Unlock Your Leadership Potential: The Brain Hack Every Successful Leader Uses
I speak often about how leaders must be strong thinkers. Deep thinking provides clarity – and clarity provides the solution to chaos, producing steady leadership. The greatest asset at your disposal to achieve this clarity is your brain. It follows then that strong leaders care to study how the brain works so they can optimize their capacity for clarity of thought as much as possible.
"The brain we develop reflects the life we lead."
– The Dalai Lama
Leadership isn’t just about strategy and execution—it’s about how we train our minds. Brain Wash: Detox Your Mind for Clearer Thinking, Deeper Relationships, and Lasting Happiness by David & Austin Perlmutter reinforces a crucial truth: our brains are constantly being reshaped by our habits, thoughts, and choices.
We think of self-discipline as willpower, but in reality, it’s brainpower. This week’s biggest lesson: the world is not designed to make you a focused, disciplined, steady leader. You must train yourself to become one. Discipline is a brain game.
In the first sixty pages of this fascinating book, I have not only learned about how the brain works, I have also learned about how it is being attacked. Your brain is not a single, unified force—it’s a system with competing parts, each trying to influence your choices.
The Three Parts of Your Brain
The Primitive Brain (Brainstem & Amygdala): This part of your brain is your survival system. It reacts instantly to threats, pleasure, and cravings. It’s why you reach for your phone, lash out in frustration, or crave sugar. Simply put – it’s the part of your brain that keeps you alive.
The Emotional Brain (Limbic System): This is the middle part of your brain where your feelings live. It influences memory, decision-making, and habits. Left unchecked, it can drive anxiety, impulsivity, and self-doubt. It takes direction from both the brain stem and the third part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex.
The Rational Brain (Prefrontal Cortex): This part of your brain functions as the “CEO of your mind.” It controls logic, focus, long-term thinking, and emotional regulation. This is where Steady Leaders win or lose the battle for self-discipline.
The Problem: Modern life is designed to keep us reactive.
Because of how the brain is engineered, the content you consume is constantly triggering your amygdala – and that makes you anxious and impulsive. It disconnects your rational brain from working altogether. The brain is moldable at any age. Every decision we make—what we eat, how we move, the thoughts we dwell on—physically reshapes our neural pathways. What we focus on, we reinforce. Negative inputs create negative wiring. Positive habits build mental resilience.
The consumption of negative social media and news overstimulates the amygdala, making you anxious and impulsive. Processed foods and sugar trigger inflammation, weakening the power of the prefrontal cortex and keeping you stuck in unhealthy cycles of cravings and impulsivity. Chronic stress shuts down logical thinking and keeps you in survival mode while weakening your ability to think long-term and make sound decisions.
The Solution: Strengthen the prefrontal cortex.
In understanding even just this oversimplification of how the brain works, you can begin to take control of which part of your brain you let stay in charge. Stop yourself from giving in to the activities that trigger the primitive brain. Limit your negative distractions and constant deluge of notifications. Be intentional about your news and social media consumption. Eat nutritious, whole foods and less sugar. Sleep more, work appropriately, and take care of your body. Make time for real, deep work – not just reactive tasks. Read a book instead of watching TV or scrolling on your phone. Do some of the things that actually exercise your rational brain so that the connective parts of the brain in your prefrontal cortex are exercised the most. Train your brain to crave and multiply positive habits. As Perlmutter says, “The brain is like a muscle. The more you train it, the stronger it becomes.”
This is the essence of steady leadership: training your mind as intentionally as you train your body; choosing the inputs that lead to clarity, resilience, and strong decision-making.
Leaders aren’t just born—they’re wired. And you have the power to strengthen that wiring.
Written by Schuyler Williamson
Pre-Order The Steady Leader Book: Pre-Order Book
God Bless!
~ Schuyler Williamson