The Science of Success and the Neuroplasticity of the Brain

In the last 10 years or so, a new field of neuroscience has mapped the mental zone that can literally change the brain to quiet an overly active stress response system and simultaneously pave the way for higher brain networks to perform at optimum. The more you function from this ‘higher’ mental zone, the less you stress, and the more your brain lights up with the mix of intelligence that predicts a successful life.

When these higher networks wire and fire together, humming away at the brain speed of a hundred million computer instructions per second, you not only succeed, you excel at every level of life: from career to family, from physical and emotional wellbeing to fully actualizing your talent and ability. It’s a brain generating the fluid and creative intelligence to achieve goals, along with the emotional and social intelligence to instill joy in your work, peace in your life, and harmony in your relationships. It’s also a brain generating the homeostasis that promotes health and longevity. The key to all of these positive outcomes is building the mindset that transcends stress.

The good news is neuroscience has identified a solution to stress that goes far beyond conventional stress management. This approach not only repairs the damage caused by overproduction of the stress hormones, but also generates the neurological conditions that stimulate the growth of new connections within the higher brain that expand brain capacity, making people smarter, more innovative, and emotionally intelligent. The solution lies in the power of your mental state to rewire your brain. Change your mind-set in specific ways and you can literally change brain structure to extinguish stress reactions and amplify higher brain function. The technical term for this change is neuroplasticity.

Here’s a list of the positive change neuroplasticity can produce:
• The usual networks that generate the brain’s executive functions grow larger and become more fully integrated with other neural networks. This means you increase your skillfulness at planning, decision-making, error correction, and troubleshooting. You build strong cognitive abilities and can think abstractly.
• Gamma wave activity is far better organized and coordinated, signaling the higher mental activity and heightened awareness found in peak performers.
• The right brain and the prefrontal cortex work together to elevate intuition and creative insight into practical innovation.
• Activity in the left prefrontal cortex, the seat of positive emotion, swamps activity in the right prefrontal cortex, the seat of negative emotion. This condition enables you to achieve a high level of emotional intelligence.
• There is greater activity in the center of the brain, especially the caudate and right insula, generating the social intelligence that sustains interpersonal resonance.
• Your physiology functions at optimum, securing a high level of health and energy.

Who in their right mind wouldn’t want a change like that? Who in corporate leadership wouldn’t want a work force operating at that level of brain function? The point is, if an individual or company is not actualizing the mindset that transcends stress to empower higher brain function, they are not maximizing their full extent of fluid, creative, emotional, and social intelligence. The skill of Positive Presence is your ability to create and adjust a positive and energized mind-set (higher brain function) through conscious thought processes that result in effective workplace behaviour – the kind of behaviour needed for sustainable engagement.

Achieving the prescribed shift in mindset is easier than you might imagine, adding little to your to-do list. It’s essentially about practicing a to-be list… even better is the fact that change in brain structure happens quickly, within fourteen days to eight weeks.