We can do better

All of these "motivational speakers" are right: you are capable of amazing things. But you will not know about it, because 99% of the time your body and your brain hide from you your superpowers.
Of course, they say that there are reasons for this, and although we are not sure, we buy it. Hey, science: Unlock a minute and these forces are too, so we are finally able to find out whether the will beat Captain America Iron Man in a fight in real life.

1. Superpower





You may have heard of "urban legends" about "the woman lifted the car after the accident," but whether you believe it or not - this is not just a legend. She talks about Angela Cavallo, whose son repaired "Chevrolet Impala" 64th year, when the car slipped off the jack, and he was trapped under the wheels.

Angela ran out of the house, and found the unconscious body of his son lying under the wheels. Instead of saying something passive-aggressive, like, "Well, I told him to throw this thing out of the garage," she screamed loudly, calling on the help of neighbors. And when there was no help in time, a woman alone, with his bare hands, lifted the car with his son.

Artistic performance

Okay, maybe she did not raise this thing over his head as the Hulk. It took only a few centimeters to son got the opportunity to move to a safe place. But this is no small feat when you consider that the weight of the car - at least a couple of tons. Go out and try it, if you do not believe.

Sindzhin Eberly climbing in New Mexico, where a boulder weighing 240 kg rolled down, crashed into him (in the process of breaking his hand), and started to push him, bringing a fall from a height of 600 meters and to certain death. And on again "adrenaline mode" and the man threw the boulder aside broken arms.

Why can not we do it all the time?

The facts tell us that the muscle fibers may actually give us an opportunity to break through the wall, like the Terminator, if we really want to, but our brain arbitrarily us in this limit. Why?
One problem is tendons and other tissues through which we - one, and that prevent us from this kind of abuse.
This is the same logic that makes consumers steroids more prone to injury: their musculoskeletal system simply can not keep up with their bulging muscles.
So when you are in "raise a boulder or die", the body gets superpowers, stopping other body functions, such as digestion and immunity. This is one of the things that are activated only once and only for a few minutes.

2. "Vision" ears (echolocation)



This - superpowers, which has Daredevil. He overcame blindness using sonar-like hearing, which is so acute that completely replaced his sight.
This is the real thing. In the real world, we call it echolocation, and guys like Daniel Kish possess her. Kish is completely blind, and was blind all his life. Despite this, one of his favorite activities - mountain biking.



C using sound, mentally drawing a picture of the world around him, Kish makes it so that can avoid collisions with trees, boulders and bears at a time when rushing down the mountainside.

Why can not we do it all the time?

For the same reason that people who use calculators are weak in mathematics. Most people choose the easy way, in this case, they rely on their vision, which tells them where to find things, but they lose the ability to make it more difficult and more surprising way.
However, any of you can try echolocation even without losing an eye in any superhero stories. Tests have shown that people with a blindfold gradually learn to estimate the distance to objects, listening to the echo of his own footsteps. Soon they may even determine the shape and texture of invisible objects, relying only on the echo. Try this: Close your eyes, and slowly go to the wall as he spoke. Listen as changing your own voice, and as an echo answers you.

Your brain is able to recognize all the details of the echo (in the end, you listened to him all his life), and it is only a matter of training - to force myself to use them.

3. Super Memory



Hey, remember that time in the afternoon, in March, when you were eight years old? You were tired? Or not? Nothing remarkable happened?
You can not remember it? Why not? Finally, once your muscles are technically able to allow you to turn off dude head off, then your brain is technically should be able to keep every thing you've ever seen, heard or experienced.
Just ask Jill Price. She has a disease called "Hyperthymesia." Illness gave her an almost perfect autobiographical memory, which we have just mentioned. Give her a date, and she will be able to remember everything that she was doing that day, what the weather was, and all the other seemingly trivial events that no one will remember.



But even if you do not have such a disorder (science knows only a few such cases), there are a few tricks that you can do right now, and that a few times will improve your memory.
During the study of short-term memory was tested people's ability to remember a sequence of numbers. Starting with memorizing seven digits, after a little practice a person is able to remember about eighty. This is - something that looks like a magic trick, especially if you show him at a party.
Why can not we do it all the time?
Firstly, it is important to note that what is at Jill - is not a "photographic memory", as some people (as they say, can scroll through the phone book and remember all the rooms). This is believed to be a myth. Science has never had a chance to test everyone who could actually do it, has always been only a "history of second-hand." You've probably noticed that there is a giant Jill Baska, which stores all of her memories. It is able to store all their lives in the brain about the same size and shape as yours. Why?
Let's look at the brain as a computer. He really fast processor and almost unlimited space for storing information. But still it has a unique and often inconvenient file management system. It's not like a folder on your hard drive, it's more like the results that gives the search engine.
Your brain makes memories accessible by creating links to other memories using these links every memory is sorted by relevance (based on similarities and on the basis of how emotional it was for you event).
Thus, the memory is only available when some memories are opened by other, which refers to the brain arbitrarily or after the introduction of some information (for example, someone of something reminded you). Otherwise, the memory will be gone forever.
And with all kind of Jill: her excellent memory, is believed to be the result of obsessive-compulsive disorder and refresh those memories. How are the people who trained to memorize series of numbers, it is "trained" themselves to remember the years of quite minor everyday events. But the normal mind forgets it all: so he can give priority to the truly important things.
Brain with Hyperthymesia - like a broken search engine that gives you a porn no matter what you are looking for. Something like a Google search for the pictures.

4. The insensitivity to pain

The fact that pain is a necessary part of life - one of the heavy lessons that we get as they grow older. But here, at some point you break a bone, or get some other unexpected injury, and wait a second. This is - hardly hurt. In these moments of shock or injury your brain just switches off the pain, like a switch.
Tell it to Amy Racine, who fell off a cliff, landed six floors below his knee reversal and broke her hip. Without feeling too much pain, even with a broken bone sticking out of the skin, it dragged down the street until she found help. The pain came back only when she came to where it loaded into the helicopter.
A similar phenomenon is called the "phenomenon of the runner." At the point when the whole body is screaming for mercy, a sense of calm painless makes the runner to run on, it's almost like being on drugs.
Why can not we do it all the time?
Welcome to the wonderful world of endorphins. The very name of this wonderful substance means "morphine produced naturally by the body." It is an excellent ingredient for good health. It is produced by the body during exercise, excitement or during orgasm, and it has the ability to blunt or eliminate pain, blocking synapses (connections between neurons) in the brain.
So why is the body so sparingly on endorphins? Why can not you just turn them and let the phone? Just ask anyone with congenital insensitivity to pain - a genetic disorder, which allows a person does not feel the pain constantly. The parents of one such girl saw her in different situations: one day she accidentally otgryzla part of their own language, absent-mindedly bitten through his own finger, or drank a flammable liquid.
Whenever the pain bothers you, it saves you from a hundred situations in which you mutilate themselves.
You probably want to say, "But why my brain does not allow me to decide? Give me control of a switch endorphins! I'm not going to use it in order to win an argument at the bar, eating glass! ", But we are not so sure.

5. Time management



Simply put, this "flying bullet" in reality. Talk to people who visited in combat or in other situations of life and death, and they will tell you about the time that stretched like taffy.
Been a number of studies US police officers who took part in a series of shootings and other creepy moments. One of them said:

"During the shooting, I looked up, and was puzzled as he saw beer cans, slowly drifting past my face. What was even more puzzling is the fact that they had the word "federal" printed on the bottom. It turned out the liner, flying from the officer who shot next to me ».

Firefighter Ryan Jordan tells a similar story. At a time when the forest fire suddenly blocked their way, and they began to think, what to do to avoid roasting, it felt as if someone had put the game on pause.

Why can not we do it all the time?

Something similar is happening in the crazy moments, but for different reasons. Experts say this is because your brain has two modes of perception of the world: a rational and experimental. First - this is the one in which you are probably are now, it's peace of mind and the ability to think things through. But if the other end of the room to explode a bomb - you suddenly will pass in an experimental mode.
Your brain goes into a sort of "overdrive", bypassing all the analytical and rational thought processes for the benefit of the trigger decision. Most normal thought processes are confused and suddenly you act on instinct (or, in the case of a police officer or a soldier, at the expense of training). And as you think faster - the world seems slower.
It makes sense. Neo never had the ability to slow down time. He just could not move very fast.
So why is it you can not turn it like Neo?

A better question: Would you like this?



In moments of your life when you have to make decisions in a panic, in a split second - how good are these decisions? Risknёm guess that most of your most idiotic decisions you have made, while in the middle of some kind of panic.
This is the reason why the police are forced to go through all this training. You should be able to overcome their natural instinct to start yelling and shooting in all directions. Experimental thinking in your brain - this is the removal of excess weight from your car to make it faster. But it is not just the loss of the air conditioner and the headrest with DVD-player. This - the loss of brakes and power steering.

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