Posts Tagged ‘brain’
“My Brain Hurts..I’ve Only Got So Much Space Up There.”
Friday, February 15th, 2013
So I have to save it for the important stuff!
As a conference keynote speaker who speaks on memory, I have had every brain myth thrown at me at one time or another over the years.
One of the most common is, “I only have so much space in my brain, so I have to save the precious amount left for the important stuff.” It’s as if by learning something new they will have to dump or jettison some other more important stored information.
I actually get this most frequently when I challenge people to learn and develop the skill set of having a ‘trained’ memory. I put it up there with “I just don’t have time.” I think more realistically they are saying “I’m in a comfort zone….leave me alone.” Which is fine, but understand, it has nothing to do with any storage capacity your brain has!
No person exists, or has ever existed, who has come close to using the full potential of the brain.
Let me share with you a couple of statistics I learned many years ago, which to this day remain the most incredible statistics I have ever come across. They both address the absurdness that we ‘fill’ our brains up like a tap filling a water bottle.
The first is from Mark Rosenzweig a pioneer in brain plasticity research. He found that if the brain were fed 100 pieces of data, like a word or image, each second for 100 years, it would barely use up one tenth of its storage capacity!
Here’s my favourite:
Understanding that the brain contains a minimum of 1,000,000,000,000 neurons or nerve cells each of which has the potential to connect or interact with anywhere from 1 to 100,000 other neurons, it was for the longest time believed that the total number of permutations or interactions between these cells was the number 1, followed by 800 noughts! Incredible.
Incredible until you read that Professor Petr Anokhin from Moscow University concluded that this figure was totally underestimated. His new number, if written out in regular size script, (and this blows me away every time I mention it), is:
The number 1, followed by 10.5 million KILOMETERS of figures in length. That’s over 250 times the circumference of the Earth!
You’d probably run out of ink.
So the next time you hear someone say, I’ve only got so much room up there, you can throw them those statistics….if you can remember them that is….
Funny, unique and interactive in his entertaining conference keynotes and workshops, Bob Gray reveals the untapped potential in each of us. His empowering systems and their many applications in the business world give participants immediate ‘walk away’ value. Book Bob Gray today as your next conference keynote speaker.
Tags: brain, brain storage, conference keynote speaker, Keynote Speaker, Public Speakers, Motivational Keynote Speaker - Bob Gray – Memory Edge, Motivational Keynote Speaker - Bob Gray – Memory Edge, Public Speakers
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“We only use 10% of our Brains anyway!”
Wednesday, February 8th, 2012
If I had a dollar for every time someone has said that to me.
Ask the average person what percentage of our brain we use and the majority will say 10%, very few will say we use 100%, which would be the correct answer. Imaging methods have shown that even simple tasks produce activity throughout the whole brain.
So where did this 10% myth come from? It seems to be traced back to the American psychologist William James, who in his 1906 speech ‘The Energies of Men’ said:
“We make use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources.”
He never actually stated a percentage, yet somehow along the way this ‘undeveloped potential’ was picked up and morphed into a percentage. One example is a 1929 ad that ran in The World Almanac, which read:
‘Scientists and psychologists tell us we only use 10 percent of our brain power’.
But it really took hold and was popularized in 1936 when American writer Lowell Thomas, in the preface to Dale Carnegies best seller How to Win Friends and Influence People, falsely stated that:
“Professor William James of Harvard used to say that the average man develops only ten percent of his latent mental ability.”
Then there was no stopping it. Fortunes and careers have been made over the years with self-help books tapping into this myth. Individuals involved with the paranormal have championed this ‘fact’ to explain the potential for psychic powers.
Even Uri Geller, remember him? He made a career out of convincing people he could bend metal with his mind. He claims in his book, Uri Geller Mind-Power Book:
“Most of us only use 10 percent of our brains if that.”
Having us believe that he has tapped into some, if not all of the remaining 90%.
Think about it logically, if big chunks of our brain were never used, then damaging them would have no effect on us.
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Cheers, Bob
Motivational Speaker
Tags: 10% brain myth, 100% brain, 100% brain use, brain, brain 10%, brain myths, brain use, Improve your memory, psychologist, uri geller, william james
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