The 80/20 Individual is the second of the “80/20 trilogy”. The book shows how to apply the 80/20 principle for personal success at work. The Director magazine commented: “Koch writes with inspirational verve and assurance drawing on personal experience of building businesses … A useful motivational tool for appraising and leveraging talent in the organization, his book yields valuable lessons that any business can apply and will be of particular interest to the would-be entrepreneur.”

Research at the University of Liverpool has found that Shakespearean language excites positive brain activity, adding further drama to the bard’s plays and poetry.

Shakespeare uses a linguistic technique known as functional shift that involves, for example using a noun to serve as a verb. Researchers found that this technique allows the brain to understand what a word means before it understands the function of the word within a sentence. This process causes a sudden peak in brain activity and forces the brain to work backwards in order to fully understand what Shakespeare is trying to say.

In a recent post on invisible neurology, responders still found the whole issue of pain very confusing. There is a lot of subjective control over pain.

Researchers are aware by now that what rates as a 10 (excruciating) on the pain scale for one person may rate as only a 2 or 3 (tolerable) for another. It is also known that even when surgical patients are placed under general anesthesia to block pain entirely, under hypnosis these same patients recall that they experienced excruciating pain. So what part of the brain was conscious and what part unconscious from the anesthesia?

It’s now been ten years since the book was published and I think it is fair to say that it has had a major impact in reinterpreting and popularizing the 80/20 principle. The book has sold over 700,000 copies and been translated into 25 languages. It has sold massively in Japan and Korea and heavily in America and Europe. There has been massive feedback, mainly positive, from readers and reviewers. Throughout the world, a large number of individuals, perhaps hundreds of thousands, have found the principle useful, at work and in their careers, and increasingly in the whole of their lives. The principle helps people achieve much more, with much less effort.

Bank of America announces their initial findings of landmark philanthropy study. In this study some key findings surprised me, such as:

- Rich people feel that giving back to society is more important than leaving a legacy.

Joseph Campbell (perhaps the foremost scholar of mythology) says, “money experienced as life energy is indeed a meditation, and letting it flow out instead of hoarding it is a mode of participation in the lives of others. There’s a beautiful thing that can grow out of a life devoted to money that surprised me.”

- Charitable giving increased over the last 5 years.

Whilst collecting data on subjective well-being is not an exact science, the measures used are very reliable in predicting health and welfare outcomes. It can be argued that whilst these measures are not perfect they are the best we have so far, and these are the measures that politicians are talking of using to measure the relative performance of each country.

The researchers have argued that regular testing as a collaboration between academics in different countries would enable us to track changes in happiness, and what events may cause that. For example what effect would a war, or famine, or national success have on a country’s members’ happiness. .

Neuroscience has discovered that our brain’s very design makes it sociable, inexorably drawn into an intimate brain-to-brain linkup whenever we engage with another person. That neural bridge lets us impact the brain—and so the body—of everyone we interact with, just as they do us.

Even our most routine encounters act as regulators in the brain, priming emotions in us, some desirable, others not. The more strongly connected we are with someone emotionally, the greater the mutual force. The most potent exchanges occur with those people with whom we spend the greatest amount of time day in and day out, year after year—particularly those we care about the most.

The new science of Kinesiology ushered in a powerful diagnostic tool called “muscle testing”. Muscle testing is a simple procedure for testing strong/weak responses, such as that of an outstretched arm, in response to questioning.

Despite the revolutionary nature of these discoveries, most people are willing to rationalize that something other than the “conscious mind” is at play, something whose function it is to oversee the well-being of the individual and manage the body’s myriad complex subsystems.

It could then be extrapolated that this benign functionality - “subconscious mind”, “field” or whatever - would be willing to communicate with the “outside world” when matters regarding the well-being of its charge were concerned.

Biology is entering into a paradigm shift finally giving up the theory that we are all controlled by our genes.

Current science believes that we are not as powerful as our genes. The problem with this belief system is it extends to such a degree that it makes us irresponsible. If happiness is determined by our genes, then the moment we are born, our happiness can only unfold according to the program of the genes. There is nothing we can do about it.

The evidence seems to be that the conscious mind isn’t much use in making hard decisions.

Do you really need that flat-pack wardrobe or would the foldaway futon be a better buy? Why not have lunch and think about it? Then you might need to choose between pickled herring or Swedish meatballs. Everywhere we are confronted with difficult choices. In Luke Rhinehart’s novel The Dice Man, the eponymous hero makes all his decisions by rolling a dice.

Decades ago Albert Einstein told us that space and time are not conditions in which we live; they are modes in which we think.

‘Nonlocality and the Observer’ is a fascinating documentation from a workshop held by Mike Wright. The first 30 minutes are a warm up into the realm of quantum physics. But then fasten your seat belts and be prepared for some big surprises that may change the way you think about yourself and your abilities to communicate with others.

If you are looking for wonderful inpirations into the area of science related to consciousness, take a look at Edgar Mitchell’s foundation - the Institute of Noetic Science.

The institute of Noetic Science is a nonprofit membership organization located in Northern California that conducts and sponsors leading-edge research into the potentials and powers of consciousness - including perceptions, beliefs, attention, intention, and intuition. The institute explores phenomena that do not necessarily fit conventional scientific models, while maintaining a commitment to scientific rigor.