Chapter 8: Finding Your Limitless Brain

I’m loving this newly published book, Codes of Longevity. I just read Dr. Dale Foster’s chapter and it’s just fantastic.

Here are my major takeaways from Dale’s message about finding your limitless brain.

First, he says, “...you don’t have to be sick to get better.” I couldn’t agree more. The pursuit of optimal health and longevity requires healing to health and then health to optimal health in a continuous upward spiral of goodness.

Next, he links brain health to happiness. I LOVE that!

“...your brain is your engine of happiness, and the quest for happiness is the same as the quest for optimal brain health.”

“When your brain is functioning optimally you can access and manage your flow states so that life is increasingly meaningful, productive, and enjoyable.”

Then, he introduced me to a fantastic concept or formula for happiness, H=U-F. It's one I’ve never heard of, and I’m supposed to be Mr. Happy Living. And he taught me the biological equivalent of happiness is longevity!

“H=U-F. Your happiness is equal to your unitive experiences [happy ones] minus your fragmentive experiences [traumatic ones].”

“when your healing is greater than your trauma, when you have more unitive experiences than fragmentive experiences, then and only then will you experience happiness, and its biological equivalent—longevity. The GUT of Happiness [Grand Unified Theory of Happiness] principle summarized by this simple formula, H=U-F, is interwoven throughout philosophy, science, and religion.”

“When you feel happy your epigenome is unfolding and instructing the genes that express both biological health and experiential happiness.”

“If you tune up your brain, you can tune into small unitive experiences at will...”

“A happy life, therefore, is one of ongoing and increasing unitive experience, characterized by such feelings as purpose, meaning, understanding, insight, joy, love, peace, wholeness, healing, growth, evolution, expansion, freedom, creation, beauty, truth, goodness, grace, limitlessness, et cetera.”

“...resolving trauma is the main unfinished business of humanity, and yours as well. The only way to resolve trauma, heal brokenness, and undo fragmentation is through unitive experience.”

And then he walks into my wheelhouse and talks about the power of ‘finding your why’ or what I call discovering your purpose for being on this planet!

“If you don’t have an adequate why for longevity, none of the whats in this book, or anywhere else for that matter, are going to make much difference in your life.”

“When you wake up to the joy of life, the cleaning up of the mess we find ourselves in becomes not a drudgery, but a celebration.”

Here are a few more of my favorite Dr. Dale-isms...

“Just like you train your biceps to bulge, you can train your functional neural networks to strengthen, thereby improving your memory, creativity, language, logic, mood regulation, social skills, and even dance moves.” I agree, 100%. I wrote about my mental fitness practices (feed my brain, rest my brain, exercise my brain, and rewire my brain) for a chapter of my first book, The Belief Road Map.

“your brain is constantly making new neurons, new connections, new neurotransmitters, and a new you.” So true. Deepak Chopra, MD and Rudolph E. Tanzi, PhD agree, "The brain is a process, not a thing; a verb, not a noun.”

“...the brains of creative people often do not reflect this tendency—their right brains remain as healthy as their left.”

And, finally, the one that could have been (maybe should have been) our Happy Living tagline...

“Happiness is a feeling—a direct subjective personal experience of goodness. When you feel happy, you feel good.”

Oh, yes, Dale. Hell YES! I believe that with my entire being. Happiness is a feeling and I'm feeling it!!!

I’ve heard enough from Dale to buy his book, The Goldilocksed Brain: How to tune your brain for happiness (2020). In it, he describes his integral approach to health and happiness through an optimized brain.

Why not add Codes of Longevity and The Goldilocksed Brain to your gift lists this holiday season!!!

Buy your copy of Codes of Longevity today. A lifetime of health and happiness awaits you.

Written by Dr. Melissa Grill Petersen, Dale S. Foster, Ph.D., and 20+ of Today's Leading Health Experts How to Unlock Your Potential to Look, Feel and Live Life Optimized to 120 and Beyond, including a chapter by yours truly!