Limitless,, Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

A POSITIVE PEER GROUP

Your brain potential is not just related to your biological networks or your neurological networks; it is also related to your social networks. Who you spend time with is who you become. Motivational speaker Jim Rohn says that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Whether you believe that or not, I don’t think any of us can disagree with the notion that the people around us have a meaningful influence on our lives. A recent Temple University study showed that people (specifically teenagers in this study) act differently when they are alone than they do when they are with others. In reporting on the study for The New York Times, Tara Parker-Pope said that “Dr. Steinberg [one of the authors of the
study] notes that the brain system involved in reward processing is also involved in the processing of social information, explaining why peers can have such a pronounced effect on decision making.”⁸
Because of this influence, those you spend time with have a genuine effect on brain function. Certainly, they affect your self-talk, as most of us tie at least a part of our beliefs to the beliefs others have about us. But they can affect everything from what you eat to how much you exercise, to even how much sleep you get. There are lots of books out there dedicated to helping you distinguish people who are good for you from people who are not, but for the purposes of this chapter, just take a few minutes to think about who your peers are, how much influence they have on your life, and how this affects your desire to unlimit yourself.

7. BRAIN PROTECTION

This probably goes without saying, but protecting your brain is critical if you’re going to make the most of your brain. You have only one brain. If you were given only one car to use for the rest of your life, how well would you treat that car? You would take care of it as if your life depended on it. Accidents are unavoidable, but putting yourself in situations where brain injury is less likely improves your chances of avoiding the worst. Hard- contact or extreme sports are not ideal if you want to make the most of this precious asset. Driving 20 miles an hour over the speed limit all the time on your motorcycle isn’t advisable, either. If you love these things too much to give them up, at the very least take as many precautions and use as many safety tools as you can.

8.