Report from Santa Fe; Michael Gelb

. . Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by grants from the members of the National Education Association of New Mexico, an organization of professionals who believe that investing in public education is an investment in our state's economic future. And by a grant from the Healey Foundation, Tau's New Mexico. Hello, I'm Lorraine Mills and welcome to Report from Santa Fe, our guest today is Michael J. Gilb. Thank you for joining us. Great to be with you. Well, you're an author, you're also a juggler, we'll get to that a little bit later, but you really are the preeminent authority on the application of genius thinking, a pioneer in the fields of creative thinking, accelerated learning, and innovative leadership. I want you to tell me about the Brain Trust Award that you awarded because it's your colleagues with this award are really impressive.

It was, it was quite an honor to be awarded the Brain of the Year Award way back in 1999. Previous winners are World Chess Champion, Gary Kasparov, Star Trek creator, Gene Roddenberry, great physicist Stephen Hawking, and the awards given to the person who the trust believes has done the most in that year to raise the profile of the human brain, and it's important, the importance of tapping that the power of the brain. So yes, I was very lucky to win that award in 1999. Well, you might win it again because of your new book co-authored with Kelly Howell called Brain Power, improve your mind as you age. And this is doing very, very well. People are really desperate for this kind of knowledge. Let me just mention one of your other books. You have how to think like Leonardo da Vinci, and you have how to innovate like Edison.

So tell us about Brain Power, and the myths that have to be dispiled has been so much research. Yes. Catch us up. Yes, it's very exciting. And I have to say, I've been teaching this kind of material about the brain for over 30 years. But now that I'm approaching 60, it's getting serious. And the good news is that 30 years ago when I started to teach people about the potential of the human brain, I was a little bit ahead of the curve in terms of what neuroscience actually had validated. But in that 30 year period, there's been a revolution in our understanding of the power of the brain. We all grew up with a notion that your brain's potential was fixed at age five. And after age 30, you began a slow but inevitable process of decline. And that old notion, I call it the neuro-static paradigm, has been overturned.

We now know that the brain is designed to improve with use. So people are probably familiar with the new word neuro-plasticity. Neuro-brain cell plasticity means changeable, flexible, adaptable. Your brain is changeable, flexible, and adaptable. So the only real question now is, what are the best ways to help it adapt change and flex as the years go by? That's my passion. That's what brain power is all about. Well, you say that research shows that we begin learning in the womb and go right on until we die. And that the brain has the capacity for learning that is limitless. And so you kindly say, that makes every human a potential genius. Well, it's really true. We're all born with the same hundred billion brain cells. The problem is, this amazing brain did not come with a manual, which is why I have to write all these books.

Well, what does the current brain research show us? Well, it shows us that, first of all, the brain isn't fixed at age five. It continues to develop throughout our life. And it doesn't decline after age 30. If, and it's a big if, if you use it, and what are the best ways to use it, that's what we explore in brain power. How do we figure this out? What caused this major shift of paradigm between the old model that I call it neurostatic, or even worse, it was neuro-necrotic. Brain cells die and your brain is getting worse and there's nothing you can do about it, to this notion of neuroplasticity. The change came simply because we developed the technology to start to be able to measure the brain. So we could look at adults learning something new and low and behold, they were making new connections in their brain.

They were even forming new brain cells, something that in the old model was believed to be impossible. Well, well, the science is just galloping forward into brave new worlds. The, the, the ad industry and television and mass media is left everyone with just like, forgetful crotchety. You know, I think Dave very had this wonderful quote that you have in your book that, that the advertising industry presents the process of aging as attractive as death by magnitude. Just, ghastly. So, I mean, when you look at what a percentage of the population is actually aging, you know, 10% are showing in the mass media and they're all shown mostly in a negative light. So, how can I think a book like yours helps inject, you know, that new vision into those old dusty, you know, terrible paradigms? Thank you. You just, you sum up the essence of what it's really all about. It's really critical for people to change their attitude fundamentally.

Even people who are familiar cognitively intellectually with the notion of neural plasticity may not have integrated that notion into their core attitude about the process of aging. And this is even more important if you grew up in a family where someone suffered from Alzheimer's or some other form of dementia. If you watch somebody get worse over the years, it's very difficult to avoid the unconscious sense that this is your fate and there's nothing you can do about it. Well, there's a lot you can do about it. We present in the book research validated things that the average person can do, not just to prevent dementia, prevent Alzheimer's, but to actually continue to improve with every decade. Now, you talk about if you were unfortunate to be in a household where you see someone in decline. You have some wonderful remarks about, you know, fifth grade, you know, we don't want to wear that. We can actually change it by not repeating those deadly phrases to ourselves.

Talk about fourth graders and what a junior moment is. People turn 30 and the first time they forget something, they say, oh, I'm losing it. I'm having a senior moment. I'm not what I used to be. And then they get together and they commiserate, which means to be miserable together. And they build in and reinforce this negative self-programming and unfortunately can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. But a fourth grader asks any elementary school teacher how much stuff fourth graders forget school every day. They will lunch, they're backpack, they're jacket, they're homework. I pod you name it, they forget it. So the teacher confronts the fourth grader. You forgot all this and fourth grade child doesn't say, oh my god, I'm 10 years old and my memory is going. I'm having a junior moment. So memory is something that we can improve. It helps to learn how your memory works. We introduce this information in the book and give you practical exercises.

Things you can do every day to strengthen your memory. The other thing that's really critical as far as memory is concerned. Much of what passes from memory loss with aging has nothing to do with age per se. And everything to do with the lack of cardiovascular conditioning. Your brain is about 2% of your body's weight. It uses 20% of the oxygen. So if you're out of shape for 30 or 40 years, if you're not eating a healthy diet, yes, your circulation will be blocked. And there won't be as much oxygen getting to your brain. In one amazing experiment, they took older people, tested their memory, put them in an oxygen tent for 15 minutes. Their scores on the memory test went up. Another group of older people, memory test, before corroded artery surgery to clear the arteries that deliver the blood and therefore the oxygen to the brain, guess what memory scores improved dramatically.

Well, don't wait for an oxygen tent or corroded artery surgery. There's a chapter on the book on how to find a really natural, enjoyable approach to exercise every day, to get plenty of oxygen to your brain, and also on nutrition and the principles of really joyful, happy, fulfilling, healthy eating. You start out your book by talking about people need to think counterclockwise. And you tell the results of really fascinating study, I don't know who comes up with these studies, but this one I was intrigued by, about two groups in the year 1959. Yes, well, you know the study's significant when they're making the study into a movie, no kidding. Starring Jennifer Aniston as Dr. Ellen Langer, who led this classic study, it was done in 1979, and she had two groups of older men who had been in the care of relatives. One group went away to a lovely place, spent a week reminiscing.

And at the end of the week, they showed physical and mental improvements in the test that they were given. So they were together and they were looking back at the year 1959, and they talked about the politics, and the social things, and the TV programs, just talking. Just reminiscing. And they improved a little bit mentally and physically in the course of the week. The other group was asked to live as though they were 20 years younger. To put themselves into the year 1959, they watched the TV shows from 1959, they watched the movies, they talked about the issues of the day as though they were happening in the present moment. This group, first of all, they started functioning independently almost immediately. They organized their own discussion groups, card games, they took over the kitchen, they improved dramatically in everything the researchers measured physical and mental, and my favorite image of this study, one week of living as though you're 20 years younger, their gnarled, shrunken, arthritic fingers actually lengthened significantly in one week of changing their attitude about how old they were.

It's like the great baseball pitcher, Satchel Page, who was pitching in the major leagues at age 42, and he said, how old would you be if you didn't know how old you was? Well, we looked at that movie, does it have a name? I don't know if they're going to call it counterclockwise. I'm waiting for it to release, it was delayed in its release, I don't know why, but I'm sure we'll all recognize it when it comes out. Well, you also mentioned that stress, stress is the greatest cause of age-related mental and physical decline. Now people feel powerless against stress, but there is a way, there are ways to deal with stress. Well, what we did in brain power is aimed to power in, again, the simple practical research validated, proven things you can do to reverse the destructive effects of stress.

And the most profound and helpful of all these suggestions is to utilize the free download that comes with the purchase of the book. My co-author, Kelly Howe, is the creator of Brain Sync. That's sure for synchronization. It's a synchronization. It's a technology. No, not a single. Just wash your brain out of the sink, clean it up. She's very handy at cleaning out your brain. No, she synchronizes the brain waves between the two hemispheres of the brain, and helps you effortlessly experience deep states of relaxation. I find that the brain sync material helps me sleep better. It helps my meditation. Some people like to call it training wheels for your brain, and it's a download that comes with the book, and once you get the download, you'll just put on the headphones, and you'll get the experience when we measure brain waves, when you do the meditation track that comes with the book,

they're indistinguishable from those of an advanced meditator. So this Kelly's work is just fantastic, an amazing innovator in this field. So we really want people to make the scientific discoveries through the neurologists that are made to be able to use it in their everyday life of every American. See, we're not just talking about everybody who is enjoying our conversation. Well, of course, my wish for them is to improve the quality of their lives, improve their mind, teach, share this information with their families, with their loved ones. But it's even greater than that, because we have a healthcare crisis. And the big debate is how we should spend all this money, and how we should deliver all these services, which are all oriented towards disease. You already have the disease. It's too late. Practice what's in here. And we're talking about a revolution in healthcare. People take responsibility for doing these simple things, and they're pleasurable.

There's hardly anything in the book that costs you any money to do. You have to buy the book. It's not that expensive. Buy the book. The only thing that costs any money that we suggest you do is get some vitamins and supplements. Everything else is basically free. And the chances that you will be healthier, that you will avoid dementia, that you will avoid Alzheimer's, that you will avoid many of the other frailties and challenges that are traditionally associated with chronology, and have nothing to do with chronology and everything to do with conditioning. We're talking about something that can affect, for the better, millions of people, save us a fortune, and improve quality of life in this country and the world. So if I seem passionate and committed to this, it's because it's not just about the individual reader, it's about our society at large. Well, you say there's none of this costs much money except the book, but a lot of it, you can do it in a very small amount of time.

You say you urge people to become lifelong learners and that aren't using only 15 minutes a day in some creative, mental challenge like chess, bridge, creative writing, music, dance, so many things that you'd probably love to do anyway. Ah, let's talk about juggling. Okay, so why juggling? Well, as someone who worked his way through graduate school as a professional juggler and who once juggled live on stage with Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones in front of an audience of a quarter of a million people at a rock festival, I was particularly thrilled when in the mid-90s, Professor Arnie May and his colleagues at Regensburg University and Germany published their study showing that adults who practice juggling for 15 minutes a day for three months showed dramatic improvements in both the grey and white matter of the brain. Now, obviously this made me happy as a juggler. I always intuited that juggling was good for you.

But more than that, this was just one of the many experiments that helped establish the new paradigm of neuroplasticity because people practice juggling. We monitored their brains as they did it and we watched them grow and change and improve. And this was revolutionary at the time because we did not, science didn't really believe that the adult brain could grow change and improve. Now we know it can't, I interviewed many, as did Kelly, many neuroscientists for this book. The question among them is not, is the brain designed to improve with you? They've accepted that. The only question is, what are the best ways to do it? And in many cases, I interviewed those neuroscientists like Dr. Dan Aiman, who wrote the wonderful book, Magnificent Mind at Any Age. And I was trying to get underneath, well, what if you don't want to juggle or play chess or learn bridge or learn a new language? Is there something else that you can do? And the consensus seemed to be 15 minutes of something that's new and challenging.

Novelty yields brain benefits. It wakes up new circuitry. The more challenging it is, the more robust the process of waking up the new circuitry. And the consensus seemed to be that you can get the effect in 15 minutes. That's not too much to ask for a healthy brain for no one not to do this. You know what it is? People think they know this because they, you know, they read some report or they heard it on radio or they downloaded something on the internet. But what we've done is to systematize in a practical, accessible, and I hope fun and entertaining way, the simple, practical things that you can do, starting soon as you pick up this book. And again, I want to emphasize a fun aspect, who said we don't grow, we, what's that thing about old and playing? Who said that? You know, we don't grow old because we've, we don't stop playing because we've grown old. We, we grow old because we've stopped playing.

Amen. Amen. Yeah, yeah. And that's one thing I want to say about your book. It's, it's very beautifully written. But the way the pages are laid out there, quotes that are highlighted, it's really, it draws you in more and more. Very accessible. You've made this, it's, it's a real pleasure to read. Thank you so much. Now, I want to just go to your friends. Yes. Leonardo and Edison. Yes. So you, you, you actually people tell people that there's genius lying within them. And through the study of great minds like Edison and Leonardo da Vinci, you, you say, what can we learn from this? And tell us what can we learn from their lives? Ah, well, if you want to learn tennis, you might watch videos of great tennis player watch Roger Federer, for example, perfect form. Tiger Woods is making it come back. He just want us first tournament yesterday. And who knows how we'll do it in the Masters, but he's one of the greatest of all time. So he'd be a good person to model your swing.

If you want to learn creativity, there's nobody better than Leonardo da Vinci. And if you want to learn practical business oriented innovation, there's probably nobody better than Thomas Edison. Inventor of the telephone. Not the telephone. He invented the system that made it possible for us to understand what was being said over the telephone. It was the carbon button transmitter. But he illuminated the entire world. He didn't just invent the light bulb. He illuminated the entire world. He invented the phonograph and effectively created the modern recording industry. And he invented the movie camera and launched the movie industry. And his greatest invention is the systematic approach to innovation. So I use Leonardo as the role model for the development of your full creative power and potentiality and the balance of science and art, logic and imagination, the use of our whole brain. I use Edison as a role model for creating a culture of innovation,

whether you're in a nonprofit or a business, government doesn't matter. How do you create a culture that inspires innovation and transforms bureaucracy? Edison was the master at that. So Da Vinci Edison is a pretty good stable of all-time great characters to learn from. And you also, in your book, you have a list of great old people. Throw out our TV, daughtering, stumbling, forgetful fool, picture of an old person. And look at what Helen Keller and Jane Goodall and her own New Mexico's own Murray Galman. Well, Murray was at dinner at my house last night. And he brought over a fantastic bottle of wine. Nobel Laureate in physics in 1969. Last time he came, he brought over a bottle of wine from 1969. The year he won the Nobel Prize. And Murray's 82 helped to create the Santa Fe Institute. At age 82, I challenge you to find a more intellectually sharp,

inquisitive, open-minded, playful, but also laser-like, critical, mind, anywhere, anywhere, bring him on, because Murray's just phenomenal. And that's how, and if you talk to him, I mean, I did literally last night, he will tell you, this is something we can all access. It's the first principle for thinking likely in our adventure. He is Kuryosita, strengthened in your curiosity. This is our birthright of genius. Every child is insatiably curious. One of the secrets to continue to strengthen your brain, as you get older, is to maintain, extend, and expand that natural curiosity. I want to mention your website, www.MichaelGelk.com, because there's a whole lot more, we won't be able, we're almost out of time.

So I want you, what are the worst habits we have to eliminate, and what do we have to do? Well, the key thing, and there's a reason it's the first chapter in the book, is all about the most adaptive attitudes for aging gracefully and intelligently. And the most important thing people can do is to dramatically transform their attitude, so that they embrace this notion, now established by contemporary neuroscience, that your brain is actually designed to improve with use. Because once you understand that, and you go to the back of the book, read the studies, this is like a PhD thesis. I mean, I went to chapter and verse, we interviewed the researchers, you'll get it, and when you get it, then you'll want to do everything else in the book, naturally and spontaneously. Yeah, and you talk about the role of optimism. There are even some percentages in some of these studies. Well, Becca Levy, who was a colleague of Dr. Ellen Langer, did a long-term study of 650 people,

those with a pessimistic negative attitude towards getting older, those with an optimistic positive attitude, and the optimistic positive group outlived the negative pessimistic group by an average of more than seven and a half years. That will, that's amazing. That's very amazing. Now we know, now we know, just so it doesn't seem like magic, neuroscientist Dr. Valerie Gremillion, who is here in New Mexico, brilliant consultant for the book on some of our neuroscience, and nutrition and how it affects the brain, Valerie explains that, so this doesn't seem like magic that people live longer, you need to understand that your attitude affects your immune system moment to moment. It's why optimists don't get sick as often, and when they get a cold, they recover faster. Because when you think in a positive, grateful, optimistic way, you strengthen your immune system, we can measure it now.

This is not magic, woo-woo, when you think negatively and pessimistically, you're weakening your immune system in that moment, thereby creating this psychophysiological, self-fulfilling prophecy. Well, I wish we had more time because you talk about the value of sleep, the role of supplements, and of course, this new brainwave therapy. And again, I want to urge people to stop the mental, the negativity saying, oh, my God, I'm losing it. You know, there it is again, and just looking for this is, because that doesn't reinforce them. Every time you lose your keys and you say, oh, my God, I'm losing it, you put another brick in that wall, but it's always going to be like that. A great study that we found, it's almost too sweet to be true, but the intensive research has indeed established the fact that older people are wiser. Well, we hope our audience has grown wiser. I want to show your books again. How to think like Leonardo da Vinci. I don't have it with me, but there's how to innovate like Edison.

And then there's brain power, improve your mind as you age. Our guest is Michael J. Gelm. One last word of encouragement for us. We're saying it last so that people don't forget it. Sure, sure. I will repeat again. Your brain is designed to improve with use. Well, thank you very much. We hope our audience has improved their brain by spending this half hour with us. I'm Lorraine Mills. I'd like to thank your audience for joining us today on report from Santa Fe. We'll see you next week. Past archival programs of report from Santa Fe are available at the website report from Santa Fe.com. If you have questions or comments, please email info at report from Santa Fe.com. Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by grants from the members of the National Education Association of New Mexico, an organization of professionals

who believe that investing in public education is an investment in our state's economic future. And by a grant from the Healey Foundation, Tells New Mexico. Thank you. Thank you.

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