Get Smart! summary

Introduction

Get Smart by Brian Tracy This book reveals how to unlock your brain potential for success. Do you sometimes feel intellectually inferior to others? Do you feel there is nothing you can do about it? Perhaps you think some people are simply more creative, or they have better problem-solving skills, especially when it comes to math and technology.

Well, you should definitely think again. Brilliant people you admire are likely no smarter than you. They are simply using more of their brain potential. Most people use less than 10% of their brain cells.

This happens when engaged in daily activities. Just imagine what you could achieve. What if you manage to engage another 50%? Or even just an additional 10%.

In this summary, you will find out how to do just that with the help of some simple tools. You can easily stimulate your brain and fire up those extra neurons.

shifting your mental perspective

Shifting Your Mental Perspective The first step to unlocking your brain potential is to change your perspective. Let us imagine you have a bank account. It has a balance of $1 million. Now imagine you can only access $20,000.

That would be a pretty frustrating situation, right? Incredibly, you access very little of the wealth of brain power in your head. Recent studies have discovered that the average person only uses around 2% of their mental powers. In other words, 98% of our potential power lies idle.

But how much potential is this? Well, we all have around 100 billion brain cells. Each one of these cells is connected to about 20,000 other cells. According to Tony Buzan, an expert on the brain, if everyone could use all of their brain cells, each person could generate more ideas than there are molecules in the universe.

Luckily, each of us is capable of tapping into this unused brain power. To start, all we have to do is shift our perspective. How we look at and interpret life is incredibly important to getting the most out of it. For example, someone with an optimistic perspective will see a world full of potential and good, while a pessimist will only see problems and negativity.

Faced with constructive feedback, a pessimist may become overwhelmed with his failure, while an optimist will probably see it as a chance to learn and grow. Unfortunately, our perspectives tend to be narrow and limited, as this famous Buddhist anecdote demonstrates. Six wise blind men are trying to describe an elephant. The first man touches the elephant's ear.

He says that an elephant is like a thick blanket. The second touches a sharp tusk. He decides that the animal is sharp and pointy. The third touches the elephant's leg.

He concludes that an elephant is like a tree trunk. The fourth touches the wide side. He believes it is like a wall. The fifth feels the tail and imagines a rope, and the sixth man puts his hands on the elephant's side.

Though none of them is exactly wrong, each misses the full picture completely. They focus only on particular parts. We must broaden our own perspectives if we wish to avoid the same fate. In the chapters ahead, we will look at ways to shift your perspective.

You can start thinking and living more successfully.