Daniel Amen, M. D., has written a book called Change Your Brain: Change Your Life. It turns out that some of my friends have known about this book for years and have found Dr. Amen’s suggestions very valuable. I, however, only recently discovered the book when it was listed on the home page of Amazon.com. Based on decades of research at the Amen Clinic for Behavior Medicine, Change Your Brain: Change Your Life offers simple and practical ideas for improving the quality of our daily lives by knowing more about how our brains work.

How It Feels to Have a Centered Brain

When I read some of the suggestions, I thought about Einstein’s assertion that some of the most elegant things in the universe are the most simple. Dr. Amen’s recommendations for “good-brain” health are simple…and I can attest that the ones I have already tried for myself do make a difference.

Let me give you an example:

One morning recently I started my day feeling lethargic and, generally, off-kilter. My mood was low, although I had no explanation for why I woke up feeling this way. Having just read Dr. Amen’s chapter on the temporal lobes of our brain—areas of our brain that affect our emotional feelings—I decided to go to his book and read what “prescriptions” he gave that would produce “good-brain” health in the temporal lobes. (more…)

Researchers have located a new tribe! People who find themselves in very tough places in life, yet they don’t just survive. They actually thrive!

Who are these folks? Maybe they’re like that woman we sing about in “Delta Dawn,” sweet but addled… “Delta Dawn, what’s that flower you’ve got on?” Or like Forest Gump with his “life is a box of chocolates”? Or maybe like one of the Sisters of Mercy carrying on Mother Teresa’s work around the world? No, this tribe are just normal folk who are sensible, awake, uncompromisingly honest. So what makes them different?

Well, let’s start with how thrivers approach life: as students and philosophers, not as patients, victims or even warriors. If thrivers are students, what are they studying? If they are philosophers, what do they philosophize about? 

Thrivers come up with new ways to view a situation they have found themselves in during difficult times. They learn to apply a new explanatory system to what happens to them, creatively disputing default ways of thinking and inventing new views of the situation. They think like philosophers, asking questions such as, “How can I make sense of this? What can now, in this circumstance, give my life meaning?” Thrivers reflect on where they find themselves at this present moment. They know absolutely that it is in their power to construe-explain, interpret, translate, define-what happens to them in life. And only in their power. (more…)

One thing that makes life so much more pleasant is to avoid making things more significant than they need to be. Some people are experts at reading undue importance into decisions, timing, and choices. They ask questions such as these: “Why did she decide to do X this year when last year she turned down Y which was very similar? What does this mean??”

Something I saw a few days ago in the Arts section of The New York Times gave me a fascinating reminder that assigning importance to that decision or this timing may be completely irrelevant.

The story was about Maestro Riccardo Muti. Maestro Muti had just announced that he would become the musical director of The Chicago Symphony Orchestra. This was big news in the music world. The Times put it like this: “In a classical music world of diminishing grandeur, the orchestra has hired one of the last lions of podium glamour…” Mr. Muti had been music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1980-1992. He most recently had been music director at the Teatro Alla Scala in Milan until he resigned in 2005. (more…)