26 Jul Neuroscience Says 3 Simple Approaches Can Help You Live a Happier, More Successful Life
There’s so much evidence that no matter who we are or where we’re starting from, we an all make ourselves happier.
Happiness is not set in concrete. You can take action, and enjoy more happiness and success.
It’s not always easy, but it is possible, and these 3 simple happiness boosting tips via Inc.com by Jeff Haden will definitely help …
Neuroscientific research on how to make better decisions faster, break bad habits, and build greater intelligence, focus, and mental agility.
You can fight how you’re wired. (I know I have.) Sometimes that works.
The better approach? Don’t just try to change how you think. Take advantage of how you’re built to leverage and benefit from the way your mind works on a neurological level.
Here are three of my favorite research-based approaches.
Neuroscience on Making Better (and Faster) Decisions
Or not. In this landmark study, Adriaan de Groot asked expert and novice players to view a chess position for a few seconds and memorize it as best they could.
Here’s what happened:
- When the position imitated the layout of a real game, the experts performed significantly better than novices. They had seen and analyzed countless chess positions. They knew and recognized patterns, and instinctively connected the new pattern to ones they already knew.
- When the position was created by placing pieces at random, the experts performed no better than novices. Random patterns? They couldn’t relate them to anything they knew.
To de Groot’s surprise, the grandmasters weren’t better at memorization. But they were definitely better at recognition, and at chunking by parsing and grouping information in the most efficient way possible.
According to Barbara Oakley, an engineering professor at Oakland University and the author of Learning How to Learn:
Chunking is the mother of all learning — when you know something so well that it is basically a snap to call it to mind and do it or use it.
Creating neural patterns — neural chunks — underpins the development of all expertise.
In short, extensive practice and deep experience help experts make what appear to be instinctive decisions. Or as Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman says, “Intuition is thinking that you know without knowing why you do.”
That’s how experienced doctors can often, within seconds, arrive at an accurate diagnosis. That’s how experienced investors quickly take advantage of a subtle market shift. That’s how experienced leaders quickly read the room to recognize conflicting agendas.
Neural chunks allow you to know, even though you may not know why you know.
So how can you better create neural chunks? One way is to follow Adam Grant’s simple three-step process …
… keep reading the full & original article HERE