How a Brain Injury Made Me Smarter…And How You Can Get Smarter Without One

Are you smart? Of course you are! You are reading other people’s articles because you’re curious and you are hungry for knowledge.

What Makes You Smart?

I used to believe the best measures of my intelligence were external: grades on a report card, scores on tests, promotions at work, how much money I was being paid.

Then, on the cusp of my 50th birthday, I sustained a brain injury. I lost my ability to read and write. I developed aphasia, which means I may know the word I want to use in my head, but I can’t get it out of my mouth. Having worked all of my career as a technical writer and corporate communicator, this was a huge blow to my ego and to my checking account when I could no longer do my job. Now, almost a decade after my accident, I still struggle reading, visual distortion, balance, and occasional aphasia, but I’ve adapted and I have no desire to go back to “normal.”

What is normal anyway? Life is full of changes. We either adapt or we don’t. If we adapt, our new normal becomes normal, until the next change hits us and we are required to create another new normal.

Neuroplasticity is Cool

Photo by Josh Riemer on Unsplash

Adapting and reinventing ourselves throughout our lives keep our brains healthy by nurturing neuroplasticity, or the brain’s ability to rewire itself and create new connections.

Like working out our body’s muscles, practicing rewiring our brains can be hard and uncomfortable at first. Most new things are awkward when we are first learning them. And that’s okay. In fact, it’s wonderful because it means we are learning.

In my first TEDx talk, How a Brain Injury Made Me Smarter, I challenged my very conventional notions (and maybe yours!) about what makes people smart. There is a plethora of things that make you smart.

What Made Me Smarter After a Brain Injury

Before my brain injury, I defined intelligence in a way that worked for me…until it didn’t. After the brain injury and lots of introspection, I narrowed down my list of what made me smart to these three things:

1. Creative adaptation — your ability to create new ways of doing things, go with the flow, and, to quote a buzzword made popular in 2020, pivot.
2. Curiosity — your love of asking questions to get deeper understanding. Think of the toddler who asks, “Why, why, why…?”
3. Lifelong learning — your desire to actively pursue new knowledge until the day you die.

How You Can Get “Smarter”

No matter what your definition of smart is — it’s different for everyone — you can get smarter when you understand a little bit about how the brain works.

Think of your current thinking and doing patterns like well worn roads. If it’s a dirt road, it may have deep ruts. Ruts can be hard to get out of because they are comfortable. Key to creating a more nimble brain is a willingness to be uncomfortable.

Sounds like hard work, right? Getting out of ruts can be hard. All that discomfort and serious learning sounds tedious…until you reframe it.

Reframing it can be damn fun.

For the last six years of my life, I have been studying how laughter, humor, and play impact both brain health and learning. As an educator, I know that if it’s not enjoyable, people will not do it. Neuroplasticity can be fun.

You can incorporate neuroplasticity exercises into your daily life, with your kids, and at work.

Here’s One of My Favorite Fun Ways to Build Neuroplasticity

Photo by Klara Kulikova on Unsplash

A few years ago, I was giving a keynote speech in Arizona. It was right before lunch, which is one of the worst times to be on stage because people are hungry and often restless. I challenged the audience to eat their upcoming lunch using their non-dominant hand. For the right-handed people, that meant holding the fork in their left hand, and vice versa. I created a hashtag and asked people to post selfies and comment on the experience. Mostly, I encouraged them to have fun. You don’t feel awkward if everyone in the room is feeling awkward!

I Challenge You to do Two Things After You Read this Article

1. Find three things that you believe make you smart. Write them down. Focus on them. Build them. Find a coach, teacher or mentor to help you. Or build your own program by reading books and asking quesitons.
2. Try the non-dominant hand eating exercise for a week. Have fun with it. Get your family and friends to do it. Talk about how it feels. Learn to laugh at yourself and get comfortable with discomfort.

Let me know how it goes. I love hearing about people’s experiences in building better brains, especially when they are having fun doing it.

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Originally posted on Medium. I write about writing, brain injury, small business, and therapeutic humor. For more brain tips sign up for my mailing list.