Your Brain: The Best Investment You Can Make

As you approach 2016, ask yourself whether or not you are committed to personal excellence as a way of life.  If the answer is no, the follow up is why not?

If the answer is yes, there are an infinity of ways to move forward.  I believe the most impacting is to improve the quality of one’s mind. I have made this a personal life mission and am grateful to have done so.  Improving one’s mind does not have to come from text books, and indeed can come with great power from other sources.  Nothing teaches better than life. 

I have learned so much since the blog process began. Thanks to Conner Kempe, aka Stephen Seller aka Tony Montana on his instagrams and for help in the overall process.

The post for New Year Eve is a reposting of an earlier post concerning Brain Investment.  I wish you well in 2016 and I promise you that if you make and complete a commitment to personal excellence 2016 will be your best year ever.

Your Brain: The Best Investment You Can Make

This post will discuss some general thoughts on:

1.    Teaching, Writing, and Posting;

2.    Motivation;

3.    Higher Level Motivation and the Brain;

4.    Why I Encourage Learning the Uniform Commercial Code

         Introduction

I believe that the best investment anyone can make is in her or his brain.  Better brains process information at higher levels. Better brains see more variables which impact decisions. The bottom line is that better brains make better decisions, ultimately raising an individual’s plane of existence.  Those renewable rewards clearly justify a commitment to mental development.  Law school is certainly a great opportunity to make this happen, but there are infinite ways to acquire intellectually challenging material and challenging life situations from which growth can occur. 

1.    Teaching, Writing, and Posting

When I began this blog less than a month ago, it was a positive experience but somewhat detached because there was no audience to whom I could relate and therefore interact. The only responsibility I felt was to put out short pieces of quality information about the Uniform Commercial Code.  At this point however, there are real people involved who have read the blog, and some of whom have made comments in the groups to which the links were posted. That dramatically changes the dynamic for me. 

              The impact of having people read and comment on the posts crystallizes the teaching aspects of this process and everything that goes with that role.  This involves at the very least, two things:  first, demonstrating why the area you are teaching is important and has relevance; second, to motivate students to learn it. 

As to the former, one motivating element has already been stated in an earlier post: there are tremendous job opportunities for someone who has a thorough knowledge of the Uniform Commercial Code.  Additionally, from an entrepreneurial stand point, a knowledgeable Code person could cultivate relationships with many small businesses, particularly start ups.  At last count, there was a reported 29.4 million small businesses in America, many of them functioning without the benefit of legal counsel.  There are no guarantees, but a knowledgeable UCC person could speak at Rotary Clubs and business organizations and with a few powerful pieces of ‘look what could happen to you’ information, that person could start to generate business which would benefit the business and the lawyer.  So, the first piece, on a very practical level, is satisfactorily in place.  Job opportunities and tremendous new client potential establish importance and relevance to someone focusing on a career path.

                                             2. Higher Level Motivation

The second piece—higher level motivation—is an integral part of my approach to teaching and life in general.  In addition to the tangible rewards which can be achieved by mastering content, a still higher level motivation will result if higher level rewards are available.  By way of illustration, I am highly motivated in the teaching setting, on a personal level as well as a professional level—because I know that if I put in the right amount of effort, I will emerge from the classroom experience smarter and better than when I went in. This is always true.  I want students to understand that the same is true for them, and hence I want those of you who are sharing your valuable time with me to understand that as well. 

I explain my basic system to the students so that they can understand the process.  I approach the brain as a muscle and create teaching strategies based upon the principles of aerobic, interval and resistance training.  It works quite well. If you would like to see some of the components of that system, they are available at www.pathwaystoexcellence.us.  A ‘mini’ version of that content can be accessed at www.2ptpe.com.

     I want students to understand that if they buy in to the system and content I am presenting, the same level of improvement will happen for them.  Components of that system will be integrated into this blog.

To bring this point home, I do my best to communicate what mastering a large block of the Uniform Commercial Code will do for their overall intellect as well as preparing them for the opportunities noted.  It’s simple: mastery of a block of intense, compact information such as that contained in the UCC, significantly increases the power of your brain.  Think of it as adding a knowledge application to your phone.  All of a sudden it can do things it could not previously do.  That is a wonderful payback for putting in the work. 

3. Higher Level Motivation and the Brain

There is another element to this, and that is demonstrating, beyond any doubt, that everyone in the class has the ability to master the topic. In this regard, I am passionate and firm in my belief that everyone with moderate intelligence can elevate his or her mind infinitely and become masters of major content in the process. For example, I am 100% certain that everyone reading this could become an expert in the UCC, or one of a dozen areas with the right effort focused on the right content.  There are certainly enough open circuits in the brain to accommodate anything you might want to learn.

  From a physiological standpoint, we all have same basic brain.  That brain has been estimated to contain 100,000,000,000 neurons. Neurons process and transmit information. Your brain structurally is no different than Einstein’s.  His may have been activated at a higher level, but he had no more circuits available than you or I do. The point of this is that there is infinite room to expand, so the notion that anyone is limited in any mental way from accomplishing complete mastery of the UCC or any subject is false.  The only question is whether or not an individual has the motivation and passion  to make that happen.

                       4. Why I Encourage Learning the Uniform Commercial Code

There are many reasons why I encourage people to learn the Uniform Commercial Code.  The first is quite simple—that is an area I truly enjoy and the area in which I have taught for over twenty years. One of the primary reasons I encourage mastering the subject matter is the relative freedom that accompanies having a valuable level of expertise in an area where there are few experts.

That stated, it certainly does not need to be the UCC for that to happen.  It could be the Tax Code, issues relating to cyber currency, intergalactic torts, or any area generally not understood by the majority, and who further, typically want nothing to do with the area.  That is where you can find a spot with the autonomy to have a much better existence.  This is important to me because autonomy through knowledge increases the likelihood of preserving positive core values intact. I think it is a good thing when positive core values stay intact, and therefore, I encourage this level of mastery. I have shared this sentiment at the beginning of every law school class I have ever taught. 

Another reason I encourage learning the Uniform Commercial Code is the fact that it is a pervasive force throughout the United States and we interact with it all day every day. There are literally billions of commercial transactions occurring in the United States every working day, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions at this instant.  It is very nice to have a solid basic understanding of how the entities involved in these transactions are impacted by the law governing them, and what one’s rights are as a consumer.

 I hope this post has been of some value.  The next post will return to The Uniform Commercial Code.  Periodically, I will integrate some of the brain muscle strategies with explanations in the posts.