Brain Science - Myth Number One

I was not born smart...

But you were!

This myth is popular because it shifts responsibility for failure away from the individual and onto the genetic blueprint from which the brain was constructed.

Students who obtain low grades can excuse their marks by thinking: “I wasn't born clever enough to cope with studying!” Incompetent teachers can justify poor grades by complaining: “How can we teach children who were born to fail?”

Ulrich Neisser, one of the world's foremost specialists in the field of mental functioning, sets the record straight when he explains: “Human cognitive activity would be more usefully conceived of as a collection of acquired skills than as the operation of a single fixed mechanism”. The harder your brain is obliged to work, the greater will be its capacity for work. The more efficiently you allow your brain to function, the greater will be its ability to function with speed, accuracy, and confidence no matter what the intellectual challenge.

The harder your brain is obliged to work, the greater will be its capacity for work.

Of key importance in imposing restrictions on this functioning, however, is the manner in which an individual comes to view his or her intellect.

Believe in your brain power

This is why the myth of inborn mental inferiority is so damaging. Believe it, and you place your brain behind bars to serve out a life sentence of inadequacy.

Change those beliefs, and you can free it to work better then you might ever have considered possible.