The Gift in You: Discovering New Life Through Gifts Hidden in Your Mind (8 page)

I tell you, this child's grades in all subjects skyrocketed. He started getting 70s and 80s. His Linguistic intelligence wasn't very high, but by developing his dominant pillar, he used his gift to pull all the other lagging pillars up. When he was able to fully learn and express himself through his dominant pillar of thinking, all the other areas of thinking just naturally lifted. He may never be a Logical/Mathematical Einstein, but who cares? He's a Musical Einstein and a happy one at that.

You don't have to be like Einstein to be intelligent; you just need to find your gift so you can reach your full potential.

CHAPTER NINE:
{THE STRUCTURE OF YOUR GIFT}

How our gifting works in brain language is best explained with the understanding that your brain is made up of approximately 100 billion neurons that have the potential to connect 100 trillion times. These highly interconnected neurons are clustered into the Seven Pillars or columns of thinking that stretch from left to right across the brain.

This is the scientific foundation to the unlimited potential of your brain we explored in Part One. With about 100 billion neurons that have the potential to connect about 100 trillion times, your brain has an incredible capacity for thoughts and intelligence (see diagram on page 46).

The borders of these pillars of thinking are not fixed but free-flowing, allowing them to flow into each other, helping each other, especially when the brain has been damaged.

I believe that individuality and giftedness arise out of the different arrangements of the pillars of thinking. This difference is reflected in how the nerve cells fire in the brain.

For example, as the neurons fire in your temporal lobe, where language is processed, and if the arrangement of your pillars indicates that Linguistics is the strongest part of your thought structure, then the firing neurons will be amplified in your temporal lobe.

This amplification will be reflected in a higher level of skill, such as being very eloquent and good with words. As all that's happening, the left and right sides of your brain are being drawn together by the central part of your brain called the corpus
callosum
and its surrounding hub of thousands of electrical chemical circuits. This is an incredibly "brain healthy" process which develops your intelligence as a bonus.

Using your gift correctly is tremendously rewarding. There are many times in your life so far that you have unconsciously used your gift. Those are the moments when you feel, "Wow! I'm actually quite clever. I understood that. I'm not so bad after all." You've all had those moments, and you should have them. Hopefully, you'll have lots more of them now that you're starting to become more aware of this process.

When you suddenly feel so good that you've understood something, it's evidence for you that your gifting has come into operation and you've used your brain in the way it should be used. Grab that moment, grab that feeling, store it, frame it, put it on ice and make sure that you become consciously aware of that feeling. Use this to help guide you into using your gift as much as you can and recognizing when your gift is blocked.

Your gift - that special piece of eternity, which is your unique way of thinking - operates a bit like dominos. There are seven dominoes representing the Seven Pillars of thinking. As in dominos - you push one, then the next one in line falls, and the next and the next and so on, in that particular order. Your order does not change with experience and maturity, but the interaction between the Seven Pillars of thinking that make up your gifting just gets better with the development of wisdom. So, you stay you, but you improve and become more intelligent. God formed you in a certain way, but it's up to you to use what He has given you; there is no limit to your intelligence, only the limit you set for yourself.

You literally have a pattern of thinking that works in a certain sequential way. Your thought pattern is unique to you like a fingerprint, and you will process and build memory in the distinct way suited to you. As you think, you activate your pattern or the order in which you process information. This is a cycle of thought - we go through a loop of thought approximately 30,000 to 60,000 times a day, which is about 2,000 to 4,000 thought cycles per hour (assuming you sleep around seven to nine hours a day) and about 30-60 thought cycles per minute, averaging out to a thought every 1-2 seconds.

And this is only conscious awareness; underneath this is the
Metacognitive
nonconscious
level where approximately 400 billion bits of information per second are going on, making the above conscious process happen. There are all these incredible workings of the mind, when we are only a touch of eternity!
⁹

You may cycle through your pillars (gift) in this order:

1. Intrapersonal
   

1. Interpersonal
   

1. Linguistic
   

1. Visual/Spatial
   

1. Kinesthetic
   

1. Musical
   

1. Logical/Mathematical
   

This would involve a flow of electrical and chemical activity through the different parts of the brain in this order (see diagram on page 46). This would be a cycle of thought.

Now, if we just changed 1 and 2, as in the example below:

1. Interpersonal
   

1. Intrapersonal
   

1. Linguistic
   

1. Visual/Spatial
   

1. Kinesthetic
   

1. Musical
   

1. Logical/Mathematical
   

This would produce a completely different type of thought pattern, a completely different perception of the world, because this is a completely different gift and a completely different way of thinking. An infinite number of thinking variations could be worked out, each giving rise to another thinking pattern or gift.

Your gift has purpose. Your gift is intentional.

CHAPTER TEN:
{THE GIFT PROFILE}

"You are uniquely, fearfully and wonderfully made"
(see Psalm 139:14).

The Gift Profile is not a diagnostic test and needs to be used in conjunction with formal testing if problems are identified. This Gift Profile uncovers the structure of your gift, which will help you maximize your gift, discover ways you can improve learning for lasting change, and help you better understand how to relate to others.

When we uncover our gifts, we uncover our purpose - the reason for our intentional design. We also uncover who we are, our "true you." We find that something that no one else can do, and we do it. And the bonus in using our gift is that the brain is wired to be more efficient and our intelligence improves as a result!

This Gift Profile is a neuropsychological questionnaire showing us the structure of how we think. When we find out how we think we can capitalize on this by working with and not against our natural brain-compatible thinking style. This means we can take personal responsibility for developing our gifts, which are housed within our thinking. When we think, we think according to our gifts; we create useful knowledge and develop potential. The more we do this the more the brain grows: the branches, called dendrites, on the brain's neurons have little bumps on them like leaves that grow, change shape and shrink as we experience and think about the world. Research shows that self-regulating your thinking and consequent learning are the way we build our gifts and, consequently, intelligence and wisdom. And we certainly need lots of wisdom to navigate life.
¹⁰

So, our gifts, the way we uniquely think, are not a static entity determined by our genetics and the first few years of our lives but dynamic and continuously growing as we use them, which means our intelligence is dynamic and in our hands.

As we think to understand, we are using our gifts, and this increases the branches and the networking capacity in the brain. These connections in the interlaced neural networks (thought clusters) increase the efficiency of the brain. The great news is that the more we use our gifts, the more connections we make and the more efficient our brains become. The brain continues to change and grow into old age, making it an extremely unique organ both among biological and mechanical structures because it does not wear out!

The message of hope in all this is that, when we continually use our gifts, we can enhance and preserve the brain's powers as we move through life.

In the Gift Profile my aim is to help you find that hope, to show you that you are gifted. When you use your gift, magnificent things happen in your brain and the genius hidden in you will come out. It bears repeat-
ing
that the Gift Profile is just touching the surface of the magnificence of you.

Once you have filled in and scored the profile (in the upcoming sections) you will find your order of how you uniquely think things through to build thought into the neural networks of the mind. The highest two pillars of thought will obviously stand out as the kick start or dominant thinking loops or cycles. They work hand-in-hand with the other five, which are equally as important.

You are a combination of all seven interacting - not just the top one. So you would not say "I am an Interpersonal thinker;" rather you would say "I start processing with Interpersonal, and then I use Intrapersonal to . . . "

Before you do your own Gift Profile, let's have a look at how these intelligences combine to form a fun example of a Gift Profile.

Einstein died in 1955, but there is a lot written about him, some of which we can use to try to create his profile. We spoke earlier in Part One about the research done on Einstein's brain and how researchers studying his brain found larger areas and more connections showing lots of deep thinking in specific ways and lots of integration of information.

Let's consider a few of these facts about Einstein, such as:
¹¹

• The areas found to have these changes in Einstein’s brain dealt with Visual/Spatial cognition, mathematical thought and movement imagery type of thinking.
  

• He was extremely introspective, judging by the fact that he went on to become a great theoretical physicist at 37.
  

• In 1905 he wrote five ground-breaking papers that the Encyclopedia Britannica indicated had forever changed man’s view of the universe.
  

• He was a great internationalist speaking out eloquently on many topics.
  

• His sayings and deep thoughts are quoted to this day.
  

• He did not speak until he was three, probably because early language development was usurped by his amazing math and Visual/Spatial capacities.
  

• He received excellent results in math and sciences.
  

• He received less than excellent results in technical subjects, including drawing and geography – in fact, he failed French.
  

• He taught himself Euclidian geometry and calculus between the ages of eleven and sixteen.
  

• He played the violin quite well.
  

We have a picture of a man who had a unique pattern of thinking that he applied, showing multifaceted complexity, creativity and wisdom. He "thought out" the genius inside of himself.

From Einstein's own insight into his thinking, his discoveries were "thought experiments" performed in his imagination. I believe it's this unique thought experience, Einstein's gift, which he used and developed through his life, that resulted in the changes researchers see in his brain and not the other way around. When asked how he achieved what he did in 1905, he said, "I don't know, but I looked up to the heavens and God showed me." How amazing.

Our thoughts are not His thoughts (Isaiah 55:9), but God has graced us with a bit of Him in the unique way we think.

Einstein once said that knowledge is limited but imagination is not. It is through the powers of imagination that we expand our knowledge.

Einstein's experiences highlight the inherent limitations of existing paradigms about thinking and learning. They underscore the importance of seeing people as individuals in educational environments and not making judgments about their intelligence and potential based on how well - or how badly - they are able to do a few exercises in a specific time. It also emphasizes how little you can tell about students from just observing their behavior in the classroom.

It is a bit like when Rabbit went to school. He was so excited that he signed up for all the classes, including swimming lessons. The term started off well and Rabbit was full of passion and enthusiasm. As the term progressed, his grades in hopping, running and jumping were great. However, swimming was a problem, which reflected negatively in his grades. At the end of the term, his teacher commended him on his progress in hopping, running and jumping but was disappointed in his swimming results. She then commented that next term, Rabbit would have to stop running, hopping and jumping lessons and just concentrate on swimming. Well, we can all guess what happened to Rabbit: he drowned.

This is a powerful and poignant analogy of what is happening out there in the storm-tossed sea of education, therapy and life with teachers, therapists, parents and friends so set on improving our weaknesses that they don't support our strengths.

Yet the brain is designed in such a way that its strengths support its weaknesses. In fact, the "weaknesses" should not be seen in a negative light at all. They are simply complementary opposites to strengths, giving people their uniqueness. Now isn't that a much more positive and pleasant way of looking at the whole person?

Yes, it's true. You are truly amazing, and you are about to find out just how marvelously clever you are. To do that, you need to answer some important questions, which include:

• What do you like doing best?
  

• What kind of activities appeal to you?
  

• What are you good at?
  

Just as importantly, you need to know what type of person you really are - how your brain is wired. These questions need answers if you are really going to change the way you do things, live in your gift and make a difference in your life and the world.

Now that you know something about the seven different types of thinking - your gift that exists in your brain - it is time to work out your Gift Profile. After that, you can consider the implications of this on your life and, in particular, the way you think and learn.