Leaf, Caroline. Think, Learn, Succeed: Understanding and Using Your Mind to Thrive at School, the Workplace, and Life.Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2018.
Summary in a Sentence
Leaf offers holistic mental self-care and learning solutions to think deeply, accessing and processing the information necessary for success at school, work, and life.
Elevator Pitch
The crisis of informational overload and the dilemma of quantity over quality can be overcome by establishing specific mindsets, adopting a mental gift profile, learning a five-step brain activation process, and becoming aware the science behind Leaf’s proprietary information assimilation theory.
Problem, Solution, and Significance
Problem: We are asking the wrong questions to overcome cognitive dissonance. We are diagnosing children with ADHD and numbing our brains instead of feeding our minds through nurture and right habits. Wrong mindsets present roadblocks for personal and career growth. Use of social media inhibits brain development and causes ailment through isolation and mental lethargy.
Solution: Active and intentional mental self-care helps put us in the right frame of reference to learn, grow, retain greater and more relevant information, and obtain a more enriching and fulfilling experience from relationships, work, and life.
Significance: Personal success is found not only in a rewarding job, but a fulfilled life experience. When we are able to seek out, filter, and retain the information that most aligns to our personal identity, we are able to live lives that are most rewarding to us.
Personal Application
- I can apply all mindsets to my cognition: thinker, controlled thinking, words, controlled emotions, forgiveness, happiness, time, possible, gratitude, community, support, healthy stress, expectancy, willpower, and spiritual (15).
- I need to be aware of the seven stages of a thinking cycle and order my thought process according to interpersonal, intrapersonal, linguistic, logical/mathematical (rationalization), kinesthetic (senses), musical (intuition) visual/spatial (imagination) (130).
- I need to organize my thought process flow into 1) focus, 2) attention, 3) analysis and consolidation, 4) application, and 5) closure.
- My five-step Metacog process includes the actions of 1) input, 2) reflection, 3) writing, 4) rechecking, and 5) and output (182).
- Active self-regulation through spoken words and the Metacog process is my key to rewiring dead thinking (fixed mindset) into love thinking (growth mindset) (233).
Quotes
- “About 5% of genetic mutations directly cause health issues. Roughly 95% of genes are influenced by life factors and lifestyle choices” (41).
- “You are essentially wired for love, right down to the genetic level; the more you improve your mental self-care habits, the more your brain and body will respond in positive ways” (43).
- “Talking to yourself out loud can help you control your thinking” (57).
- “An average human looks without seeing, listens without hearing, touches without feeling, eats without tasting, moves without physical awareness, inhales without awareness of odor or fragrance, and talks without thinking,” Leonardo da Vinci (59).
- “This nutritional content – your customized thinking – can be used in a meaningful way in terms of activating mindsets and preparing for sustainable memory building” (112).
- “What you think about the most grows in your mind. What you choose to focus on will be imprinted into your brain, affecting what you say and do” (177).
- “The deeper and more deliberate our thinking is, the more we will activate the dendrites to grow, which allows long-term memory to start forming” (215).
Values Connection
- Proverbs 23:7, “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.” (NKJV)[1]
- Romans 12:2, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
- Ephesians 4:23, “To be made new in the attitude of your minds;”
- James 1:8, “Such as person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.”
Vocabulary
Automatization: reconceptualization of memory / redesigning of thoughts and the structure of the brain over time. (45)
Brain plasticity:changes occur in the brain as a result of thinking and lifestyle choices. (44)
Epigenetics: the study of changes in organisms caused by modification of gene expression rather than alteration of the genetic code itself. (41)
Metacognition: awareness and understanding of one’s own thought processes. (31)
Neurogenesis: the brain is able to make new neurons. (40)
Nocebo Effect: a detrimental effect on health produced by psychological or psychosomatic factors such as negative expectations of treatment or prognosis. (38)
Superposition: the ability to focus on incoming information and on upcoming memories from the nonconscious mind. (56)
Dendrite: a short-branched extension of a nerve cell, along which impulses received from other cells at synapses are transmitted to the cell body. (177)
Synapse: a junction between two nerve cells, consisting of a minute gap across which impulses pass by diffusion of a neurotransmitter. (179)
Hilbert Space:is a real or complex inner product space that is also a complete metric space with respect to the distance function induced by the inner product. (212)
VAK learning styles theory:Visual, auditory, kinesthetic. (133)
MPA: Multiple Perspective Advantage. (139)
Quantum: a discrete quantity of energy proportional in magnitude to the frequency of the radiation it represents. (211)
[1]Unless otherwise noted, all biblical passages are referenced using the New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011).
David Lockwood 