Do you have a bad memory? Well, so does the memory champion of the US Memory Championships. How's that possible you may ask? But that's exactly the point. We have misconceptions about learning and memory that need to be wiped out and replaced with accurate representations of how our brain works. In this first episode we look at two of the mental blocks that cause us to stutter, if not fail. And we transform them from failure to success. Let's find out how. Read online: Business Mental Myths --------- As late as the 1970s, women's brains were considered to be inferior to that of men, and especially so in the game of chess. Chess is a game that demands a high level of spatial awareness, among other skills, and it was erroneously believed that women could never equal men at the grandmaster level. In fact, not one woman had made it to grandmaster level until Susan Polgár came along. Susan's father, László Polgár, didn't believe in inborn talent. He wrote a book about genius, and in it emphasised the fact that “Geniuses are made, not born”. To prove the point, he and his wife Klara educated their three daughters at home, and while geography and history lessons were important, chess was considered to be the most valuable of all. At 4, Susan Polgár won her first chess tournament in the Budapest Girls' Under-11 Championship, with a 10–0 score. In 1982, at the age of 12, she won the World Under 16 (Girls) Championship. In a series shot by National Geographic, called “My Brilliant Brain”, Susan Polgár talks about her first visit to the premier chess club in Budapest. She was still just a little girl. “The room was filled with smoke and there were elderly men who thought my father was there for a game and brought his daughter along. But the reality is that my father wanted to see how I would against the members of the club”. The club members thought László Polgár was mad. But they went along with the crazy plan and soon found the “pretty little girl” was beating them hands down. Susan Polgár continued her meteoric rise She was the first woman in history to break the gender barrier by qualifying for the 1986 “Men's” World Championship. In January 1991, Polgar became the first woman to earn the Grandmaster title in the conventional way of achieving three GM norms and a rating over 2500. No longer could men claim that a woman couldn't attain the role of a grandmaster in chess. In time, Susan's sister, Judit also became a grandmaster. The third sister, Sofia earned a norm in a grandmaster-level tournament in 1989 when she was only 14. The mental myth was shattered once and for all. In business too, the we have to deal with mental myths that hold us back. As we weave our way through videos online or articles that rarely have any solid research, these myths take a hold of us and create a factor of intimidation. It feels sometimes, like everyone else is moving ahead while we lag behind. In business, as in life, it's not enough to just get and keep the business going. We have to make sure we don't get bogged down in myths have have no basis in reality. Three persistent mental myths that prevail are: Mental Myth 1: Copying is not a good idea. We need to be original. Mental Myth 2: You Need To Remember What You Learn Mental Myth 3: You need to speed up your learning (and there are systems to go faster) Let's find out why these myths need to be banished, once and for all. We will look at the first two myths in this episode. Mental Myth 1: Copying is not a good idea. We need to be original. When you look at the Taj Mahal, you don't think of Humayun, do you? Humayun, who? For over 200 years, the Mughals ruled over parts of what is modern day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. In what is surely one of the greatest empires the world has ever known, they were rulers of between 110-150 million people—a fourth of the world's population at that time. The family tree of the Mughal emperors started with Babur, went down to Humayun, Akbar the Great, Jahangir, bu