Power Thinking: Discovering the Unknown by Unlocking Your Brain

By Dr. Don Hooper

"Just like Napoleon Hill's blockbuster book Think and Grow Rich, Don Hooper's book will impact thought leaders for decades to come." -Rod Paige, Former United States Secretary of Education

What sets apart people like Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Plato, Elon

• Language: English
• Publisher: Center for Quality Leadership
• Release date: Jun 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9798985601664

Dr. Don Hooper

Dr. Don Hooper is the Executive Director at School Research Nexus and President and Founder of the Center for Quality Leadership, a business consulting firm that provides leadership management training. He has a Ph.D. in Administrative Leadership and was a School Superintendent for over 25 years. Over the past three decades, Dr. Hooper has helped transform the lives of thousands of leaders by showing them how to turn their creative thoughts into organizational excellence and become strong, effective thought leaders in their chosen professions.A proud father of five children, twenty grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren (and counting!), Dr. Hooper draws inspiration from his family every day and credits them with helping transform his life. He now continues to pay it forward through his work transforming the lives of others.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

From the beginning of time, humans have been gifted with the ability to think, reason, feel emotion, desire, imagine, create ideas, try and fail, try and succeed, and persist or give up. What did those whom we recognize as having accomplished a great deal do the same or different from everyone else? Why?

When Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Plato, Socrates, Harriet Tubman, Katherine Johnson, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Oprah Winfrey, Warren Buffett, Grant Cardone, and many others were born, did they not go through infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood just like almost all humans? What set them apart? Was it riches, poverty, education, geography, historical times, race, gender, opportunity, or something else?

Sir Isaac Newton, when asked how he discovered gravity, said it was by thinking about what he was observing to the point of obsession. Yes, there is the classic falling apple story while drinking a cup of tea under an apple tree, but his obsession to think deeply and frequently using mental models as he observed the forces of nature gave him the courage to say to his peers that there is a law of gravity. He employed observation, thinking, analysis, and the scientific method. Therefore, he discovered the then-unknown laws of gravity and motion and invented calculus (the mathematical study of continuous change). His power thinking helped to shape our rational worldview. Because Newton had been thinking about it all the time, when the apple fell, his mind was ready to notice and apply. Consider your future self: don’t you want to be like Newton so that your Power Thinking will shape and impact our world for generations to come?

W. Clement Stone was a businessman, philanthropist, and New Thought self-help book author who is quoted as saying, Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve with PMA a positive mental attitude. ¹ How will you use your mind?

You control your thoughts and attitudes. By learning Power Thinking, you will no doubt discover many unknown imaginations, ideas, creations, philosophies, inventions, systems, and much more to shape the future for a better you, which in turn shapes a better world.

Thought leaders are Power Thinkers who use the power of their mind and experience a transformation to elite thinking and can accomplish anything they desire if they conceive it, believe it, and achieve it.

Are you ready to engage your power?

Think of all the problems you will solve through Power Thinking. Think of the power of knowing exactly what you want and how to accomplish it. How powerful is finding your true purpose? How exciting will it be when you learn how to exercise your will to achieve what you want most? Let’s begin to understand how the brain works so you can apply thinking skills at will and at the speed of thought!

1

BRAIN BASICS: UNDERSTANDING THE SEAT OF THOUGHT

Thought breeds thought; children familiar with great thoughts take as naturally to thinking for themselves as the well-nourished body takes to growing; and we must bear in mind that growth, physical, intellectual, moral, spiritual, is the sole end of education.

CHARLOTTE MASON, BRITISH EDUCATOR

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Since this book is about Power Thinking and since thinking occurs in the brain, it is helpful to first understand some of what modern science has discovered regarding the structure and function of the brain. The following is meant to provide a level of understanding of this most important part of our body and how we can direct it through our thoughts to yield our desired results.

But before we do that, I heard a story about a young man who approached Socrates with a request. Socrates asked him what he wanted, and he said knowledge. Socrates took him to a river and held him underwater for ten seconds. He then let the young man up and asked him what he wanted. The young man repeated that he wanted knowledge. So, Socrates held him under water again only this time for twenty seconds before letting him up. Again, Socrates asked the question of what he wanted, and he again said knowledge. One more time, Socrates held him underwater only this time he waited until the young man struggled and flailed his arm before letting him up. Socrates then asked him what he wanted, and the young man shouted, Air! Socrates then told him that when he wanted knowledge as much as he wanted air, he would find it.

The Socratic method uses questions to understand values, principles, and beliefs to determine consistency with other beliefs. No doubt neuroscientists and others used the Socratic method to discover the unknown by employing such a technique. This book is about thinking, which is how the mind uses the brain to discover, learn, and explore with curiosity things that are new and exciting. As is the case with any item that is employed in an endeavor, the more the user knows about it, the more efficient and effective the user can get results that he or she desires. A Power Thinker wants to know how the brain works so that it can be used at a level that most people do not understand. So, bear with me as we explore what has been discovered about the brain so far.

Anatomy of the Brain

The brain is the control center of the body. The brain functions on chemicals and electrical impulses. That is why you may be aware that you can rewire your brain. There are neural pathways that are continually developing or are being used by your brain as you think about things. These have been developing in you since birth and interaction with others. You have power over your brain. Even a child knows what he or she wants before language is mastered. While this comes naturally, you can learn how to use that power at will.

Brain Basics

The brain is the control center of the body. The brain has a wide range of responsibilities from coordinating our movement to managing our emotions. The brain is composed of three main divisions: the forebrain, brainstem, and hindbrain.

There are three main parts of the brain. The cerebrum is the most significant part of the brain and is where thoughts are processed, and memory may be stored. The cerebellum is located under the cerebrum and is at the brain's rear. This portion of the brain helps us maintain balance and equilibrium. It is also helpful in speech and coordination. Finally, the brain stem is connected to the spinal cord and helps regulate the body's automatic functions.

The brain also has hemispheres, lobes, and regions. The hemispheres are the left and right hemispheres, and each hemisphere has certain different functions and occasionally the same process. 

According to the Mayfield Clinic, a neurosurgical clinic, the cerebrum is where reasoning occurs, and the left hemisphere is primarily responsible for controlling speech, comprehension, arithmetic, and writing. In other words, the left hemisphere is the logical and reasoning hemisphere. The right hemisphere controls creativity, spatial ability, and artistic and musical skills. The two hemispheres are connected by what is known as the corpus callosum. The corpus callosum is a large bundle of more than 200 million myelinated nerve fibers that connect the two brain hemispheres, permitting communication between the right and left sides of the brain. The corpus callosum consists of the nerve fibers that connect the brain hemispheres and facilitate communication between the hemispheres. Later, when we mention Executive Stewardship and whole-brain activity, it is essential to realize that by conscious thought, we can use all parts of our brain to capitalize on the particular specialty of each area.

In addition to hemispheres, the brain also has lobes. There are four main lobes. First, problem-solving occurs primarily in the frontal lobe. The parietal lobe primarily interprets signals from vision, hearing, motor, sensory impulses, and memory; the occipital lobes primarily interpret our vision; finally, the temporal lobe understands language, memory, hearing, sequencing, and organization.

As one can see, the brain is very intricate and exciting in form, function, and utility. 

There is so much to learn about the brain and how it affects our lives, our ability to imagine, invent, innovate, relate, control actions, avoid disaster, and create.

Neurochemistry

There are happy chemicals in your brain. Dopamine (immediate pleasure), serotonin (mood regulation and memory), oxytocin (social bonding, motivationally relevant stimuli), and endorphins (natural pain and stress chemicals released by the pituitary gland) make up the happy chemicals. These reward you when you do something that contributes to thriving and to your survival which amounts to thriving while surviving or as I call it your thrival of accomplishing things you want to do. The job of the unhappy chemical, cortisol, is to warn you of danger. The neural pathways carry the brain chemicals. These can be used and new ones built if you know how. Neurons are the elements, and neural pathways are the highways that connect them. Your brain meets its need to find more of what is happy and avoids what is a threat or remembering an unhappy experience.

Electricity flows through the neural pathways. Feed the brain new experiences, and you create new neural pathways to create new habits. This leads to the development of either a positive or a negative mental attitude. How you view your survival also depends upon your mind’s eye of what you want to accomplish. Some people refer to this as a mindset. Carol Dwek in her book on mindsets says there are two basic mindsets, fixed or growth. You can set your mind to accomplish something in a way that makes you happy, so your brain releases the happy chemical cocktail to keep you with that mindset that makes you happy. Some people are happy with a fixed mindset for certain things and a growth mindset for other things. You have the power to control your thoughts. Dopamine is released when you view something in your mind’s eye that you want to do and believe that you can accomplish it. This stops when you accomplish it. That is why some people say the journey is more fun than the destination. That is why you must do more to get more. This also creates a neural pathway that paves the way for the happy journey to be replicated.

Your mind’s eye can change lenses much like a camera. What lens do you choose? In other words, what do you want to focus your thoughts on? Warren Buffet, a famous investor and billionaire, has an investor’s eye. Always examining market data and making intuitive decisions based on thought and experience combined with creativity to make great investments. Another billionaire is Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft corporation, and he has a technologist’s eye. Sparring with different minds’ eyes allows you to see things differently. This synergy results in an incredible mind meld, which enriches your thinking. In a way, your mind’s eye is a thinking model that changes as your focus changes. To see mentally is to think.

Distraction changes the flow of your brain electricity along one neural pathway to another, and with that, a brain chemical is released. Distractions can be important or unimportant, and one can manage distractions based upon experience and commitment. Interruptions happen frequently. Some are given attention, and others are ignored or placed secondary in importance. Some interruptions happen with such magnitude that they become disruptions, which change the course of action and accomplishment.

New pathways or wiring in the brain are due to the repetition of thought. You can create a new habit of thought. Consider adopting the following four-step rewiring plan:

Step 1: choose a specific thought that you want to use as a trigger for the new path each time that thought occurs. 

Step 2: select the proper opportunity to trigger the thought. 

Step 3: make energy available for this project as you commit to it, and be consistent in the thinking of the new thought.

Step 4:  continue to strengthen the new pathway

We can build a new dopamine pathway by selecting new short-, medium-, and long-term goals. We can build a new oxytocin pathway by interacting with others in a meaningful way with small steps by imagining the motivation or motive for action to complete a desired goal or accomplishment. Suppose you wanted to create a new social bonding group or join an existing group. When you do this, you feel a rush of serotonin. Serotonin is a neural chemical that helps with a feeling of closeness or belonging. Endorphins are built for emergencies, so no regular pathway is set for them. Laughter can trigger these endorphins even if it is contrived laughter. Look for healthy ways to stimulate the happy chemicals by developing happy habits. 

Our brain's cognitive power—that is, our ability to learn, remember, and solve problems—slows down with age. Aging is a natural process. Even the most gifted athlete and performer lose their agility over time due to aging, but they are still, because of their physical and mental conditioning at an earlier age, more capable than individuals who have not performed at an elevated level. The dedication to skill and conditioning may diminish over time but still, be greater than that of an individual who has never trained at those levels. Many of us find it harder to remember once-familiar facts. These changes affect our ability to focus, so we may find ourselves getting more easily distracted than when we were younger. You may have noticed a common practice of playing word games or number games to increase or maintain cognitive abilities. Just like physical exercise is good for most of the body, mental exercise is good for our brain and its capabilities. These mental exercises performed while thinking can be referred to as a thinkercise. We can do a thinkercise for a thinkersize result. By exercising our brain, we can increase our dreams and goals to a size we desire.  Yes, it is a play on words, but perhaps we should be more creative in our thoughts. Our thought ability usually stays with us longer than our physical abilities. As we age, we may need a walker or eyeglasses or hearing aids, but many in their 90s or even at age 100 can still communicate and think even though their physical ability to move is restricted. Be sure to understand and take care of your mind. It should be with you even at an advanced age.

When we learn about the brain, we hear about neurons. A neuron's specific function is to help the brain, itself made up of billions of neurons, remember, learn, and reason. The body can react based on information sent and received by the neurons. When the body reacts, commands are sent from the brain to muscles and glands via neurons known as neurotransmitters which send a message across a synapse. So, without becoming a neuroscientist, let's dig a little deeper into how a neuron works.

Neuron

We have both neurons and nerves. Neurons generate electrical and chemical signals; nerves provide an environment for conducting these signals. A nerve uses electrical and chemical signals to transmit sensory and motor information from one body part to another.

Synapse

A synapse is a small gap structure that connects neurons as they send electrical or chemical signals