The Weight of Your Brain?

When the Russian author Turgenejev died in 1883 his brain was weighed and found to be exceptionally heavy - heavier than any other brain by that time. When the French author Anatole France died in 1924 his brain was weighed as well. It was found to be the lightest of all brains by then.

The brain of both of these two authors was recorded in the Guinness Book of Records and both of the records have been beaten since then.

Among the normal tinnitus there is a rhyme going on in my head: "If you always do what you´ve always done, you´ll always get what you´ve always gotten."

You need not be exceptionally intelligent to understand the logic of that rhyme. But understanding does not mean that you would change the situation accordingly. Changing one´s own habits must be one of the most challenging things in life. You might have set a goal, but anyhow you go on your normal daily life in the way you have always done.

In a seminar I met a couple who had built a solid, highly profitable business. The process from the decision to the end result had taken them five years. "In fact we did it in three years, but we needed two years to get ready for the activity." they explained.

Maybe it was the other way round - two years of doing and three years of active work - but it does not matter. The basic idea is still the same - you might have decided to reach something important and anyhow the concrete activities tend to somehow remain on the side-track. It is as if there were a threshold in front of the conscious changes in life. Why does this happen?

No doubt the goal itself needs to be clear. All goals have consequences. We may need time and energy to check them out. It is not enough for the goal to be morally and ethically correct. It must be ecologically correct as well, which means that it must not mess your own or anybody else´s life.

There must also be a clear connection between the goal and the activities leading to it. They are the daily activities that beat the path and make the goal become true. And it is exactly here that we have the continuous competition between the old habits and new activities. Normally the old routines win and the goal is in danger of becoming unreachable.

Some time ago I read the biography of Evita Peron (Barnes, J.: Evita, La biografía, ISBN: 84-473-1214-3). I know that there are different opinions about her, but nobody can deny that having made a decision, she did not need any threshold-time to start the action proper.

She quickly became the only person who, by then, had paid any attention to improving the living conditions of the poor people in Argentina. A clear indication of the impact of her work would be the number of hospitals before her and when she died. Sorry, I do not remember those figures just now. Just wait until I have read the book again...

Another interesting fact in Evita Peron´s life was that she never reached her primary goal. She wanted to be recognized and appreciated by the high society in her country. She never was. From the goal setting point of view this is due to the basic fact that we cannot set goals for other people. I cannot stop smoking for you and you cannot go jogging for me.

To gain somebody´s appreciation or love is not under your control. They also say that life would be easier if we could decide who we fall in love with. Well, as far as we know, Evita Peron made a very conscious decision to fall in love with Juan Peron and immediately informed him about her intention to marry him. She was an exceptional person in that respect as well. Burning goals really push obstacles by side.

Among all the goals you have set yourself, there are some that have the status qualification 1 A, which means that they get absolute preference among all possible choices you make daily. Do you recognize the specific features that make these goals so compelling for your brain? We continuously make choices of what to do next. Some things get preference, others drop out. How does your brain know what to prefer? How do you mark the steps leading to your goal 1 A so that the new routines get in and the old ones are pushed onto the side-track - and not vice versa?

Our preferences become our ambitions and passions. We want to do something in order to reach something else. Doing is under our control. At the beginning of the 15th century Cosimo de Medici wanted to have 200 books in his library. We do not know why he wanted to have them, but we know that he took the list to a bookshop in Florence and the bookshopper employed 45 scribes to copy them for him.

Ivan Sergejevitsh Turgenejev and Anatoli France wanted to write books. When you read them you will get an approximate idea why they wanted to do that. One of them had an exceptionally heavy brain while the brain of the other was exceptionally light. Obviously the size of the brain is not decisive. Decisive is how you use your brain in your normal life.

What will you do next? How does that help you reach your goal marked with the status qualification A1?