It may be just a lump of fat. But that lump of fat sitting inside your skull is the most powerful tool you have to create the life of your dreams.

    People do amazing things with brain power . . .

    We’ve sent men to the moon . . . we’ve crossed cultural divides and created connections where none existed before.

    We’ve run marathons . . . we’ve raised children to become capable adults . . .

    Some of us have used the power of the mind to survive experiences most of us couldn’t fathom getting through . . .

    Viktor Frankl who survived the horrors of concentration camps attributed the power of his mind to helping him survive. In his book, Man’s Search For Meaning, Frankl describes how he used his love for his wife, his imagination and his sense of self to carve out a way to live despite the dehumanizing world of the camp.

    “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing- the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

    Frankl is not alone. People throughout history, around the world have used their mind to overcome tremendous obstacles, to survive as well as to create opportunities and thrive.

    By extension, we can also use this powerful tool under comparatively normal circumstances to build the life we want.

    Whether it’s health . . . good relationships . . . financial security . . . or self-realization . . . Your brain can help you bring these treasures into your life.

    Unfortunately, too often we overlook the power of our mind in shaping our reality. We accept that our lives are out of our control. We concede that our environment has more power than we do.

    Even worse, we accept that our mind cannot change, grow and strengthen.

    Particularly as we age, we assume our brains will deteriorate, or at the very least, stay static- locked in place for the rest of our lives. The father of neuroscience, Santiago Ramon y Cajal, once stated that adult brains are fixed and immutable. He and much of the scientific community held that after a certain point, our body no longer made new neurons.¹

    But the truth is your mind can still grow and change.

    Each of us has potentially more brain power than we think.

    Researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden demonstrated that the average adult hippocampus (the region of the brain responsible for emotions, memory and the autonomic nervous system) generates about 700 new neurons each day!²

    Adult brains have remarkable ability to shift and change to meet new challenges. But we also can do specific things to help our brain do this.

    Two landmark studies show that not only can your brain grow . . . Your brain may actually change its structure depending on how you use it!

New Brain Growth in Taxi Drivers

    The first study involving London taxi drivers demonstrated how your brain can change physically . . .

    To become a cab driver in London, you have to memorize the location of 25,000 streets and thousands of points of interest. Mastering this information can take as much as 4 years.

    Researchers took images of the cab drivers’ brains before they started learning the streets and over time as they mastered this knowledge.

    Interestingly enough, their brains grew in the posterior hippocampus where we process information. And their brains shrunk in the anterior hippocampus. The anterior hippocampus is harder to describe in function, but seems to be more connected to imagination, emotions and stress.³

    Functionally speaking, these cab drivers scored above the general population when it came to recalling London geography. But they actually scored lower than average when it came to other visual perception tests. As this study demonstrated, the brain shifts resources among parts of the brain based on the demands we put on it.

      A Fundamental Change In Brain Activity With Adult Literacy Students

The second study showed how the adult brain can change its activities fundamentally as we learn . . .

    In India, researchers looked at the brains of illiterate women who were learning to read. As the students learned to read, coordination between certain parts of the brain increased significantly. Specifically, areas within the most primal parts of the brain –the brain stem and thalamus– shifted their activity to coordinate better with the visual cortex. This change seemed to help the brain filter visual information more effectively.

    And the better these students became at reading, the more these parts of the brain synchronized their activity.⁴

    As these groundbreaking studies clearly demonstrate, the adult brain can change in dramatic ways in response to new challenges in the environment.

    In other words, your brain doesn’t stop developing at age 18. Science confirms that you can dramatically grow and shift your brain’s activities throughout life so you can do new things.

    We “old dogs” can learn new tricks.

    So now that we know you can do this. How do you do this?

    Grow Your Brain By Learning

    Taking a cue from the London cabbies and women in India–it’s simple: Learn something.

     And to make it more effective – learn something difficult!

    As adults, we learn what we need to learn to get through our regular day but then, we stop challenging ourselves. And no wonder! With the stress of work, family and everything else, the last thing we want to do is take on a new challenge.

     But when we get too stuck in the “status quo” our brain sits back and stops growing too. It’s the old adage, use it or lose it.

    Researchers at the University of Texas in Dallas have shown that by learning something new, older adults can maintain significantly more brain power.⁵

    The study involved 200 seniors. The control group didn’t learn a new hobby. Instead they had fun doing familiar activities like crosswords, watching movies, or listening to the radio. Two additional groups learned a new hobby – either quilting or digital photography.

    The researchers found that two groups who learned a new skill maintained significantly more brain power than the seniors who enjoyed more familiar past times.

    Better yet, the seniors who took on a new hobby maintained the mental advantage for at least a year after learning the new skill. Researchers also discovered that the harder the new skill – like digital photography – the better the results when it came to brain power.

    Neuroscientist, Dr. Denise Park, explains learning something new engages the entire brain as if the brain is a sports team or orchestra and everyone’s playing. When you learn something new, she points out, every player on the brain’s “team” or “orchestra” has to be involved and communicating.

    In other words, every team member or musician gets to practice and hone their skill. So the whole brain becomes even more proficient as a result.

    But if you think learning is one of the most powerful things you can do to engage and wake up your brain, you can take it to another level with a new physical skill . . .

     Learning A New Sport Or How To Dance Keeps Your Brain Agile

    While learning helps our brains, physical learning engages our brain at a whole other level. Learning to juggle, ski, dance, balance on a slack line . . . your brain has to respond in a multidimensional way that doesn’t necessarily get tapped into by other forms of learning.

    Learning something that’s physically challenging seems to increase the myelination of our neurons in the motor cortex of the brain. The myelin sheath of nerve cells is a sheath of fat that coats the neuron. By insulating the neuron, these myelin sheaths protect them and also make them more efficient in communication.

    Scientists used to think this process stopped with adulthood. But now it seems this may not be the case.⁶

    When you combine learning a new physical skill with the advantages exercise in general brings to the brain – actually increasing brain volume – it’s easy to see why hang gliding might not be such a bad activity to try out!

    Along with learning, nutrition also counts.

    The Right Nutrition May Make You More Intelligent

    Your brain is a hungry beast. Even though it’s only about 3% of your body weight, it eats up close to 20% of your total caloric intake and all the nutrients that come with this. But specific nutrients seem to have particular impact on your brain power.

    Most recently scientists have looked to the special monounsaturated fats or MUFAs found in nuts, olive oil and avocados. These MUFAs can actually make you more intelligent. When volunteers in this study took a standardized intelligence test, the ones who had the highest levels of these oils in their bloodstream and diet did the best.

    Now here’s the interesting part . . .

    These oils didn’t necessarily make the brain bigger. They helped it work better . . .

    General intelligence seems to be linked to how well a part of your brain called the dorsal attention network is organized. The dorsal attention network is responsible for attention-demanding tasks and everyday problem-solving. When it’s well-connected to different functional regions of the brain as well as the overall general brain structure, intelligence seems to go up.

    It seems that people who have more of these special fats in their bloodstream have a dorsal attention network that is better connected and better organized.⁷ As a result, their intelligence went up!

    So eat your avocados, nuts and olive oil and revel in the intelligence they nurture. Better yet, include your chlorella in the mix. It also has these special fats, omega-3 and omega-6, along with other brain nurturing nutrients like B12 and magnesium.

    Now you know how to build your brain power – even as you get older – so you can continue to build the life you want.

    But there’s one more thing . . . One thing you should stop doing to give your brain an edge . . .

Put Your Smartphone Away

    It’s ironic that something with the word “smart” in it may be undermining our brain power. But dozens of studies are showing this may be the case.

    From making us lazy when it comes to remembering things⁸ . . . to even developing addictions⁹ . . . our smartphones seem to be causing problems.¹⁰

    And one recent study shows your phone may be sabotaging your mental performance even when you can’t see it!

    In this study, volunteers were asked to leave their smartphone in another room. Or simply stow it nearby in a handbag or drawer.

    Then the volunteers took various tests that assessed their ability to focus and remember information.

    Without fail, the volunteers who had their smartphones nearby – even though they couldn’t see them – did worse on the tests than the volunteers who left their phones in the next room.

    Concludes Dr. Adrian Ward, the lead author of the study, "Even when people are successful at maintaining sustained attention - as when avoiding the temptation to check their phones - the mere presence of these devices reduces available cognitive capability."

    So don’t take your smartphone everywhere. Avoid the distraction!

    Then, have a chlorella avocado smoothie, go outside and work on your hula hooping.

    If you’re real quiet, you may even hear the crackling as your brain activates new communication channels, gets stronger and grows, so you can chart out the beautiful future you’ve been dreaming of.