People who are successful in life have one thing in common: They all seem to be doing something different and special with their neurocircuitry to maximize their potential and achieve their goals. We believe that’s what gives these people a Winner’s Brain.

The average brain does a pretty good job of getting by day to day. After all, it has over one hundred billion brain cells serviced by a superhighway of blood vessels to help you think your thoughts, move your body, and experience the world around you, acting with a combination of speed and efficiency that even the most advanced computers can’t rival. But presumably you are reading this book because of a desire to move beyond just getting by. You want to excel in life and achieve the goals that matter to you most.

Maybe you’re considering a career change or launching a new business, yet haven’t had the wherewithal to take the leap. Maybe you feel stuck at work and are unclear how to get ahead. Perhaps you’ve lost your job and are searching for a better situation. Wherever you are in life, whatever your goals, you want to expand your limits and open up your possibilities.

Contrary to popular belief, high personal achievement has very little to do with your IQ, your life circumstances, your financial resources, knowing the right people, or even luck. Take, for example, the great French sculptor Auguste Rodin, who came from a poor family and was rejected from art school three times. Despite butting up against constant rejection, he bounced back time and again, using each failure and disappointment as an opportunity to fuel his talents and his passions. As you shall see once you dive into the upcoming chapters, Resilience and Motivation are two of the critical abilities for which Winner’s Brains are wired.

The Partnership of Brain and Behavior

Our combined expertise as a cognitive behavioral psychologist (Jeff ) and a cognitive neuroscientist (Mark) places us in a unique position to explain how the cognitive mechanisms of the human brain are associated with success. We have seen from our respective work how the strategies shared in this book can influence thoughts and behavior and help individuals push past unpleasant life circumstances, allowing them to blossom and grow. Seeing people routinely rise above challenges— sometimes incredibly harsh ones—and consistently flourish is one of the primary reasons Jeff became so interested in the science of success. And we’ve also seen evidence that these same strategies can literally reshape the brain. Brains that perform successfully really do “light up” differently and work more efficiently, and Mark has investigated just how the structure and function of brains are altered as a result of how their owners use them.

Winner’s Brains actually operate differently than the average brain. We know this, in part, because of technological advances that let us see individual differences in how neural areas light up on scans of brains as they spring into action. By measuring physiological changes related to neural activity, such as increases in blood flow within the brain, techniques such as f MRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) can help us see which areas of the brain are relatively more active and participating as a corresponding thought, emotion, or behavior is playing out. (If, for example, someone sneaks up behind you and yells “Boo!” that instant jolt of fear that surges through your body is associated with increased activity within the amygdala, an almond-shaped structure in the medial temporal lobe—the structure that’s most closely associated with identifying threats and evaluating the possibility of harm.) We’ve found the following:

A Winner’s Brain is very good at tuning out distractions and choosing the best way to focus on a task (there are different types of focus the brain is capable of) in order to get the best outcome. A study led by Daniel Weissman at the University of Michigan showed that participants were able to stop and reorient their brain’s processing power to help them perform better despite interruptions. We call the deliberate form of this strategy focus reinvestment. With practice, this type of skill is something you can develop for yourself to reduce your own attention-related errors. Even if previous tries to change jobs, find a mate, or attain any other objective have failed in the past, an extra dose of focus may be just what you need to get you over the hump.

Winner’s Brains seem to maintain a bottomless effort supply. A youngster who is forced to practice his piano lessons one hour every day, even if he doesn’t want to and has no interest in playing, is unlikely to become an accomplished pianist. But a child who loves music, is interested in playing, and understands the potential of success will prioritize and complete her practice sessions—even at the end of her most tiring days. She is more likely to become a proficient, successful player because of her ability to sustain the effort.

Support for this idea comes from studies like one by Debra Gusnard and colleagues at Washington University School of Medicine, who measured people’s brain activity while they viewed a random series of images that were either emotionally stimulating or dull. These people also filled out self-assessments regarding their day-to-day level of persistence in completing tasks. Subjects with high persistence scores showed, during periods of the experiment containing mostly dull images, increased activity in brain regions known to contribute to motivational drive. Subjects with low persistence scores showed decreased activity in these regions. Winner’s Brains fire up Motivation to push through boredom, while brains of less tenacious individuals seem to run out of steam.

Winner’s Brains adapt in exceptional ways over time, harnessing a process known as neuroplasticity. Every time you think a thought, feel an emotion, or execute a behavior, there is always some sort of corresponding change within your brain. In some instances we can detect these alterations in the brain’s physical landscape. Later in this book, you’ll read about London Black Cab drivers who have regions of the hippocampus— an area of the brain involved in memory and spatial navigation— that are considerably larger than that of the average person. Research by Eleanor Maguire and colleagues at University College London suggests that these cab drivers likely started out with fairly ordinary brains. But when motivated to commit routes to memory, they quite literally built a better brain, neuron by neuron. This is something virtually anyone should be able to do—including you—if you quite literally put your mind to it.

Many people view the brain as a mysterious, abstract structure— almost like a set of master controls that run on autopilot behind a locked door to which one has no real access. This simply isn’t the case. You have the ability to unlock the door and consciously, deliberately, and successfully control much of your brain’s switchboard in order to better position yourself to achieve your goals and dreams. The brain is active and subject to change no matter what you do—this is one of the key discoveries of modern neuroscience. What sets the owner of a Winner’s Brain apart is the desire and the know-how to take charge of the process.

Our definition of Winners encompasses the usual conception: people who meet with extraordinary success in the particular aspects of life they value the most. Winners achieve what they set out to accomplish, whether they wish to master a golf swing, raise a confident child, or climb the corporate ladder. But we would add more: The kind of Winners we are talking about revel in the journey toward their goals almost as much as the destination itself, and they strive for the type of success that helps make the world a better place. And whether they realize it or not, virtually all Winners rely on the specific brain strategies we lay out in this book to come out on top.

Throughout this book, dozens of our Winners tell their stories, which illuminate the science and theories. They come from all walks of life: artists and inventors, musicians and business people, a high-altitude window washer, an Olympic champion. Many are well known, like blues great B. B. King, Olympic gold medalist Kerri Strug, actress Laura Linney, and motivational speaker Trisha Meili, the Central Park jogger. They all meet the definition of success in their own unique way. Our interviews reveal surprising, often touching, and enlightening information aimed at showing how anyone can change their thinking to improve their life.

To be clear, not everyone with a Winner’s Brain walks around with a gold medal, an Oscar, or a million-dollar paycheck. Some of the people you’ll meet consider their greatest accomplishment being a college graduate, a superb cab driver, or a working artist. They are every bit as amazing as the celebrities you will meet in this book because they have accomplished the things in life that are most important to them personally, often in the face of extreme adversity.