Practice Makes Perfect

Practice Makes Perfect

In his bestselling book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell wrote that it takes approximately 10,000 hours of practice to become a master in a particular field. Gladwell based this claim on several studies, including one by German psychologists who researched violinists during the 1990s. The study found that, over their lifetimes, elite violinists averaged 6,000 more hours of practice than non-elite ones.…

Read more

7 Memory Articles Not to Forget

7 Memory Articles Not to Forget

If you’re like us, you’re fascinated with memory—how it works, how to improve it, even how to deal with traumatic memories. Rewire Me explores these topics and more in these memorable articles: 1. Music and Memory: Why Some Songs Mean So Much to Us. How songs affect us depends on when we first hear them. 2. 6 Memory-Boosting Strategies That…

Read more

The Lure of Forgetting

The Lure of Forgetting

One of the first things Lynn asked when she settled into my office for help overcoming post-traumatic stress disorder was, “Can’t we just erase the memories that are making me feel this way?” As a trauma survivor myself, I understood Lynn’s plea. I carry quite a few memories that have made my life miserable at times. Instead of seeking to…

Read more

How Gender Reassignment Affects the Mind

How Gender Reassignment Affects the Mind

Rewire Me has run dozens of articles on people’s conscious journeys toward healthier, deeper, more spiritually attuned ways of living. I’ve written about religious experiences that are so powerful they seem to spontaneously rewire the whole person, transforming him or her into not just a better person but a completely new one. Such rebirths, I’ve noted, are often marked with…

Read more

Finding Time for Doing Nothing

Finding Time for Doing Nothing

My husband and I have an infuriating problem when we need to leave the house together. We play a strange, relay-race game with time, but rarely do we find time for doing nothing. He’ll be ready to go, for example, but I’ll still need to find my shoes or brush my teeth. So he gets on his computer. I appear…

Read more

Do Brain Training Games Really Work?

Do Brain Training Games Really Work?

I was hunkered down in a digital workstation at an Arizona longevity clinic, testing a brain training game to figure out do brain training games really work? My mind was in overdrive as my fingers chased elusive flashes of light onscreen. I was playing a shrink’s rethink of the game Fruit Ninja, except that this was a test to determine my…

Read more

6 Memory-Boosting Strategies That Really Work

6 Memory-Boosting Strategies That Really Work

Some people have a knack for memorizing things. Consider the card counters who play blackjack in Las Vegas. They beat the house by keeping track of played cards and calculating the odds of being dealt a winner from what’s left. This is a minor feat compared to achievements in the USA Memory Championship. In 2013, entrants in this annual competition…

Read more

Toward a Science of Wisdom and Compassion

Toward a Science of Wisdom and Compassion

I recently attended Zen Brain: Consciousness, Complex Systems, and Transformation, an intensive three-day retreat with a panel of brilliant experts that included scientists, philosophers, and Buddhist thinkers. The conference was held at Upaya Zen Center, nestled in a quiet valley surrounded by mountains in the heart of Santa Fe. Upaya, founded on a vision of Buddhism, is based on the…

Read more



Social

Subscribe to Our Newsletter