if their enterprises succeed. “Just as some-
one can become addicted to sex or drugs,
they can fall into a cycle of addiction where
there’s never enough money or power, and
that can be very punishing,” says Robert-
son, the author of The Winner Effect, a
book about the neuroscience of success.
Most cognitive or behavioral traits,
he adds, are “two-edged swords.” For in-
stance: a lot of research suggests that peo-
ple who possess some narcissistic per-
sonality characteristics—egocentrism,
entitlement, lack of empathy for others—
may be more likely to land in leadership
roles, but there’s evidence that narcissists
make poor CEOs. Although a hint of narcis-
sism could boost a person’s self- confidence
or charisma in a way that helps them suc-
ceed, too much could hold them back.
While the usefulness of some brain
traits or tendencies is context-dependent,
other traits increase a person’s odds of suc-
cess in almost any situation. And it’s pos-
sible to retrain the brain in ways that en-
courage some of these helpful patterns of
thinking.
One example: people who display
high levels of “self-compassion” often
score high on measures of well-being, and
they also tend to motivate themselves in
ways that help them achieve their goals.
“There are two main ways people moti-
vate themselves—through self-criticism
or through self-compassion,” says Kris-
tin Neff, an associate professor of edu-
cational psychology at the University
of Texas and the author of The Mindful
Self- Compassion Workbook. Neff com-
pares these approaches to the carrot and
the stick. “Self-criticism is being hard on
yourself, or scaring yourself with the fear
of failure,” she explains. This kind of mo-
tivation can work, but it can also increase
anxiety and discourage people from set-
ting lofty goals or undertaking new proj-
ects. “To succeed, you often need to keep
trying after an initial failure,” she explains.
“But for people who self-criticize, failure
can be too scary.”
Self-compassion, on the other hand,
is a form of motivation that accesses the
brain and body’s “care systems,” the ones
we tap into when parenting or helping
friends through hard times. “Think about
how you would talk to a child who had
failed at something,” Neff advises. “You
would never say, ‘You’re such a loser’ or
‘a failure.’ ” Yet these are the kinds of ad-
monishments many people heap on them-
selves when they don’t succeed. Neff says
self-compassion is about learning to be
kind to oneself when things don’t work
out and recognizing that nearly all suc-
cessful people struggle through setbacks.
When people practice self- compassion,
she says, failure isn’t as scary. Removing
this fear helps people to stay motivated
and on track.
She recommends that people write
themselves “encouraging, supportive”
letters—the kind one writes to a struggling
friend. “Writing to oneself compassion-
ately is an effective way to increase moti-
vation and reduce fear of failure,” she says.
Returning to the lessons of the marsh-
mallow test, Robertson says that kids who
were able to resist gobbling the marsh-
mallow tended to distract themselves by
looking away from the treat and counting.
Really, he says, the test was a measure of
the children’s ability to train attention on
something other than the marshmallow.
“The ability to control attention is one
of the most valuable human attributes,”
he says. “What we pay attention to”—or
choose not to pay attention to—“affects
our mood and goal motivation and a lot of
other things that are central to our success,
and we know that attention is a muscle
that can be trained.” Mindfulness training
and other forms of meditation have been
shown to bolster attention, he says, while
incessant distraction seems to tank it.
Taken together, the neuroscience re-
search reveals that the human brain is end-
lessly complex and that the skills or traits
that correlate with achievement develop
from a mixture of genetic and environmen-
tal variables. Just as there is no one defini-
tion of success, there is no single definition
of a successful brain. •