Steven Campbell on Making Your Mind Magnificent to Transform Your Life

Steven Campbell talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com about his book, Making Your Mind Magnificent.



“While you’re talking to yourself, your brain is believing everything you tell it, without question.” ~Steven Campbell 

Steven started his career working in hospitals for twenty years, which gave him a good background in physiology, which he was taught in. He then got his Master’s degree in Information Systems and then began teaching computer courses. He has had a lifelong fascination with the brain, and over the years, he has taught students how to learn and how to study, including all that he learned about the brain in these courses. It was after he had retired from the academe that he began spreading the word about all that he had learned about learning and the brain, and he wrote the book in response to people asking him to write a book about the subject matter that he was speaking on, which was so powerful that psychologists attend his seminar, despite the fact that Steven doesn’t have a degree in psychology.

Steven noted that we human beings talk to ourselves thousands of times faster than normal verbal conversation, and that our self-talk comes in the form of images and feelings, rather than words. The brain, for its part, accepts without question that which it has been told, which means that, if it is told that it cannot do something, it will do its job and make sure that the person to whom it is a part of cannot do that thing. On the other hand, if the brain has been told that it can do something, it will likewise do its job and make sure that the person to whom it is a part of can do that thing, and will find ways of getting that thing done. Steven notes that the brain doesn’t care if what was told it is true, and refers to Phantoms in the Brain by Sandra Blakeslee and V.S. Ramachandran, which deals, in part, with the phenomenon of people still feeling limbs that have been amputated.

Steven remarked that psychology began with Freudianism, where it was believed that unresolved childhood conflicts were the source of one’s present-day behavior, after which behaviorism was initiated by Dr. B. F. Skinner, who theorized that one behaves the way one does because of cause and effect. This was then followed by theories that behavior is determined by one’s genes, and then by one’s environment (culture and the like). Steven notes that all of this stems from Dr. Albert Ellis’s book, A Guide to Rational Living, which was a cornerstone in cognitive psychology, which theorizes essentially that we are what we say to ourselves, and effectively says that all of the psychological theories previously brought up were all true. This is because everything one does today is primarily based on what one says to himself today, or what one is believing today, rather than due to cultural conditioning or events previously experienced in one’s life, which was a radical idea when it first came out in the 1960s. Dr. Ellis also theorized that how one feels about oneself doesn’t come from one’s past - from how one was raised, for example - but from one’s own beliefs about what has happened to oneself, and that these beliefs can be changed, with the feelings that will follow. This is based on neuroplasticity, which is a term coined by Dr. Eric Kandel in his book, In Search of Memory.

Steven is, himself, a living lesson of the subject of his book, as he told himself for over 40 years, that he was terrible at mathematics, but he was forced to become good at math when he was assigned to become a math teacher. He became so good at it, particularly since he had applied what he knew about how the brain learned, that students began to favor his subject over those taught by other professors, and it was then that he began believing that he was good at math - a message that his brain took in, locked on and then operated accordingly. Steven points out that the brain doesn’t care if what is told it is true or not, and that one can change one’s life by changing what one tells one’s brain, and what one believes in, right now.

Steven notes that the brain, when people sleep, creates the connections amongst all of the things it has learned and recorded throughout the day, organizing and making sense out of all of the things learned. Based on the latest studies, the brain has a hundred billion neurons, each of which are connected to an average of ten thousand neurons. The brain thus has a pattern based on a hundred billion to the ten thousandth power [(100,000,000,000)^(10,000)], which is an enormous number and means that the brain is virtually unlimited in what it can learn. The primary element that thus holds people back from learning is the self-talk that people engage in, and the reason this is only coming up now is because it’s only now that the technology is available where we can see the brain actually operating.

Where physical statistics are concerned, Steven points out that the brain takes up only 2% of a person’s body weight but consumes 20% of a person’s energy, 20% of the air a person takes in, 25% of a person’s blood flow, 30% of the water a person takes in and 40% of the nutrients a person consumes.

In addition to presenting himself as a case study, Steven also mentioned an example of a dyslexic, troubled man who turned his life around after attending one of his seminars and was greatly impacted by the message of his talk. He also mentioned an example of a student who limited herself in math because of her own self-talk. Steven pointed out that one’s old life ended one second ago, and that one’s new life began one second ago.

Steven has a regular radio show on KOWS.FM 107.3, which starts at 9am Pacific time, every Wednesday morning.

Purchase from Amazon: Making Your Mind Magnificent by Steven Campbell

Fatima Doman on Focusing on Authentic Strengths to Optimize Potential

Fatima Doman talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com about her book, Authentic Strengths.



“Look to see the best in yourself, and then cultivate that.” ~Fatima Doman

Fatima came to the United States at the age of three, as a refugee from a war in Angola. She has been an executive coach for twenty years for Franklin Covey, and has been using positive psychology lately when she works with her clients, and received her Advanced Executive Coaching Certification from Columbia University as part of Franklin Covey’s Executive Coaching Practice under Global Executive Practice, and among the many tools she learned during that certification was positive psychology.

Positive psychology is a relatively new field in psychology that has been around for only fifteen years to date, and is based on, and has been validated by, the over two hundred research studies done around the world that show that people focus on strengths rather than weaknesses when they focus on what’s right rather than what’s wrong, and this creates greater energy and resilience and even higher functioning immune systems. Fatima notes that it’s better to work using models on humans flourishing rather than focusing on disease models, which is the methodology used in traditional psychology, and positive psychology acts as a balance to traditional psychology. Positive psychology focuses on what’s going right, and enables those who use it to work towards something they create more of, rather than avoiding particular behaviors. Fatima notes that people can coach themselves using positive psychology as well as coach others.

The twenty-four strengths of character that the book is based on came about from a study conducted by fifty scholars around the world who studied strength of character in wisdom literature from around the world, and the listing of the essential human strengths which can be found in all cultures took three years to catalogue. These are all in Fatima’s website, authenticstrengths.com, where visitors can take a free survey (which is highlighted on the website) to see how these twenty-four strengths rank with them.

Fatima wrote Authentic Strengths because she wanted to share the positive message to the world, particularly as she experienced its power in her own life, and thus feels that everyone can benefit from it, so they can use their authentic strengths in their lives. She notes that research has shown that people can learn to be more optimistic as well as learn to create the conditions that enable a greater degree of fulfillment in their lives, and the science behind these are what Authentic Strengths is all about. Given the broadness of positive psychology, Fatima wrote the book as a distillation of the strength concept in a way that the ordinary person can understand.

Fatima remarks that everyone has the twenty-four strengths, but these are all present in different degrees in different people, and that we should use our top strengths more often, as these give us more energy and more engagement, and that we should create more opportunities for us to use these, thus leveraging these to create greater results. She noted that people who focused on using their higher strengths for a week experienced benefits, such as lower stress and lower anxiety, over a period of six months. Fatima notes that certain strengths can be influenced by culture, such as a higher placing of the strengths of modesty and humility in Asian cultures.

Fatima commented on a few case studies, such as herself when she worked on her strength of prudence while she worked on her book. Fatima noted the case of a high-performing VP of sales who was about to be kicked out because of the abrasive way others felt he dealt with them. Fatima identified the man’s strength, which explained why he acted the way he did - and he basically had only the best financial interests of the company in mind - and then worked with him on his communication skills, while keeping his higher strengths in mind, which resulted in him not only staying in his company but also being given equity share in the company.

Fatima remarked that it is possible for people to develop their lower strengths, and gave the example of a woman who was able to gain fulfillment by working to develop one of her lower strengths, which was perseverance.

To those who want to achieve better things for themselves, Fatima recommends that they take the strength survey on her website to discover what their top, or “signature,” strengths are, and then look for ways they can use that strength in their lives. She would like to see the message spread throughout the world, and mentioned that one of her partners in India is using the book to work with teenagers, which helps them a lot.

Fatima Doman’s website is authenticstrengths.com.

Purchase on Amazon: Authentic Strengths by Fatima Doman