If Only I Were Always This Smart, About Everything

A couple of nights ago, I had an odd and interesting experience: as I was flipping through TV channels, I stopped at a movie - and IMMEDIATELY recognized both the visual style and the style of the accompanying music. When I say immediately, I mean within five seconds. I drew a blank on names for a few moments, so what I said to myself was, "This is by the Edward Scissorhands guy." But it wasn't "Edward Scissorhands." Nor was it "The Nightmare Before Christmas," which the imagery and music also brought to mind.

When Christopher Walken appeared, that didn't help. Then I saw penguins, and it clicked - Batman. More precisely, "Batman Returns." Directed by Tim Burton, music by Danny Elfman.

What made this odd and interesting (to me, at least) is that I had never seen "Batman Returns." In effect, I recognized something I had never seen before.

How? By its strong resemblance to what I had seen.

It got me thinking about the whole business of how shockingly efficient our brains can be sometimes at recognizing patterns, even when we don't know consciously know what those patterns are. Can I tell you precisely what made me recognize Burton's hand in the visuals? Not beyond some generalization about twistily deformed objects. Can I name the elements of Danny Elfman's musical language (which first won my affection in the theme for the campy TV series, "Tales of the Crypt")? Um, quivering quavers and discordant chords? Can't say that I have a lock on it.

But I knew.

And that - the ability to simply know things sometimes, more quickly than I can figure them out - delights me.

But I've said that before - at the same time that I also asked a question that I want to repeat now: "...are there ways to train my brain to make more of those connections?" I'm not sure how useful that ability is; but maybe it would be more so if I cultivated it.

Can it be cultivated? I need to look into that - say, after I get the hang of box breathing and speed reading.

Have you had moments in which your brain worked surprisingly well? Do you wish you could have more? Better yet, have you learned how to have more?  Any reading suggestions?

The Night My Brain Exploded

(ALERT: NSFW language)

Here's a story:

My mom passed away on May 14, and we held her funeral on Tuesday, May 20. That night, I went to bed around 12:30. That's early for me - I wanted to be well rested for the drive back on Wednesday.

I don't know when Janet came to bed; that didn't rouse me. But when she came back to bed after getting up to use the bathroom, I woke up.

I did not wake up drowsy and tired. I did not wake up merely refreshed. I woke up surging with energy, feeling as if I were ready to explode, because of the dream I had just had. I said something to Janet about wondering whether I should tell her about the dream, but I needed to go to the bathroom.

Dreams fade quickly; by the time I wrote about the dream in my journal, some details had faded. But it went something like this:

I was, it seemed, a new employee in the marketing department of a large company. And somehow I was chairing a meeting of honchos. And I left the meeting and ran into someone from the design department - bumped into him so that he dropped his stuff - and as I was helping him pick it up, either I saw this phrase on one of his papers, or he spoke it: "Change the fucking world."

And it penetrated like a bullet, and set me on fire.

And I went back to my meeting, which was running late, or running long, or both, and instead of feeling scared because of that or apologizing for that, I went in with total swagger because it didn't matter that the meeting was late or long or both, what mattered was that we were going to change the fucking world. And I said so.

And I saw "change the fucking world" becoming a global mantra, with me as chief guru for the attendant movement. I saw myself, like Anthony Robbins (Has he stopped being "Tony"?), onstage in an auditorium filled with thousands - no, tens of thousands - pouring out verbal fire to help them change themselves so that they could change the fucking world.

I saw T-shirts emblazoned with a four-color logo: CTF*W. I saw bumper stickers with the same. Coffee mugs.

I saw myself re-ordering my personal relationships, putting family, friends and acquaintances on notice: "I want people around me who want to change the fucking world. If you don't want to change the fucking world, that's okay - but I gotta ask, 'Why not?'"

And there was was music - a throbbing anthem for full orchestra, led by brass.

And I woke up ready to change the fucking world, NOW.

On my way to the bathroom, I glanced at the wall clock in the kitchen and thought it said 6-something, and concluded that I may as well stay up, because there was no way that I could fall back asleep. I'd do better to start getting ready to leave - I felt like I could drive a thousand miles.

The music was filling my brain, along with the images of T-shirts and bumper stickers and me onstage before tens of thousands ("Now get outta here, and CHANGE THE FUCKING WORLD!" Crowd roar: "YEAAAHHHH!!!"). And, and...

I was linking "Change the fucking world" to the call of Christ and the identity of the Christian:

For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to devote ourselves to the good deeds for which God has designed us.     (Ephesians 2) 

"We're created in Christ Jesus to change the fucking world," I said.

And all of this is happening on a trip to the bathroom, and I want to ACT, so I pick up my phone to check the availability of the website address, changethefuckingworld.com, and I see that...

...it's 3:26 a.m.

WHAT???

I was totally jazzed emotionally, I was almost exploding with physical energy, and my mind was focused like a laser and racing like a lightcycle...

...on three hours of sleep????

I immediately wanted to know, "What brought about this phenomenal state, and how can I get it again?"

My best guess, then and now, is that my state was fueled by having drank multiple glasses of punch at the funeral meal, followed by two cans of Pepsi later. Both my body and brain may have been sent into overdrive by sugar and caffeine.

That answer's a bit disappointing, as I don't want to make massive doses of sugar and caffeine parts of my regular diet. But the question of how to place myself at will into a state of high energy, high confidence and high clarity remains intriguing, to say the least.

It's also possible that my state was fueled in part by a heightened awareness of mortality. I was already working at maintaining an awareness of mortality, so to the extent that that may have been a factor, re-experiencing the state would just be a matter of getting better at that.

For now, I am finding that the very act of recalling the event elicits at least an echo. I do, in fact, want to change the fucking world (tm).

No. Not "want to."

Intend to.

The Amateur Neuroscientist's Notebook: I Love When This Happens.

I turned on my TV this afternoon, and it was tuned to TCM (Turner Classic Movies), which was airing a movie I'd never seen before. In less than 10 seconds, I correctly named it. It happened so easily that I could have taken the occurrence as evidence of "cosmic consciousness," or some other psychic/paranormal phenomenon.

Instead, I thought about it about a little more, and realized more fully what had happened.

When I turned on the TV, I saw a boy of about 8 or 10, engaged in conversation with a man who I'd say was 50ish. This is the boy (with a different man):

The boy's thatch of blond hair reminded me immediately of Ricky Schroder as he appeared in the movie, "The Champ,"  which I saw in the theatre when it came out in 1979. For those who don't know (spoiler alert), it's a male weepie in which an aging boxer (Jon Voigt) fights one last fight for his son, then dies.

I remembered that the movie I saw was a remake of one made decades before, and based on my experience of TCM's programming, I guessed that they were airing the original, and said, "The Champ."

And was right.

I did not remember, and perhaps I had never known, that in 1931, the boy was Jackie Cooper and the boxer, Wallace Beery.

But I love, love, love the fact that the stuff I did remember, I remembered instantly. With no conscious effort, my brain made a slew of connnections and spat out to the correct answer to a question I'm not even sure that I asked.

The ability to instantly and consistently make those sorts of subliminal connections between obscure and disparate details is a large part of the leap toward being an ubermensch that Bradley Cooper's character, Eddie Morra, takes in "Limitless."  I wonder how much of that leap can actually be made today, without using pills as Eddie Morra did.

I think I may have actually trained myself over the years to be absent-minded and forgetful. But if I can effortlessly remember Ricky Schroder and Jon Voight and their movie being a remake, are there ways to train my brain to make more of those connections?

Maybe I'll start with hanging out at Lumosity... 

Do you have a story of an occasion when you noticed your brain working really well? What ways have you found to help your brain to work better, more often?

CHEAP THRILLS: The joys of tardiness and procrastination

Source: http://blsciblogs.baruch.cuny.edu/fro12lc16/2012/10/18/you-say-750-i-say-820/

Yesterday, a friend posted a link on Facebook to a two-year-old blog post from Raptitude.com, titled "Procrastination is not laziness." 

Reading that piece revived the memory of something that I've intended to write about ever since it happened a couple of years ago:

I had an appointment Downtown with a friend at something like 8 a.m. I arrived late, she forgave me, and we had our meeting.

Nothing unusual about that. What was unusual was what happened along the way.

As I was preparing to leave, and I saw that I was running late, I became hyper-alert, evaluating every action in terms of whether it would speed up or slow down the process of getting to the appointment, and issuing myself commands like, “Put shirt on before pants so that you don't have to undo pants to tuck in shirt,” and “Stuff tie in pocket and put it on and tie it while in the car, at stop lights.”

That's not the unusual part; that happens often when I'm running late. The unusual part was that this time, for the first time, I realized that I enjoyed it.

A LOT.

In the last minutes before the house and in the car on the way Downtown, I was so aware of both my behavior and my environment, I felt so much in control, I was so decisive, and so just plain smart in judging the outcomes of specific actions, that I was totally jazzed.

All because I was running late.

That realization evoked a couple of questions. First, “Do I tend to run late for appointments because I get such a rush from running late, because I enjoy the hyper-alertness so much?” Second, “Can I learn to experience that hyper-alertness without running late – or more precisely, how can I learn to experience that hyper-alertness without running late?”

The answer to the first question is, “Well, DUH!” It's a cheap thrill.

I consider the second question more useful, and am a bit annoyed with myself for not having thoroughly followed up on it. I really like the guy that sometimes emerges when I'm running late, and want to see a lot more of him, without having to trigger anxiety or to jack up my reputation to do so (avoidable tardiness is rude, after all).

***************

Missing appointments times is not the only way of running late. One can also run late by missing deadlines for doing things.

And dang it, I've found a way to experience a thrill with that, too.

I'm sorry to say that I learned this – trick? Technique? - I learned of this possibility in fifth or sixth grade. Here's how:

There was some sort of class project with a deadline. A fundraiser, I think. I waited until the last minute to do it, then did a good enough job that my teacher praised me, in front of everybody - not just for doing a good job, but for coming from behind and pulling it off at the last minute.

Which taught me that one way to gain public praise is by pulling things off at the last minute.

Man, I wish I could unlearn that lesson.

***************

But perhaps I don't need to unlean it; perhaps ignoring it will suffice. It may help if I pay more attention to a different memory, a different type of memory.

I was early once.

Okay, I've been early more than once, but this occasion became special. Again, I had a meeting Downtown, and this time I arrived early enough so that I spent some time sitting in my car, in what was then Kaufmann's parking garage. I don't remember all that I did during that time, but I do remember this.

I loved it.

The absolute lack of anxiety provided its own thrill, one that I want to remember more often, in order to seek it more often.

I think the key to change in this area is not to make myself feel bad about being late – I've tried that a lot, for a long time, and it hasn't worked – but to help myself feel great about being early.

***************

So here's the dream: not just to be on time, nor just to be early, but to gain a reputation for being early.

What if I was the guy who was already at the meeting place when the other person arrived? How would that feel?

What if, when people came to pick me up, I were waiting on my front porch? How would that feel?

What if someone who met me tomorrow would say a year from now, “I've never known him to be late.”?

Now, THAT would be a thrill!

How do I become that guy? I can start by acknowledging that I already am that guy – he's in me, I just need to let him out more often. At some points in my life, I have already engaged in the specific behaviors needed to be early. I just need to engage in them more often.

But hey, I'm open to suggestions. Have you overcome tardiness and/or procrastination? How? For my neuroscience friends, do you have any brain-based strategies to suggest?