Super Brain (29 page)

Other social scientists have found these correlations unacceptable, but so far no one has found a better model for explaining how behavior gets passed along. The point is that placing yourself in a positive social context is good both physically and mentally. In a way not fully understood, our cells understand what it means to do good.
A classic Harvard psychology study from the 1980s asked subjects to watch a film depicting Mother Teresa’s work with sick and orphaned children in Calcutta. As they watched, their blood pressure and heart rate went down.

Going a step further, in 2008 a study by University of Michigan social psychologist Sara Konrath examined the longevity of 10,000 state residents who had participated in a health study going back to their graduation from high school in 1957. Konrath focused on those who had done volunteer work in the past ten years, and her findings are fascinating. Individuals who volunteered lived longer than nonvolunteers. Of the 2,384 nonvolunteers, 4.3 percent died between 2004 and 2008, but only 1.6 percent of the altruistic volunteers had died.

The key word is
altruistic
. People were asked why they volunteered, and not every answer involved altruism. Some of the participants’ motives were more oriented toward others, such as “I feel it is important to help others” or “Volunteering is an important activity to the people I know best.” Other respondents, however, had more self-oriented reasons for volunteering, such as “Volunteering is a good escape from my own troubles,” or “Volunteering makes me feel better about myself.” Those people who said they volunteered for their own personal satisfaction had nearly the same mortality rate (4 percent) as people who did not volunteer at all. This is just one example among many to support that invisible traits in the mind-body system have physical consequences. Your cells know who you are and what motivates you. The Michigan research was the first to show that what motivates volunteers can have an impact on life expectancy.

To move from ego-centered selfishness to social sharing is a process. The steps look something like this:

I want to be liked and accepted
.

If I keep everything to myself, others reject me
.

We can succeed together or fail separately
.

I can afford to share. It doesn’t hurt. It feels good, in fact
.

When I give, I find that I receive
.

The more I have, the more I can afford to give
.

Strangely, there’s a fullness in giving away more and more
.

The most fulfilling kind of giving is to give of myself
.

I find the deepest connection comes from generosity of spirit
.

As with everything in life, the path from the first step to the last isn’t a straight line but a zigzag that is different for each person. A three-year-old learning to share toys can’t comprehend what generosity of spirit is. Some people never comprehend it, no matter how many years pass. Yet building a self follows this arc, matching a cell’s natural design, which involves sharing and cooperation as a matter of survival. At the level of the self, survival isn’t usually the issue. The issue is the rewards you receive through bonding and connecting, the basic process that makes for a peaceful society.

2. Cells are self-healing

When you are self-aware, you learn how to repair your own damage. This comes naturally to cells, although healing is still one of the most complex and baffling bodily processes. We only know that it exists and that life depends upon it. Cells are fortunate not to have to think about healing. They spot any damage, and instantly the repair mechanism sets to work. At the mind-body level, there is a basic parallel. When we say that time heals all wounds, we are talking about an automatic process, however painful it may be. Grief runs its course, for example, without anyone knowing how shattered emotions are actually healed.

But much healing isn’t automatic, as we know from those who never recover from grief. Most of the time healing is a conscious activity. You look inside and ask “How am I doing?” all the time. There is no guarantee that you will find the key, and when your
inner damage is sore and aching, even looking at it can be too much. Self-healing means overcoming the pain and finding a way to become whole again. The path looks something like this:

I hurt. Somebody help me
.

I hurt again. Somebody help me again
.

Why won’t the hurt go away? If I don’t look at it, maybe it will go away
.

I tried to distract myself, but I really need to get at this pain inside
.

I can stand to look at what’s wrong
.

Maybe there’s something I can do for myself
.

This pain could be telling me something—but what?

I think I understand, and now the pain is beginning to subside
.

I feel incredibly relieved. Healing is possible
.

I trust my ability to heal
.

A small child crying out for Mommy to come and help has no other resources. A child can’t comprehend the final stage,
I trust my ability to heal
. But healing is part of the vast feedback loop that holds mind and body together. The more you experience even a moment of trying to heal yourself, the greater your ability grows. The triumph over one’s deepest wounds is a spiritual triumph. Without it, life would be cruel, since wounds are unavoidable. Only by building a self can you prove to yourself that life isn’t cruel so long as victory over pain is possible. Through self-awareness, you realize that healing is one of the most powerful forces sustaining your life.

3. The life of the cell demands constant nutrition

Cells survive by having complete trust that the universe will support them. So solid is this trust that a typical cell stores no more than three or four seconds of reserve food and oxygen. Nourishment is always coming in. Using that certainty, a cell can devote all its time
and energy to the things that cause life to move forward: growing, reproducing, healing, and running its own internal machinery. At the same time, cells don’t pick and choose what is good for them. All nourishment is good. There’s no time to make mistakes or to flirt with risky lifestyles.

Here is a piece of wisdom honored more in the breach than in the observance. In our culture excitement, risk, and danger are positive words, while balance, proportion, and moderation feel impossibly dull. We take it as our birthright to experiment with rebellion. So we have every temptation to ignore the benefits of a balanced life, and while we experiment, our cells suffer. But wisdom has more than one teaching. Everyone cherishes the right to make mistakes, and evolution is very forgiving. You can always retrace your steps and lead a life that is more nourishing. The important thing is to know what is most nourishing to you personally and put your energies there.

When you do that, passion becomes part of balance. Presumably cells are passionate about life already—they do all they can to thrive and multiply, after all. So nourish yourself with the three things that would increase your passion for life. It’s worthwhile to sit down and actually write the three things down, tucking the list in your wallet to take out and remind yourself whenever you need to. Leaving specifics aside, your nourishment needs to embrace mind and body. Therefore, your list should include:

1. Your highest vision.

2. Your deepest love.

3. Your longest reach.

Vision gives you purpose and meaning. Love gives you vibrant emotions and lasting passion. A long reach gives you a challenge that will take years to meet. Taken all together, these three primal elements lead to true happiness. As with every aspect of wisdom,
you have a path to follow when it comes to nourishing your life. It looks something like this.

I guess I’m happy enough. My life is as good as that of the person sitting next to me
.

I only wish my day wasn’t so routine and predictable
.

Just beneath the surface I have secret dreams
.

Maybe I don’t have to be afraid to stretch myself
.

I deserve more quality and happiness in my life
.

I will risk following my bliss
.

My aspirations are starting to come true
.

It’s unbelievable, but the universe is on my side
.

This is an arc of growing trust, the kind of trust that comes naturally to cells but that gets compromised in our own lives. For most people, trust runs into a roadblock early on. They lose the simple trust of a child, who depends on his parents to feed, clothe, and support his existence. A transition comes when a new sort of trust—self-reliance—enters. During this transition, a person learns to stop making trust external (
I trust Mommy and Daddy
) and begins to trust internally (
I trust myself
). Clearly this difficult transition involves many setbacks. So it takes constant awareness to keep evolving. The only true nourishment that lasts a lifetime comes from within. If you keep placing your trust in other people, they can be taken away from you. But if you trust yourself, there is no such threat. The path leads from
I can do this myself
to
I am enough
and finally
I am supported by the universe
. No path is more rewarding or more sublime.

4. Cells are always dynamic—they die if they get stuck

Cells are immune to many troubles that plague everyday life—they have to be in order to survive—and one blessing is that they never
get stuck. A cell’s whole world is the bloodstream, which is a superhighway of chemicals brimming with traffic. Blood looks uniform to the naked eye, a slightly viscous, warm, crimson liquid. But at the molecular level, it teems with change. A cell never knows exactly what the superhighway is going to bring next. The blood chemistry of a soldier in battle, a patient just diagnosed with cancer, a yogi sitting in a Himalayan cave, and a newborn baby is entirely unique.

Cells, in response to an ever-changing world, adapt instantly. The brain is forced to be the most adaptable, since all operations in the body, however minuscule, are reported back to it. Therefore, if you get stuck in a behavior, habit, or belief that refuses to budge, you are hampering your brain. It took a long time for medical science to accept how serious stuckness can be. Twenty years ago some early mind-body studies looked for correlations between psychology and disease. Many doctors suspected, without scientific proof, that some patients had personalities that made them more susceptible to cancer in particular. Results did emerge—a so-called “disease personality” was marked by emotional repression and a general uptightness. But there was no “cancer personality.” Therefore it wasn’t of much use to discover that your psychology might put you at a vague, general risk of almost any disease from the common cold to rheumatoid arthritis and heart attacks.

But we can make use of this finding by turning it on its head. Instead of trying to pinpoint the kind of behavior that makes cancer more likely, we can focus on not getting stuck, since we know that brain cells—and all the body’s other cells—are designed to be dynamic, flexible, and constantly alert to change. Learning that change is your friend doesn’t come naturally to everyone, and as we age, resistance to change grows. The path to follow typically looks something like this.

I am what I am. Nobody has the right to change me
.

Familiarity creates my comfort zone
.

My daily routine is beginning to seem stale
.

I see people who do more things than I do. Maybe I’ve suppressed my curiosity
.

I can’t expect life to bring new things to me. I need to motivate myself
.

New things are beginning to be enjoyable
.

It’s possible to create a comfort zone in the midst of change
.

I love my dynamic life—it keeps me feeling vital
.

Cells don’t have to follow this path; evolution has ensured that dynamism is simply a fact of life. It’s on the personal level that you must confront your stuckness. In the end, the reason is natural and basic: you are designed to evolve because that’s how your body operates. Your cooperation with nature may meet with resistance at first, but if you press on, it’s the easiest way to live and thrive.