Your Purpose in Life – (2)
This week, we were going to discuss how people can find their purpose in life, but had to change course to address the demands of readers. One unwritten rule in writing is that you don’t take your readers for granted.
Last week, we made the point that, “individuals are wired for specific purposes – given different talents or gifts. And maximum efficiency and satisfaction in life is achieved when an individual operates in his or her gift zone. Also the gifts become useful when they are deployed in the areas most suited.
Some readers wanted some more examples of great men and women who failed in some areas of life only to excel beyond measure when they hit their gift zones. Here we go:
Steve Jobs: billionaire co-founder of Apple Computers and Pixar Animation; Disney’s largest shareholder. Dropped out of Reed College after six months and went to India before returning to Silicon Valley. As he said, “I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and how college was going to help me figure it out.”
T. D. Jakes: pastor, bestselling novelist. Dropped out of high school.
Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson III: rapper, entrepreneur, producer, actor, book author, amateur boxer. Dropped out of high school in the 10th grade, began dealing drugs at the age of 12, began rapping professionally at the age of 21.
Amanda Hocking: multimillionaire self-publisher, novelist, blogger. A few months of college.
I went to college, but I only went to my writing class, so I dropped out after a semester. A few years later, I went to college again, but I only went to my English class, so I dropped out after a semester.
Thomas Edison: multimillionaire inventor of the phonograph, light bulb, and many other inventions. He quit formal schooling after his teacher called him addled. Was home-schooled by his mother. Joined the railroad at the age of 12.
George Foreman: heavyweight champion boxer, author, designer of the George Foreman Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine. Quit school in the ninth grade, but did get his GED. Never attended college.
Benjamin Franklin: inventor, scientist, inventor, diplomat, author, printer, publisher, politician, patriot, signer of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Dropped out of Boston Latin. Home schooled with less than two years of formal education.
And this is for readers who want details of the study on Neymar’s brain, and Suarez’s too. Well, the studies lend credence to the fact that individuals are gifted differently and one is at their best operating in their gift zone. But course, in the same gift zone some individuals are more bountifully gifted than others. Prof Wole Soyinka and Ngozi Chimamanda Adichie are two of Nigeria’s many writers. But both are so gifted that they write almost effortlessly, and anything they write now is gold. The late King of Pop, Michael Jackson had six different special gifts in music.
But all that take nothing from the point that people are their best operating in their gift zones.
Neymar
The study shows that at his dribbling best, Neymar’s brain activity is less than 10 percent the level of amateur players, suggesting he plays as if on auto-pilot. Neymar is Barcelona and Brazilian football superstar.
Results of brain scans conducted on Neymar in February this year by some Japanese neurologists indicated minimal cerebral function when he rotated his ankle and point to the Barcelona striker’s wizardry being uncannily natural.
“From MRI images we discovered Neymar’s brain activity to be less than 10 percent of an amateur player,” researcher Eiichi Naito said.
“It is possible genetics is a factor, aided by the type of training he does.”
The findings were published in the Swiss journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience following a series of motor skills tests carried out on the 22-year-old Neymar and several other athletes in Barcelona in February this year.
Three Spanish second-division footballers and two top-level swimmers were also subjected to the same tests, added Naito of Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology.
Naito concluded that the test results “provide valuable evidence that the football brain of Neymar recruits very limited neural resources in the motor-cortical foot regions during foot movements”.
Asked whether Neymar’s Barcelona team-mate Lionel Messi or Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo might display similar test results, Naito said: “It is fair to assume they would show similar levels given their footwork and technique.”
Same goes for Luis Suarez.
Suarez
A clear genius, he is described by many football lovers as the best attacker in the last football season. According to Dr. Ian Robertson, Suarez relies on parts of the brain which function far too fast to be consciously monitored. This includes regions called the cerebellum and striatum, where highly complex mental operations can be partially automated and “run off” at high speed. He says, “to let these automatic systems – think of them as very smart internal robots if you like – do their work, you need to “switch off,” or at least tone down, potentially interfering activity from the ponderously slow parts of the brain involved in conscious thinking and decision-making. To unleash his genius, in other words, Suarez has to enter a mental zone of relative mindlessness.”
