Change Your Brain Every Day - Success at School: This Factor is More Important Than Grades with Chloe Amen

Episode Date: July 29, 2019

For some people, the education system can be a breeze. For others, struggle and frustration is the name of the game. However, when it comes to predicting success in life, grades aren’t necessarily the best metric. In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana are joined by their daughter Chloe, co-author of the new book, “Change Your Brain, Change Your Grades”, for a discussion on the most important focus points for students.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. Hey, everybody. We are so excited. The next two weeks, we're going to talk about learning. And one of the primary things that separate you from the

pelicans I saw flying over the ocean this morning was we don't have to operate our lives out of instinct. We can learn. We are also going to introduce you to our new book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Grades, coming out September 17th. And you want to introduce the world to- Yeah. This is very special because on this book, our daughter, Chloe, and our niece, Alizé, they were a part of writing it, and that's really special for us. So today we've got Chloe, actually for the whole week, we've got Chloe here with us talking about being a good student and what some of the challenges have been for her and how she overcame them and, yeah, how to be a good student and how to optimize your learning.

And it's not just if you're in school. This is really important. Many of the principles we're going to talk about is, well, how do you get a raise at work? You learn new things. You make yourself more valuable. How do you prevent aging as you learn new things right so change your brain change your grades people who have gotten the prior version of this which called secrets of successful students that actually wrote in 1982 a little before chloe's time a little before Chloe's time. A little before the internet. But in 1982, what had happened.

So I was a mediocre student in high school. Like 2.8 was my GPA out of high school, which means I was paying attention to girls, not to my classwork. But out of college, I was a 3.93 and had virtually straight A's in medical school. And I taught a course in medical school. I was in the charter class. We didn't have upperclassmen. I was always the oldest, you know, our class was the first one. And so I taught a seminar for students coming behind on how to do medical school.

And when I graduated from medical school, 1982, I went, oh, I should probably write that. How does someone go from being sort of a mediocre student to a great student? There's a method for that. And I just, I love sharing it. But then recently, I'm like, I need to revise that book. And I realized the internet wasn't invented when I had written that book. And computers. You were handwriting your papers, probably. I hand-wrote the first version of this book. We had to sit in the library.

I remember doing research in the library. And so I tapped Chloe, who's actually a wonderful student, virtually a straight-A student, and Alizé, who you'll meet, same thing. And I'm like, let's update this. My sneaky purpose was I really wanted them to read the book and read the principles in the book and help me with it, which they did. So are you introducing Chloe? I did. I just introduced her. This is Chloe. I got an introduction. So Chloe is actually going to be a junior. So you just finished your sophomore year and she's taking weighted classes and she got straight A's, which means

she's actually above a 4.0 now, which is really fun and exciting. And she's also volunteering. She does a lot of volunteer work. She's on the Mayor's Youth Council. She's on the National Honor Society. And she's involved in a whole bunch of activities. And so yeah, we're really proud of her. But I've always, we've always told her something really important that I think is really important. I've never, I've never celebrated or really encouraged, like I've never made a big deal out of her grades it's always been the effort so it's always been the effort that we made a big deal it's like it's how much work she puts in that is really important because we've often seen we actually recommend don't tell your kids they're smart right because if it's hard for them then they'll go oh i'm

really not smart yeah but if you praise them for working hard and chloe works very hard right then and grades didn't always come super easy when she was really young no and so that that the fact that she had to learn how to work hard yeah is now why she does so well and i had to learn just like how i learned too how because not everyone learns the same um not everything works for everyone. It's not the same formula for everyone. And I've had to kind of learn that as I've gone along. And that I'm not one of those people who's just naturally like it just comes easy. When I to get in order to get really good grades, I have to put in a lot of studying and a lot of time. It doesn't just like come naturally, but I've learned that that's just how it is.

And I think everyone has their different ways of learning. And when you really figure out what works for you and how you learn and you just accept it, you can make it a lot easier for yourself or you can make it a lot harder for yourself. But one thing I do notice is you tend to remember things because of the amount of studying you put in probably. Yes. So she tends to remember the information. So you take it seriously. Yeah. One of the things that I learned, so trick number one, is before you go to class, read what they're going to talk about in class.

So that way, because so often students are completely clueless and they come unprepared. Right. But I learned if I read the chapter, whatever we're going to talk about ahead of time, then the teacher would then reinforce it. I would ask smart questions, which would embed me in their head as someone who actually cared. And I've noticed, Chloe, that you actually outline what the lesson is.

Right. And I have- You could sell those notes. I have a system for that, but I also have kind of a little bit of an advantage in that sense because I do, um, online. So I get all of my notes in front of me. So let me clarify that. What she's saying is she does, we homeschool, she has an online program that she does an online school program. So it's the same lessons, but all of them are online and I just have to read them kind of through myself. I don't really have a teacher that guides me through it, which at first was really hard for me because I'm used to having a teacher like, okay, these are

the important parts. These are what you really need to take notes on. This is what's going to be on the test. Right. The teachers give you the little like, oh, pay attention to this part. I don't have any of that, but I've learned to kind of outline the important parts. But translating what you said about reading the lessons first, I think when that going over to high school, that can be hard sometimes because if you've ever been in a high school class, they are very unpredictable. So sometimes the teachers are like kids come in and they're talking and it's hard to focus. But if you go in, if you're in high school and you go in ahead of time at lunch or whatever, usually teachers will help you out. If you say, look, I want to just kind of get ahead.

I want to know what we're learning today. They'll usually help you if you take the time to go in. Yeah, because you haven't always done. But college classes, if I'm right, I think with college classes, that's a little bit easier. Well, they have class hours. They have teacher's hours or professor's hours. But she didn't always do homeschool. You were in a traditional school up until the middle of eighth grade, almost the end of eighth grade.

So she knows sort of the system how that works too. And we should, in one of these episodes, we're going to talk about the difference. For those of you who either are in homeschool programs or are interested in them, or you want to hear the differences between the two, it's really interesting because it's different. Well, we can talk about it a little bit. And Alizé's in traditional school, and we'll hear from her next week. Chloe's not. And one of the reasons I really like it is sleep. And because when you're homeschooled, you are much more likely to get seven or eight hours of sleep. Or nine.

And it might sound like Chloe's working, you know, working all the time. And it's just not true. I think now she actually has a much more balanced life. Right. That, you know, we can sit in the morning and have coffee or tea and chat. It's not running out of the door. And you're actually missing all the time. You have to get your makeup done.

You have to get to the bus. You have to come home. Well, it's an hour from the time you walk out the door to get to school. And so sleep is the most important thing for me because the brain is developing. Well, and the rate of depression in teens that get one hour less of sleep is – what is the increase? Significantly higher. And suicide is higher in kids who don't sleep.

Get one less hour. Well, if I can add something to that too, just getting alone just more sleep is beneficial. But also the reason why I like it is because people, their prime time for productivity changes between people. So I have friends who work best at 2 o'clock in the morning. That is not me at all. Come 6 o'clock, I'm like can't focus on anything, like just nothing.

But I can focus at 6 o'clock in the morning. And when you're in traditional school, sometimes you just don't get that option because there's like set hours. So that's why I like what I do as well. Because it's flexible. Also for that reason. So if you would rather sleep in until 9 and then get up and do whatever and then work later, that's fine. Or get up earlier and then you have the afternoon.

So the second tip is know your sweet spot. Know your time, right? Know your best time. Your best time. And just for the book in general, I think this was one of the tips that I added in there. Know what time of day that you study better. So it's almost like doing an experiment. Study it for one test, study it this time

and see how you do. For the next test, study at night rather than in the morning and see how you do. See how much of the information you retain and then you know oh i study best and i take in most of the information or more of the information at that time yeah you're like me i'm a morning person after each podcast in the next two weeks we're gonna give one of the books away and if you go to brain warriors way podcastcom, leave a comment. And in the subject line, put change your brain, change your grades, raffle.

We will enter you into the free drawing. We're going to talk about relationships with teachers when coming up. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast, please don't forget to subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode. And while you're at it, feel free to give us a review or five-star rating as that helps others find the podcast. You can use the code PODCAST10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or a 10% discount on all supplements at brainmdhealth.com. For more information, give us a call at 855-978-1363.