By Stefania Aulicino
I love science. Many people know me as an entrepreneur. Not too many people know that I was president of the biology club in high school in Westchester NY. I still retain a fascination with the Discovery Channel: how exciting that we can actually SEE what is going on inside the body.
My delight is learning about how we can understand what makes our incredible human engine work!
Just discovered a book called The Talent Code. Greatness isn’t born. It’s grown. Here’s how.
Daniel Coyle does a remarkable job of story telling backed up by exhaustive interviews with the cutting edge neurologists and scientists which he puts into English!
I’m only on page 69, but I wanted to tell you about this! Something we entrepreneurs can take to heart.
It’s about how people become geniuses.
One story explains about how Brazil is a hot bed for nationally renowned soccer players.
Coyle explains that a soccer coach Simon Clifford wanted to know why so many supper national skills were found in Brazilian soccer players.
Here is what he discovered.
Many Brazilians are too poor to play on the large green fields and practice (like so many soccer kids in America). But driven by passion and love for the game, they play a different version of the game.
“It resembles soccer, if soccer was played inside a phone booth and dosed with amphetamines. The ball was half the size but weighed twice as much; it hardly bounced at all. The players are trained, not on a vast expanse of grass field, but on basketball court sized patches of concrete, wooden floors and dirt. Each side, instead of having 11 players, has 5 or 6. In its rhythm and blinding speed, the game resembled basketball or hockey more than soccer; it consisted of an intricate series of quick, controlled passes and non-stop end-to- end action.
This game is called futebol de salao, Portuguese for “soccer in the room”
Why is this important?
Kids that practice like this, spending hours and hours, are incubating the genius level skills reflected in such players as Pele. Brazilians dominate this sport, winning 35 of 38 international competitions.
How?
Turns out practice makes not perfect, but practice grows myelin.
Myelin is how you GROW talent.
Here is my CliffsNotes version (read the book for details: The Talent Code; Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How. Daniel Coyle, 2009)
All actions are really the result of electronic impulses sent along chains of nerve fibers.
For years, scientist focused on the synapses.
Input Paths_____________________________________Output Paths
(sensory info, decisions) –> | processing | –> (muscle movements)
Now, we know that it’s the “highway” between the input and the output that is “wrapped with myelin”.
Myelin wrapping speeds up or slows down the process, based on repeated practice to perfect the exact response required. Myelin is applied by nature over time—not all at once. It is wrapped/applied in direct proportion to practice. This supports the adage that if you practice something for 10,000 hours or about 10 years, you will be an expert.
Hard work is necessary to become a genius, but the good news is YOU CAN DO IT if you will practice.
That is why passion is required. (or you won’t keep practicing)
That’s why you must never give up.
You are in the process of growing yourself into the genius you want to be!
This is not relevant for just sports figures, but concert pianists, scientists and business builders.
Hope you found this as exciting as I did – and confidence building, that if something is taking you a long time, it’s OK. You are simply perfecting yourself!
And that is exactly what we entrepreneurs, do for love. And Myelin supports us.
Please share what you think. What non-traditional business disciplines might have inspired or nurtured your business success? I’d love to share your story.
Stefania Aulicino, president of CapitalLinkUSA ensures business owns get cash to keep control of a bigger, more profitable company, faster, safer than they ever thought possible- in any economy. Become a magnet for non equity and equity sources to fuel your growth. Explore our tools, solutions and consulting options tailored for different growth stages and different budgets: www.CashAndControl.com
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