clair073

The Joys of Consciousness You take time to be alone, valuing your personal time. You meditate. You feel light and buoyant. You feel spiritually uplifted. You find a solution to a problem. You have a fresh new idea. You notice something beautiful. You walk outside in nature and feel refreshed. You engage in physical activity that's invigorating. You are playful and take time to play. There is a moment of pure joy. You smile in appreciation. You respect someone else's boundaries without being asked. You lift someone else's spirits. You make another person laugh. You give someone a helping hand. You do something kind. You forgive a slight. You offer yourself in service to someone in need. You feel a close bond with another person. You cherish another person. ― from The Healing Self by Deepak Chopra and Rudolph E. Tanzi        re-sequenced to show the joys of nurturing oneself and then nurturing others.

Common wisdom asserts that your IQ is fixed. Of course, the various “multiple intelligences” change with personal life experiences and growth, but we usually consider the standard IQ score to be inherent and unchangeable. But even the standard IQ measure changes during different life stages. Clearly, the IQ of young children changes as they mature. Several studies even show that working-memory training can raise the IQ of elementary-school children. More than one analyst claims that a rigorous PhD program can raise IQ in adults. Most obvious is the decline of IQ in those elderly who do not age well because of disease. A neglected segment along the age spectrum is the teenage years. Now, evidence indicates that this age group experiences IQ changes ranging from a decline to an increase. A study of this issue shows that both verbal and non-verbal IQ scores in teenagers relate closely to the developmental changes that occur in brain structure during the teenage years. Longitudinal brain-i...

The hardest memory task I ever had was to give an 18-minute TED talk from memory. I remember struggling with remembering my core ideas and their sequence. To solve this problem, my first task was to create some slides, which the TED format allows. The directors even show the slides on a monitor at the foot of the stage that only the speaker can see. Looking at each slide as it advanced helped provide cues in the proper order, but to be effective, slides must not have much text, and in no case can a given slide reveal on its own the associated content. I still had a memorization problem. Then I remembered the “production effect,” which basically is a way to strengthen memory by actually forcing the recall in the appropriate setting. In other words, I needed to rehearse by actually giving the speech, vocalizations, mannerisms, and all, in front of a mirror. The usual thing we think of about improving memory is the need for rehearsal, especially the kind of rehearsal where you force recal...