Throughout the text, you'll find helpful nuggets of information offered to help you in your quest to improve your IQ
by Richard Pellegrino and Michael Politis
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Book Details
Price
|
2.50 |
|---|---|
Pages
| 353 p |
File Size
|
4,825 KB |
File Type
|
PDF format |
ISBN
| 0-02-862724-5 |
Copyright©
| 1999 by Richard Pellegrino and Michael Politis |
What's the most powerful muscle in the body? The one between the ears—the brain, an organ of enormous complexity, which we use so little of. The world needs the very best thinking possible from every person on the planet. It's critical that we all learn to think more effectively: The world is changing too rapidly and the challenges ahead of us are too huge to leave our collective brain power unused. Yet little is being done to help people learn to be effective thinkers. Of the thousands of hours spent in schools, almost none are spent learning how to think better. Realizing this, I'm delighted to see this Complete Idiot's Guide to Improving Your IQ because it provides a practical guide to understanding more about how your brain works and how you can use it to accomplish your life goals and help build a better world. If we could tap into the powers of the mind, we would not only be smarter, but also more effective, wiser, and happier. The difference between “normal people” and “geniuses” is not in the genes, but in ourselves: It is the degree to which we effectively use our brain's abilities to accomplish what we need to get done. So, how do you learn to use your brain effectively? Tools. This book provides you with a working knowledge of how your brain works so you can use it for your own purposes. Biomedical research has moved neuroscience ahead at a pace that would amaze Einstein himself! Do you have to be a brain surgeon to understand how the brain works or to
radically improve your ability to use it? The good news—no. The other news—it takes more than inherited smarts or good intentions to understand your brain and to tap its enormous potential.
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Improving Your IQ provides the cutting edge of neuro-science and psychological research. The authors show, in language that respects the brain and the reader, how the brain works. Beyond this, it is a body, mind, and spirit “training” manual, offering practical methods to help you develop your senses about the world around you, the people who inhabit it, and yourself. The authors show how you can be maximally effective within the context of your desired goals—in part by learning to “think your way” into a morë effective, actualizable vision of the world.
I encourage you to try the exercises in this book, and my wish for you is that they will open up the wonderful world of your mind and positively change your life. The authors cannot guarantee that one read of this book will up your IQ by 200 points. But they do promise that you will become more intelligent in ways that matter to you. It's hard work, but it will seem like play; and when work and play are indistinguishable, magic happens. Read on, and see what kind of magic can happen for you.
JOYCE WYCOFF
....
JOYCE WYCOFF IS AN AUTHOR, SPEAKER, AND FOUNDER OF THE INNOVATION
NETWORK, WWW.THINKSMART.COM. HER PUBLICATIONS INCLUDE MINDMAPPING:
YOUR PERSONAL GUIDE TO EXPLORING CREATIVITY AND PROBLEM-SOLVING (1991)
AND TRANSFORMATION THINKING, TOOLS, AND TECHNIQUES THAT OPEN THE DOOR
TO POWERFUL NEW THINKING FOR EVERY MEMBER OF YOUR ORGANIZATION (1995).
SHE HAS CO-AUTHORED TO DO… DOING… DONE! A CREATIVE APPROACH TO
MANAGING PROJECTS AND EFFECTIVELY FINISHING WHAT MATTERS MOST (WITH G.
LYNNE SNEAD, 1997) AND BREAKTHROUGH SELLING: CUSTOMER-BUILDING
STRATEGIES FROM THE BEST IN THE BUSINESS (WITH BARRY FARBER, 1992). SHE HAS
BEEN HELPING PEOPLE LEARN TO INCREASE THEIR PERSONAL EFFECTIVENESS
THROUGH THE CREATIVE USE OF TECHNIQUES THAT IMPROVE THEIR THINKING
EFFECTIVENESS.
Introduction
You picked up this book because you are intelligent. You want to grow, in body, mind, and spirit, and that is all the brain asks of any aspiring Pilgrim who wants to reach the Promised Land, kingdom, or dimension called “enlightenment.”
This is an intense book, but it does not demand that you leave your job, spouse, or circle of friends to become one of “the chosen.” We all are the chosen, as long as we chose to become the Einsteins, the ones with “da brains” who get the job done in ways that are innovative, effective, fast, and enormously enjoyable. First, a confession from the writers. When we first took on the job of writing this book, we had no idea what we would write about. We had no idea that the application of the very ideas that we propose here would move us up to levels of vitality and intellectual intensity that we never imagined possible. And another thing is worth considering very carefully. Everything in this book is proven, scientifically. In the following pages, you will not find egotistical motivational opinion, lofty untested cerebral postulates, or formulas for making a perfect life from the Wizard Publications at www.Oz.com. If there was no basis in real scientific, sociological, or medical fact, the idea in question went into the shredder. In Part 1, we find our feet, conceptually and scientifically. We ask, “What is intelligence?” We then provide a widespread, functionally applicable definition that so many others have not thought of before—straight out of Webster's dictionary. How do we measure effective intelligence? How do “lower” animals on the evolutionary chain use analogs of our human intelligence, and what happens to the circuitry of our brains when we become learners and doers rather than spectators? We'll start off with road maps of the nervous system as seen with the eye, the light microscope, and the electron microscope. We'll also show how we can learn faster from mistakes, and recover faster from disease or trauma-inflicted deficits in brain circuitry. The brain is sort of like a computer. And, directly and
indirectly, we are the best repairmen and programmers available.
In Part 2, we consider the input that our brain uses for raw data. An army is as effective as the intelligence service that feeds it information, and the Central Intelligence Agency field workers in our possession are biologically superior to anything built by NASA. How does the eye convert strange electromagnetic waves into the wondrous sensations that we call light? How do the ears on the side of our heads allow us to hear virtually every kind of sound made, from frequencies as low as 20 cycles per sec to as high as 20,000, and to determine where that sound is coming from, to one degree arc? How do we feel the other sensations: touch, vibration, taste, smell, and “electrical vibrations” (which are very, very real)? What is the sensation of pain and why is it the opposite side of pleasure?
are found in the “limbic” system, which used to be considered a primitive part of our brain left behind by evolution and is thought to be scheduled for the genetic shredder in a few hundred years.
But research in the last decade has proven that these limbic areas are extremely important in helping us learn, motivating us to learn, and remembering what we have learned. We also talk about “the Zone,” a condition of “state” in which body, mind, and spirit are all working together at maximal speed. “The Zone” is a real place—the place from which we are maximally intelligent. It creates a situation in which we get everything we want and need, with maximal efficiency. There are very real biological correlates that can be measured and can tell us that we are in “the Zone.”
In Part 6, we tackle consciousness. The “conscious” brain is what we identify as the part with which we think, feel, and act. The “unconscious” mind creates images, programs, and circuits that never rest and are “beyond our control.” Or are they? In the last five years, the innovative research in cognitive neurobiology tells us, with hard facts, that we can identify, watch, and modify the unconscious mind; and we can make it our servant rather than our silent master. And, oh, what a powerful servant it can be.
This book cannot be read in one night, but give it an evening and we think you will continue. Your comments and suggestions, good or bad, are welcomed. “The truth shall set you free,” and we invite you to share our freedom with us.
....
Table of Contents
Part 1: What's So Smart About Being Intelligent? 1
1 What Is Intelligence? 3
Defining Intelligence 3
Nature or Nurture? 4
The Many Facets of Intelligence 5
Different Types of Einsteins 5
The EI Hall of Fame 6
Measuring Effective Intelligence 7
To Be Maximally Effective, Keep an Open Mind 7
…and Gain Control of Your Communication Skills 8
2 How Should We Measure Intelligence? 11
IQ, a Test Taken Out of Context 11
Tool Time 12
A Hammer Is a Hammer Is a Hammer…Or Is It? 13
I'd Rather Be a Hammer Than a Nail 14
The Rest of the Toolbox 15
3 Tools Don't Do the Job, People Do the Job 19
You Can't Always Get What You Want 20
What About the Outside World? 21
“Every Scientist Should Know How to Be a Shoemaker” 22
Fun with Fractions 22
Balancing Act 23
Emotion Can Turn the Gain Up or Down 23
For All This, People Still Have the Unquenchable Desire to Build 24
The Good News 24
The Better News 25
Something to Try 25
4 Slugging It Out—How Even a Snail Can Learn 27
The Generic No-Name Nervous System: Andy's Inner Workings 28
Part 2: The World Talks to Us 69
8 What You See Isn't Always What You Get 71
The Eye as a Camera: Just Point and Shoot 72
The Brain Starts Here 74
The Low Road and the High Road Between the Brain and the Eye 76
Beauty Is in the Eyes of the Beholder 79
9 Hearing the Silence, and a Lot More 81
Of Megaphones and Microphones 81
How to Hear What Is Being Screamed into Your Ears 84
Training the Ears Inside Your Brain to Sing by Themselves 85
Hearing with the Brain and Hearing with the Heart 86
The Harmonics of Sound—Not Just for Musicians 87
Hearing the Silence 88
10 See Me, Feel Me, Heal Yourself 89
Good Vibrations: The Pacinian Corpuscle 89
Running Hot or Running Cold? 90
Touch Me in the Morning 91
Territoriality Among Neurons 93
The Man in Your Head 94
Feeling the Electricity with Your Fingers 94
Try This at Home 95
11 The Nose Knows: Taste, Smell, and Effective Intelligence 97
The Nose—Sensors and Pathways 97
The Nose as a Tool for Effective Intelligence 100
Pheromones, Conditioning, and Smelling the Roses 100
The Tongue—A Tool for Listening and Talking 102
12 Pain and Pleasure: Two Sides of the Same Coin 105
What Is Pain, Anyway? 106
There Are Some Pains with Which the Brain Cannot Be Trusted 107
The Opium Den in Your Skull, or Sometimes the Brain Is a Smoky Room 109
A Kick in the Butt 110
The Brighter Side of Pain 110
13 All According to a Plan 113
Windows to the World 114
Meaningful Modalities 114
Intensity Issues 114
How Long Has This Been Going On? 115
Location, Location, Location 115
Sensational Stimulation 115
The Case for Challenge 116
Living the Good Life 116
Environmental Awareness 117
Lace It Up Tight, Doc 119
14 Now Hear This: You Get to Paint Your Vision of the World 121
Just Because You're Paranoid, It Doesn't Mean They're Not Out to Get You 122
Guardians at the Gate 122
Keeping the Mental Camera on Close-Up and Wide Angle at the Same Time 125
Managing Modernity 126
Even a Great Movie Is Built One “Frame” at a Time 126
Now That You Have the Power, What Are You Going to Do with It? 127
Vigilance 128
Selective Attention 128
What You Focus on Becomes Reality 129
Part 3: The Huddle Before the Next Play: Processing 133
15 The Movie Inside Your Mind: Far More Than the Ocular Camera Sees 135
The Brain as Set Designer 135
Color Me Effective 137
All the King's Horses and All the King's Men 139
The Wiring: Old Ideas Verified by New Technology 139
And When the Connections Aren't There 141
16 Listening: An Active Process 145
More Than Just a Game of Cerebral Telephone Tag 145
Sorting Out Audio on the Cerebral Sound Board 146
Sound Perspective: Eyes on the Sides of Our Head 147
The Intelligent Ear and the Doppler Effect 147
Hearing the Silence—Prelude to Hearing the Sound 148
The Most Effective Earplug—Your Mouth 149
How Much Do You Listen? 150
ACTIVE Listening: A Lot More than Being Polite and Quiet 151
17 Memory and Magic 153
Use It or Lose It 154
Short-Term Memory and Intelligence: A Mismatch Made in the
Land of Ignoramus 154
Memory Processing 156
Compartmentalizing the Chaos 157
Identify the Information with More than One Sense 158
Incubation Time and Recall 159
Overlearning: The Only Way to Keep Your Memory 159
18 Converting Brain to Brawn: A Class Act 161
Association Cortex: What's Up with So Many Circuits? 161
Motor Cortex: Just Where Are the Engines Under the Cerebral Hood? 163
Judge but Not Jury 164
Right versus Left: Always an Unbalanced Political and Cerebral Debate 165
Keep Your Perspective 166
19 Visualize a Compelling Future 169
The Hallucination as Proposed Reality 169
Manipulating Your Own Magic Carpet 171
Fine-Tuning the Third Eye 171
What Gives Us Such Flexibility? 174
Part 4: We Talk Back 175
20 The Intelligence of Brawn: How Brain Moves Muscle 177
Hammering the Nail on the Head with Your Head 178
Every Action Has an Opposite Reaction 179
Walking the Walk 179
The Brain as Programmer 182
21 Communication: Your Brain's Most Powerful Cannon 185
You're Always Communicating Something 185
The Voice as Emotional Barometer 187
Listening to Yourself Before Opening Your Mouth 189
The Basic Vocabulary of Human Body Language 191
Where are You Really Coming From? 193
Effective Intelligence Is Contagious 194
22 The Automatic Nervous System: Thinking without the Brain 195
The Sympathetic Nervous System: The Yang Master 195
The Parasympathetic Nervous System: The Yin Master 197
The Window on the Brain 198
Being Ruler of the Yin and Yang Autonomic Masters 199
23 Maybe You Want to Rephrase that? 201
Talk Is Never Cheap 201
Lots of Words, Lots of Emotions, Endless Communication Possibilities 202
Word Up! 203
Suiting Words to Deeds 204
Part 5: Head, Heart, and Mind: Emotions and Effective Intelligence 207
24 Emotions: Turning the Intensity Up or Down 209
Advantageous Anger 210
Taming Anger's Tiger by the Tail 210
Manipulating Angry Memories 211
Lightening Up with Laughter 212
The Wonderful World of Wonder 213
Communications Skills 101: Making Your Listeners Care 213
Getting the Message 214
A Prerequisite for Effective Social Interaction: Empathy 216
No Color Without Emotions 217
25 Heart and Head: How the Brain Makes You Laugh or Cry 219
Amygdala—Grand Central Station for the Emotional Express 219
The Prefrontal Cortex: Not for Lobotomy Only 221
When Wrong Emotional Reflexes Become Learned Facts 221
The Problems of Passivity 221
Hormones and Emotion: A Match Made In Heaven? 222
Stress Can Make You Sick 223
26 In the Zone 225
The Importance of State 226
The Zone: A State of Mind, Brain, and Biology 226
Creating a State of “Zone” 228
Act Like You Know What You Are Doing, and Sooner or Later You Will
Part 6: Behave Yourself 231
27 Consciousness: Is the Emperor Wearing any Clothes? 233
What You See Is Not What's There: An Old Problem 234
A Category for Everything, and Everything in Its Category 234
Now You See It, Now You Don't 234
Of Two Minds 235
Definitions of Cerebral Cyberspace 236
The Role of the Unconscious 237
The Conscious Mind Might Be Smarter, but the Unconscious Mind
Is Faster—Who Wins? 238
28 The Unconscious Mind: Who Is Running this Show, Anyway? 241
The Unconscious Takes It All In 241
The Visionaries Who Could Not See 242
Decisions, Decisions, Decisions 243
Advanced Decision Making 244
Free Will 245
Effective Intelligence 246
29 Just Follow These Simple Rules 247
Intelligence: “To Apprehend the Presented Facts to Guide Action
Toward a Desired Goal” 248
Understanding the Hardware 248
Rewriting the Software 248
Choose Your Passion! 251
Who Do You Need to Become to Feed Your Passion? 251
Glossary 253
Index 257
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