PREFACE

Peace Is Just a Thought Away

In 2008 I received an invitation to give a TED talk. At that point in time, there were only six TED talks online and I had no idea what TED was. (It turned out to stand for Technology, Entertainment, and Design.) The TED talk “My Stroke of Insight” that I gave in Monterey, California, was the first to ever go viral on the Internet. As a result TED and I became globally famous simultaneously.

In that talk I shared with the audience my story of surviving a massive cerebral hemorrhage in which the left hemisphere of my brain shut down and the right hemisphere became dominant. I described how I, through the eyes of a neuroscientist, watched with fascination as my circuits and faculties went off-line. I took the audience on a journey into the deterioration of my own left brain, whereby I shifted into a state of peaceful euphoria and oneness with the universe, unlike anything I had ever known before.

Within three months of delivering that talk, I was chosen as one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World for 2008. I became the premiere guest on Oprah’s Soul Series web-cast, and my memoir, My Strokeof Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey, was published by Penguin Books. It spent 63 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Today, over 12 years later, it remains the number one book in the Amazon marketplace on the subject of stroke, and in the top ten in other subjects including Anatomy Science, Medical Professional Biographies, and Nervous System Diseases.

That 18-minute presentation instantly changed my world, and many other lives were permanently shifted too. I still have TEDsters come up to me to

share what row they were sitting in on that fateful afternoon, and over 25 million views later, that talk remains one of the most popular TED talks of all time. I have received hundreds of thousands of emails over the years from people asking how they, too, can access that peaceful euphoria I described.

Unquestionably, in many ways that TED talk was an amazing success. But in my heart the talk failed to accomplish one thing I had hoped it would do. I wanted us, as human beings, to recognize that we are connected as part of a whole, and I wished for us to treat one another with a higher degree of respect and kindness. Instead, our civility toward one another has clearly decayed over the past decade and more.

Perhaps this is not so surprising, given that we live in a world where our politics, relationships, and life in general are spiraling into an uncomfortable state of chaos. Life is tough with its highs and lows, and none of us came into this world with a manual for how to get it all right. But what I have learned is that we do have the power to pause, sidestep our habituated patterns, and make better choices. We have the power to choose moment by moment who and how we want to be in the world.

That ability, like every ability we have, is dependent on the cells in our brain that perform that function. Our brain is a magnificent tool that is the home of our thoughts, emotions, experiences, and behaviors. When we understand at a cellular level what is going on in the relationship between our thoughts and our emotions, we no longer have to be bound by our emotional reactivity. Instead, we can become emboldened to live our best lives and be our best selves. We have much more power over what is going on inside of our heads than we have ever been taught.

Much of the material in this book stems from my own experience with watching my brain break down due to trauma, and then insights I gained as the cells in my brain recovered. In the big picture, this book is about our shared journey into the challenges of our lives and what our choices are in how we can live our best life while taking our brain anatomy into account. In these pages you will encounter a new paradigm for understanding how the different parts of our brain work together to manifest our perception of reality, along with a set of tangible tools you can use to not only master your brain’s emotional reactivity, but ultimately live a whole-brain life.

You are the life-force power of the universe and your human brain is amazing far beyond your wildest imagination. This book will clarify for

you exactly what that means and what your options are as you learn to own your power and apply these tools to create the life you want to live. This book is your road map to peace, which really is just a thought away.

CHAPTER 1