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Saturday, July 17, 2010

You can train your brain.

by Louis B. Shalako

c2010

All Rights Reserved


Every interaction with another human being changes us in some small way.

We get another piece of information. We get another impression, another argument, another opinion, another question.

We get another piece of the puzzle.

And then we go on to the next person. When we arrive there, we enter this process as a new person, because the last encounter has changed us in some way. What this means is that we see the next person with a whole new perspective. Then the process unfolds again, and we get another new insight.

In this way, we grow as human beings.

In the words of popular self-help author Dr. Daniel Amen, you can ‘change your brain.’

What this means to me is simple.

‘Seek out new things, new people, and new ideas, for not to do this is to be isolated, and ultimately one will be the loser for it.’

It is not necessary to contradict every point of view one does not agree with. Sometimes it is enough just to sit back and listen, for surely the other person arrived at their present destination for a number of reasons.

And sometimes it is not necessary to draw any conclusions. One might just keep listening. One of the great challenges we face is that everything we know, is taught to us by other people. We have the right to pick and choose what we learn from them.

The key thing is to choose wisely.

Any other knowledge we have is a conclusion that we have made ourselves. If we are to protect ourselves in some way by being objective about conclusions drawn by others, then surely in the interest of protecting others, we should try to be objective about our own conclusions.

(For your own reading safety, comfort and convenience you might want to take everything I say with a grain of salt.)

'Draw your own conclusions.'

And, it might be wise to 'consider the source.'

In the interest of ‘factual accuracy’ I Googled Dr. Amen’s name to check the spelling. I originally wrote, ‘Dr. Gregory Amen.’ I had to change it. This is not ‘dogma.’ This is what the man himself honestly believes his name to be. I really can’t do any better than that, although I clearly don’t know everything.

I can assure the reader that Google did not write this for me.

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