The
Biology of Success
by Robert Arnot, M.D.
Chapter 1
Build
Mental Capital
Mental energy is the basic foundation of
success. Look at corporate titans such as Michael Eisner, Martha Stewart,
and Jack Welch, or world leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Tony Blair, and
Margaret Thatcher, or super moms from Maria Von Trapp to Barbara Bush.
High mental energy is what they all have or had in common. Mental energy
is the brain's power supply -- the more power you have, the longer and
harder you can work. Compare your work output the morning after taking a
red-eye to that after a refreshing night's sleep. It's brain energy that
makes the difference.
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM:
Success is in the genes.
THE BIOLOGY OF SUCCESS:
Mental energy fuels success.
Affect
When you meet many successful people, it's
not their actual brain energy that first strikes you, it's their affect.
Affect is a more precise, medical term for mood. Most successful people
have a high positive affect most of the time; not that they don't get
cross, angry, and even down, but their predominant affect is positive.
A landmark paper published in 1985 by David
Watson and Auke Tellegen concluded that most mood variations can be
explained by just two factors: positive affect and negative affect.
Positive affect is associated with enthusiasm, activity, strength, and
elation; it's the opposite of dull, sluggish, or sleepy. Negative affect
is associated with feelings such as nervousness, fear, distress, scorn,
and hostility; it's the opposite of being calm or relaxed. Positive affect
encompasses feelings relating to energy; negative affect encompasses
feelings relating to tension.
A highly positive affect acts as the
energizer needed to super-charge our thought processes. Ed Diener, Ph.D.,
of the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, reports that it is
positive affect that "motivates human sociability, exploration, and
creativity." At work, you will be far more productive and much more
likely to be helpful if you are in a positive mood. In short, good and bad
moods deter-mine your pattern of thought. "A negative mood generates
sadness, irritability, guilt, and a negative, self-critical, and
pessimistic thought pattern," says Dr. Diener.
Understanding positive and negative affect
is absolutely critical to goal-setting. If goals require a great deal of
energy and you think about them while in a low-energy mood, you may get
discouraged and feel you can't achieve them, and as a result you'll set
lower goals for yourself than you should. Robert E. Thayer, Ph.D.,
professor of psychology at California State University, Long Beach, writes
in his excellent book The Origin of Everday Moods, "Your current
energy level is incorrectly influencing your judgments about your ability
to muster enough energy and commitment for the future task." In other
words, be aware that how you feel has a direct impact on your thinking
processes. When we set standards for ourselves they seem objective, but
standards and goal-setting are totally subjective and personal.
To be a success, you should set goals only
when your mood and energy levels are elevated. Be aware, though, that if
you set your goals at a one-time high (for example, when you just won the
lottery), you may not be able to reach those goals because you'll not be
able to find again the same high-energy and high-mood state. Using The
Biology of Success, you will want to concentrate on bringing your overall
affect and energy to a higher overall level before you set goals that
dreams are made of . . . and then maintaining that energy to carry out
your goals.
The Mood Thermostat
The brain's affect ranges from very low to
very high. The right genes bless some of us with a high setting and a
lifetime of happiness. Others among us are cursed with a low setting and
years of bleak moods and dark thoughts. Although we talk about a wide
range of emotions from happy and joyful to sad, angry, and outright
hostile, for the purposes of thinking positively we are simply interested
in whether our affect is positive or negative. The great good news is that
you can create more mental energy, much like turning up a thermostat, only
it is your brain energy levels that you are readjusting to a higher
setting.
This "mood thermostat" is located
deep within the brain in a structure called the amygdala. Using brain
scans, scientists can now peer into the amygdala and see in
three-dimensional color its degree of activity. The relationship to mood
is inverse: the lower the activity of the amygdala, the higher your mood.
A note of caution: Be aware of what I call
the stepladder effect. In modern-day America, our national mood is one of
anxiety, even mild depression. This is protective. When bad things happen,
there is not far to fall. As your mental energy and mood rise, however,
you'll find that it is as if you are on an unsteady stepladder. Sure you
feel terrific, but you're afraid of falling should bad things happen.
You may even start to look down in terror
at how far you now have to fall. To build resilience against the
stepladder effect, you need to immunize yourself with the spirit of
optimism, which is discussed in the chapter "Be an Optimist" in
Part Two. Life's biggest winners get knocked down again and again, but
they fundamentally believe they can win; when adverse events plunge them
into momentary despair or gloom, they just as quickly pull themselves back
together and regain their positive affect and mental energy.
Where Is Your Thermostat Set?
Brain scanning is not routinely available
for the diagnosis of low mood, but excellent self-tests are. The following
self-test will help you determine where on the scale of sadness to
happiness your mood "thermostat" is fixed. Once you complete the
self-test, carefully read the "Diagnosis" section following it.
SELF-TEST
Devised by Robert L. Spitzer, M.D., Chief
of Biometric Research at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, the
PRIME-MD? test can be completed without the help of a doctor. Dr. Spitzer
has graciously allowed me to use his test in this book.
Question: Over the last two weeks, how
often have you been bothered by the following?
Please answer
A. NOT AT ALL
B. SEVERAL DAYS
C. MORE THAN HALF THE DAYS
D. NEARLY EVERY DAY
If you're not certain, keep a calendar for
the next two weeks and mark how many days you suffer from the following
symptoms.
______ 1. Little interest or pleasure in
doing things?
______ 2. Feeling down, depressed, or
hopeless?
______ 3. Trouble falling or staying
asleep, or sleeping too much?
______ 4. Feeling tired or having little
energy?
______ 5. Poor appetite or overeating?
______ 6. Feeling bad about yourself --
that you are a failure or have let yourself or your family down?
______ 7. Trouble concentrating on things,
such as reading the news-paper or watching television?
______ 8. Moving or speaking so slowly that
other people could have noticed? Or the opposite -- being so fidgety or
restless that you are moving around a lot more than usual?
______ 9. In the last two weeks, have you
had thoughts that you would be better off dead or of hurting yourself in
some way?
DIAGNOSIS
