really want, and envision, your success in order to achieve it.
This program can help you to achieve the results you want—but only if you have the right mind-set. Most important is tackling your issues from the inside out (emotionally) rather than from the outside in (concentrating only on your physical appearance). Making the decision to transform yourself because you want to feel good, have optimal health, think more clearly, manage your stress, and be strong and fit is so much more powerful than thinking that it might be nice to drop a few pounds so you can fit into that pair of jeans you’ve been coveting!
Furthermore, I know that you will lose weight if you stick to this program, so for me, that’s a given. Far harder is for my clients to push past the “I just want to lose weight” state of mind to the real reasons they gained the weight in the first place. Which translates to setting up a plan and a goal, but most of all to connecting with what’s really behind it: your emotional history.
Unless you acknowledge everything that made you into the person you are today, you can’t move past it. But that doesn’t mean you need to stay stuck in old patterns. So many of my clients age fifty and up have told me that they’ve never felt so powerful in their life, not even when they were in college. Enthralled, I literally watch their self-esteem and self-confidence blossom as they overcome their self-imposed obstacles and succeed at something truly remarkable. It’s a hugely important, transformative personal victory.
As a result, growing older is for them no longer fraught with uncertainty. They truly believe that they’re not just getting older, they’re getting better—at everything. They’ve given themselves a potent sense of well-being; they’re better able to manage their stress; they thrill to the achievement of the goals they’ve set and the transformed shape and muscles that accompany it; and they revel in their phenomenal mental and physical power.
These clients know that the circuit that goes from your brain to your muscles works with less dexterity as you grow older—particularly if you don’t exercise at all. And they’re determined to stay on top of their game for as long as possible.
lori’s story
Once you regularly do exercises that incorporate strength training, balance, and coordination, the new coordination patterns will fine-tune your brain.
Which brings me back to brain chemistry, and all those one hundred billion neurons in your brain—neurons that I like to think of as a basketball team. Each neuron is a player, and the neurotransmitters are the basketball they dribble across the court. But as you know, the players can’t touch each other, so they make new connections by passing the ball from one player to another via the synapses in order to make the basket.
Indulge me in this metaphor. After all, who would you prefer to have in your head? A team that will fight to win the championship or a team that has no aspirations larger than a halfhearted pickup game followed by an evening celebrating at a local dive?
I know which team I’d choose—the one that learned how to incorporate cognitively and physically challenging exercises in unique combinations to improve their brains and their bodies. Best of all, it’s never too late to join this team, because the stronger the connections and teamwork you form in your brain, the more powerful your brain is going to be.