Tony Blair told leaders in Pakistan today what many mid-lifers said all along, that “Force alone can’t beat terrorism.” Baby boomers live in ideal spaces - somewhere between cruel ravages of yesteryear’s wars, and lively prospects for peace that could distinguish a new era. Luckily research shows novel ways that human brains adapt from traditions of battle - into legacies of peace. Why so many wars then, as we’re reminded in Brad DeLong’s more than fair daily journal?

It takes jumpstarting a brain’s working memory for tactics that rewire old basal ganglia habits. Those well-reinforced words images and traditions for violence unfortunately control a whole cultures’ basal ganglia. You may recall from earlier posts how the basal ganglia stores and resurfaces mental habits. Because of war words, battlecry images, the basal ganglia holds us in ruts with routines for tough talk and one-upness that lead to war.

In contrast, peace plans rewire human brains for remarkable benefits, when leaders draw from hidden or unused parts that rejuvenate the brain’s working memory for change. Yes, even a warrior’s brain rewires when peaceful benefits override the horrors from war. It starts with one act of peace, because the brain reshapes itself based on stimulation from what we do.

Not surprisingly, the brain’s plasticity is rewired for non-violent solutions, when peacemakers lead us to question, target, expect, move, and reflect our way to redirect our brains toward the power of peace. In the past week, I’ve run into several such leaders - who show how the minds of peacemakers work.

One such remarkable leader at Strong Hospital, Reg Stewart, pulls together diversity that draws the best from people’s cultural background as well as their unique intellectual strength.

Reg Stewart’s brain-based-peace-plans inspire us to QUESTION … “What if people come together to build on every person’s strengths in ways that that would benefit their entire communities?

When we question to ask, “What if…” as Reg does, the brain builds new neuron pathways for peaceful benefits on both sides of any challenge. Peacemakers spark amazing mental acumen - that removes guns from the equation - and offers peace possibilities in place of battle plans. Have you noticed how great questions tend to target action?

You may remember Crash Davis, a baseball great played by Kevin Costner, in the movie “Bill Durham,” who described a TARGET to peace. Do you recall Davis’ plan for people to come from all over the place philosophically and “have some fun at the same time?”

Target peace, as Crash Davis did, and you also release serotonin … a chemical that surges through the brain to increase non-violent solutions through cooperation and well being that shows up in respect for others. Serotonin is less available to those who wage wars to get their way. Instead, its enemy hormone, cortisol tends to rage through brains of people lash out… strike back… or seek revenge…. Spark this chemical and war’s a done deal, because it is the brain’s hormone for violence and self-serving.

EXPECT your brain to show you exceptional solutions with hope for more global interests, when you draw from Dr. Howard Gardner’s wider mix of intelligences. Dr. Gardner prospers peace and we-being by helping peacemakers to rewire their brains for words and images that spark success from multiple angles. Expect your best options, see the benefits, and it’s time for action before any lasting peace plan takes root. Moves from peacemakers are easily missed by those who bank on armies. Mother Teresa showed us why….

MOVE peace forward the way Mother Teresa did, and you experience its advantages in smaller packages at first. She simply followed a call to act peacefully on a daily basis, and her brain rewired for goodwill that followed. In spite of criticism from many groups, Mother Teresa moved from one needy person to another, and refused to be intimidated by big groups organizing to fix the “bad guys.” She taught teachers one at a time under trees, airlifted sick babies to hospital after commissioning enemy airplanes, refused payoffs, and took time to hold the hand of one person at a time in spite of many who clamored for her help. For the brain to light pathways to peace, it needs time and space to reflect on war in all its horror and rewire victory in non-violent ways.

REFLECT for peace as a tool for the next overwhelming dilemma you face and share with one other person how peace replaced war to bring victory. It’s too early to tell, but New US Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, took advantage of the brain’s plasticity to reverse trends of war-wired brains, when she broke traditions of scraping with political opponents and spoke of freedom that follows when leaders listen to, respect, and work with the other side. Wow – let’s support these words and images of peace that could mean change for Western nations. Imagine new neuron pathways in minds that prosper peace and preclude wars.

Never have we faced a better time to celebrate diplomats like King, Gandhi, the Dali Lama, or contemporary ambassadors of harmony listed here. With their skills for humanity, they also refuel a brain’s basal ganglia where the mind stores peace and reverses violence.

It seems that everybody poses a trick these days to keep a brain from aging or to make it more intelligent in spite of age.

And some anti-age brain ideas are well worth the read. Scott Adam’s post… Aging Brains comments over at Dilbert.Blog starts this way…

“They say you get smarter every day that you’re alive until some tipping point. After that, because your brain starts to rot with age, you get dumber every day. I wonder if I’ll know when it happens. That would be a bad day. “Something feels different today. I wonder what…uh-oh.”

People have their own way of dealing with secrets the brain still refuses to yield. Scott decided to make a deal with his brain… “To compensate for my inevitable mental decline I am already doing triage on entire categories of my memory. Anything I don’t need will be purged to make room for new stuff. I already got rid of the category I call “who wore what.” If I see you in the gym wearing a full chicken outfit I will remember that as “saw you working out.” Luckily I’m male, so it didn’t take much work to purge that category.”

It’s worth a look at Scott’s faithful crowd of 336 respondents also, for a few tips on intelligence. Not all comments here hold water with researchers – and many lack currency from cognitive fields – but Scott’s readers lay into who’s smart and they show where today’s genius hangs out, too.

One reader, for instance, pointed blog readers to join the Triple Nine Society – which is a group that welcomes people who test in the 99.9th percentile in one of several adult standardized tests.

This self-proclaimed smart society, promises its members … “Opportunities for social contact include the annual meeting and local meetings in some areas, an email discussion list, and real-time chat channels.” What do you think?

I used to write a regular column for Mensa … a similar self-named smart group’s magazine. You likely have your own ideas about self- publicized smart circles, but I see one key problem.

These intelligence elite, who welcome the top 1% of all intelligent people, seem unaware that the definition for intelligence has changed. Those people once named as smartest – more often than not sport far less intelligence than previously thought. Oops….

In the past era, with amazing technology we can test people’s acumen from multiple intelligences. We tend to name people smarter because they solve problems and create products that lead to innovation in several intelligences and with evident results that are measurable beyond any classroom or textbook.

So, to keep up with who’s really smarter, intelligence clubs such as Mensa and Triple Nine Society, will want to change their question.

Instead of asking prospective members …. How smart are you? (which implies a number score in response, and lacks current accuracy) they’ll need to ask the more relevant question … How are you smart? (which expects multiple ways of using knowledge to solve problems and create solutions that show evidence of real intelligence applied).

So, with this new definition … who’s smart in your mind? Better still… “How are you smart?”

It’s fun to create visual images and character profiles that people care about and every time you use your spatial intelligence in this way, you grow more. Not a bad exchange considering you also get a memorable story from the deal too.

Writers add color, textures and shapes to stories when they draw on their spatial intelligence to paint, shape and build a story so that readers’ can see the images as if they appeared on stage. Robyn McMaster over at Art and Mind says it best through O’Keefe’s stories about flowers and Billy Collins’ pictures in his poem, “The Death of a Hat.”

Have you read any spatially appealing story lately that show the topic visually with a bit of flare…? Watch your visually alert readers jump onboard your storyline in ways that increase traffic when you add a few spatially packed tasks for their consideration.

To show spatial writing about the high arctic theme, here’s one scene from my incomplete novel called, Flight of the Raven. “Outside the kitchen window, her team of huskies barely moved. Their heads tucked against the drive of the wind. Their tails turned and curled like snow that swirled and circled around their feet. She stood watching their nocturnal wakefulness, and breathed in coffee aromas, from the warm cup cradled in her hands….”

If you can see my novel scene you have also seen me draw from spatial intelligence. Often hidden or unused by amateur writers, this intelligence allows a writer to project ideas on the back screens of the mind. It’s as though words appear from your spatial muse to paint your story ideas onto a screen or stage so that the reader can better see.

Here are a few spatial tips to rev up your next story for visually inclined readers:

1. Sketch – without using words - one main event in a friendship story which resulted in mutual benefits.
2. Design a backdrop and props for a state-of-the-art office in your home
3. Describe scenes a mentally challenged adult… might see as motivational or inspirational art in your home
4. Identify and detail fun traits you inherited from three relatives and illustrate how they show up in an ordinary day
5. Photograph scenes from a remote cabin and describe your reflections as they jumpstart change in one of your beliefs.

Any other ideas to use more spatial intelligence to paint and shape a good story out there…?

Encounters with nincompoops or champions both bring life to good yarns, if you throw a little interpersonal intelligence into the mix. In fact, the best stories show folly in a star one minute, and champion the bravery in a scoundrel the next.

In his recent best seller, Prisoners, Jeffrey Goldberg, wrote about people who humiliated and bullied him in a Long Island schoolyard, and, Nick Rennison’s new biography, Sherlock Holmes, takes readers into the ambiguities of the world’s most famous detective. Both show similar interpersonally strong storytelling skills in different ways.

What life experiences could you bring to a story about people you encountered? Would your story look like Goldberg’s admiration for people, and show his realistic colors of Israelis he admired? Or would it bring Rennison’s sense of adventure to the afterlife of a literary character?

Interpersonal intelligence grows a story when real people you know, end up in stories you write. Goldberg wove his 1990 experiences as an MP at the Israeli military prison Ketziot during the first intifada, into a story about a Muslim & a Jew across the Middle East divide. Rennison’s showed Holmes’ ambiguities as a reflection of his zeal for progress on one hand, and personal darker struggles with emotions on the other.

As witnessed in Goldberg’s and Rennison’s stories – an interpersonally alert writer tends to be part memoirist, and part reporter, because interpersonal skills increase an author’s ability to develop and interpret relationships as they relate to an interact with nincompoops and champs.

Your interpersonal intelligence guides you past the mundane, in behind the obvious – to capture an adventure through triumphs and tragedies of interesting people. Goldberg reached out to talk with Jewish and Arab prisoners and try to find out what they were thinking – and readers see nuances often missed in media reports about Palestinians and Israelis. In Goldberg’s favorite prisoner, a scholarly rogue named Rafiq, you see likeability and a sense of humor. Similarly, Rennison shadows Holmes through the ups and downs of the late 1800s in ways that show a Victorian era at war with its own skeletons.

A writer’s interpersonal muse holds insight from relationships all around you – those that work and those that don’t. Here are a few prompts to get your next story off the ground through activating your own unique people smarts.

From your right brain…

1. Interview your favorite hero and write three insights you learned
2. Create a post with a writer you admire, alternating sentences
3. Ask 3 people to tell you what they think of immigration, growing old, or AIDS
4. Tell your story idea to a child and invite a response

From your left brain …

5. Re-tell a recent dialogue between 2 people you know
6. Climb a mountain with a friend and relate the conversation sequentially
7. Play a board game for 4 with people and compare culturally different responses
8. Discuss a news article with friends and support opposing views

What prompt would you add to use more interpersonal intelligence as a tool to tell somebody’s best story?