When I had all my seizures in college (a result of the Epstein-Barr virus attacking my brain instead of just giving me mono), I realized that I had a broken brain. A really broken brain. My neurologist said that I’d lost about 15-20 IQ points, but “it’s a good thing you were so smart to start off with.” I could no longer remember conversations verbatim. I suddenly would use the wrong words (refrigerator for dishwasher). It pretty much sucked.
There’s a brain coach and author Jim Kwik who was called “the boy with the broken brain” when he was growing up because of an injury when he was five.
According to his website,
“Jim discovered that, no matter the circumstances, we can rebuild our brains. And after working on himself, he realized his brain was not broken…it just needed a better owner’s manual. This shattered Jim's own limiting beliefs – and over time, it became his passion to help others do the same.”
This is true and not just about really obviously broken brains like mine and Jim’s, but it’s also true about all brains, and a big part of empowering yourself and brain when you’re a writer is about turning the page. Sometimes it’s what we have to force ourself to do to get our goals especially when it comes to moving past our insecurities, right?
Jim couldn’t just give up because he was hurt when he was five. I couldn’t just give up even though I really miss those IQ points. We have to try to be as smart as we possibly can so that we can become as shiny as we possibly can.
But how do we actually do that?
We’re going to talk a little about that today.
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