Garden Brain: Update Your Brain Patterns to This New Model And Solve Problems That AI Can Not Solve

C. Problem Solving Parallel to Brain

Just like the above example of cooking as a solution to the problem of hunger, which is a primary problem of survival, you understand that any problem is solved by the brain in the exact same ways:

1) Search for available solutions
2) If no solution is available(for instance there is no reserved food) then cook a solution.
3) For a solution, look for the resources, organize a set of tasks to be performed one by one,
4) Use appropriate energy to perform the tasks
5) Observe the entire process(a process is a set of all the sequential tasks that are needed to complete a solution)

D. A Practical Example of Solving the Problem of Job Loss

If you lost your job recently then your brain will use the exact same model to solve the problem of unemployment and to get you another job.

i) It will look for available solutions. That is if you already have some offers or acquittances that can get you a job.
ii) If you know someone who can refer you to a job, the brain will go for that option first(like looking for existing food).
iii) If no such job is available, then the brain will look to cook for a solution.

-A resume
– Search for positions to apply.
-Apply with the resume
-Secure an interview. For securing an interview a good cover letter is needed, and so it will focus on good cover letters for the application to each of the positions.
-Then you will prepare for the interview
-Then you will attend the interview and try to crack the interview.
-Finally, you will get an offer letter upon successfully cracking an interview.
-Then you will join the job.
-When you get the first salary, you are eating the food that you prepared. Your problem is solved.

E. Delegating/Outsourcing: Not Always You will Have Resources

Not always you will have enough vegetables in the kitchen, or you may have run out of gas in the stove, or may not have key ingredients such as oil. Then you will have to look for the possibility to order food from outside(outsource), or go and eat outside(outsource).
This is called outsourcing or delegating. Even for delegating a problem, you have to know the available sources of delegation and must have the required resources for the delegation.

In the exact same way, when you lost your job, you might take the services of a hiring agency to get a new job, which will perform the tasks of making a resume, searching for positions, writing cover letters, applying on behalf of you and get you an interview.

F. Acquisition/Hunting/Gathering: Getting The Needed Resources

Let’s say that you do not have the resources to delegate(enough money to afford outside food), your brain has to go and acquire the vegetables or spices it needs but doesn’t have.

In the same way, if you have not made your resume for years when you lose your job, you do not have a key ingredient that is needed for the job search process, so you have to first make this resource.

There are some other ways to get a solution for a problem. They are:
If you are hungry, can’t cook or don’t want to cook, do not want to delegate, or can’t afford to delegate, you will use the reserve techniques.

G. Begging/Requesting

When you are hungry and the above solutions are not working for you, you might request the known ones for help. For instance, you may request your neighbor for some food, or beg people who have a surplus of food to help you with food.

Same way, when you have your pink slip visible, you may request the management and beg them to consider not taking away your job.

H. Borrowing

You know that you have the ability to arrange for the resources sooner, but right now you do not have the resources you need. You may borrow some ingredients or vegetables from your neighbor, promising him that you will soon purchase and return back him the ingredients. As you are too hungry now, immediate resource availability is your key.

Borrowing may not be a solution for job loss, but you may consider borrowing some money from the bank in the form of a personal loan to survive for the period till you get a new job. The debt industry serves this essential need.

I. Exchanging

Exchanging is one of the oldest ways humans have solved their problems and is the fundamental on which the entire social structure is based. A farmer exchanges his crops for milk products from an anima farmer, clothes from a cloth maker, and kitchen tools from an ironsmith.

In modern days, we carry out the exchange through a universally agreed value system which is called money. This system has been so integrated into us that we may not even realize that you are exchanging all the time for solving our problem.

So, when you are hungry, your neighbor may have enough resources but not the time and energy to cook the food. You may offer to cook the food and get your food from it in exchange. Here you are investing your energy and time to get your solution, while the resource is provided by someone else who doesn’t have the energy.

Same way, when you lost the job, you may offer to do someone else’s job in exchange for the resources you need. This is called freelancing. So for instance someone is working independently and making pickles at home. She has a lot of orders and not enough energy to deliver all the orders. So she has been letting go of these offers.

Even though you are a coder who has recently lost the job, you may go to this pickle maker and ask her if you could make a pickle on her behalf while she focuses on bringing and delivering more orders. Every employment is created in this way.

J. Snatching or Stealing

You will go out, find someone with food, and will overpower that person, and snatch the food. This is morally wrong for the brain and therefore brain puts it in the least priority.

It happens in the corporate all the time, when a manager sees that his pink slip chances are looming large, he indulges in politics, steals someone’s position, and retains the job.

K. Solving a Mental Problem

Now you know how the brain solves a practical problem, with tools, resources, energy, observation, and decision.
Decision is the choice the brain makes to solve a problem either by choosing from available processes, or by Stealing, Exchanging, Borrowing, or Begging.

Problem Solution Example: Resolve Relationship Conflicts

L. Walking Out

Walking out of a problem is also one of the solutions that the brain often uses at the end. For people who neither have enough resources, nor energy, or people they know who can exchange or lend them a solution, they choose walking out as a primary solution.

So for instance one may have a problem with the boss in the job and may decide to quit the job without having any other job in hand with the hope that he would get a better job.

In the same way, one may walk out of the relationship on the first instance of the conflict with the hope of finding a better relationship.

One may choose neither to cook nor to look for food and sleep hungry with the hope of somehow getting the food the next day.

M. Staying In and Doing Nothing

This is also one of the solutions our brain use, whereby the brain simply ignores the problem as a problem. This happens when the brain faces the problem over and over again with or without solving the problem, and still survives without any harm to life.

Getting accustomed to a partner’s conflict everyday evening you come back from your job is a classic example of doing nothing about a problem.

Whenever one is lazy, one may go to sleep rather than cook or look for food.

When one frequently switches jobs, losing the current job may not affect the person. On the other hand, if one has enough reserved money, one may choose to do nothing about the job loss. Same way, one who has enough food stored in the refrigerator may not bother to do anything about hunger.

N. Decision and Execution

What one chooses to do in a problem is the decision, and successfully completing the decision is execution. Whenever the brain solves a problem, or faces a problem it keeps track of the way one is suffering due to the problem as well as the processes.

So needless to say, the more one suffers and solve the problem the more tools, resource, and options, are available to the brain. However, if one keeps struggling to solve the key problems on a daily basis, over a period of time one is not left with enough energy to solve the problems even when one has all the resources and choices.

O. Seed vs Tool, Structure vs Garden as The Brain’s Solution Center

Now that we know every single way that your brain solves a problem and every single way your brain decides, and all the things that the brain needs to solve a problem, it becomes important to know what are the fundamental ways that the brain organizes so many different things(tools, options, processes, tasks, energy, outcome from the past, past problems, people who have the solutions, resources from where a tool or solution can be hunted, borrowed or stolen from, which of the techniques to use, whether to solve the problem or escape or stay in the problem). That is where the key idea of Structure vs Garden comes in.

a) A structured brain

the brain can organize information like a structured habitat where we have big buildings, hotels, lodges, schools, gyms, shops, and roads that connect to each of them.

Different dishes may be different buildings, cooking styles may be the equipment of your mental gym, a needed resource list may be maintained in the mental shop, available hotels may be in your mental hotels and all of them will connect through roads. The brain chooses the shortest path and least energy investment path to a solution.

So if one was successful in securing food over and over by begging, begging will get the highest priority, and even when every ingredient is already available, the brain will look to beg for food. That is why the “brain doesn’t do things differently and brain always works in one pattern.”

One who is a successful thief will steal in every aspect of life whether he needs it or doesn’t need it, because he has been successful stealing in one aspect, he will do it in all aspects. So one who steals someone else’s job, will steal money, will steal someone’s promotion, will steal someone’s food, and so on.

A structured brain is a more rigid and often opinionated or belief-based brain. This is because past successes and methods are the starting point of this mental colony of solutions. So if one is accustomed to shouting at a partner to try to resolve the conflict, one would shout even when no aggression is required.

A structured brain is often a right-brain dominance. The information of the structured brain is connected in a two-dimensional neural network model(like the roads). This is a more literal model of brain functioning. That means if we say “read this section carefully” you may start reading the section again if you have a structured brain. Reading simply implies reading and nothing else in a structure.

Because the structured brain is like a road path through various models in the brain, the brain extracts information through the shortest path between point A(the problem) to point B(one of the solutions that are easier to reach by the neural network at this point of time). Therefore this type of brain needs clear instructions and commands about the problem and solutions.

When the problem is quantifiable, (for example how to arrange $100 for the next week), the structured brain works best because it always has easy ways to reach to the solution. However, whenever the problem is more abstract in nature(for instance relationship conflict), the structured brain gets confused as there seem to be no definite points. The brain can not reach any conclusive clarity for such problems.

We can summarize the structured brain as follows:

1. Rigid, based on beliefs and opinions.
2. The brain learns more through personal experiences.
3. The brain solves quantifiable problems better but gets confused in abstract problems.
4. The brain can perform repetitive tasks in more efficient ways.
5. The structured brain is habit-driven, and therefore it is very difficult to change the brain.
6. The structured brain works better with concise and clear instructions and commands. (Hence if one knows the belief system, it is easy to manipulate individuals with a structured brain).
7. Different information, skills, and knowledge are often linked via stories.
8. As our imagination plays a major role in constructing stories, this brain can get into imagination, overthinking, rumination, and prediction quite frequently.
9. Feelings play a major role in finding the shortest path to a solution.
10. Because the structured brain is driven by feelings, it seeks enriching experiences.
11. Even though this brain is largely governed by habits, the brain gets bored too easily and too early in repetitive tasks. As frequent boredom is one of the key causes of depression, such a brain is more prone to depressive events.
12. Decisions in a structured brain are much more impulse and instinct-driven. The brain tends to attach logic after a decision is made. So a structured brain can quickly take a decision, but it becomes hard for the brain to be convinced about its decision.
13. One with a structured brain has much more physical ability, and so will be much more charismatic and energetic in a social interaction as the brain consumes less energy(because it always tries to find the shortest path).
14. Because feelings are relative and can only be experienced when there is a change in positive to negative feelings or vice versa, often the brain attracts negative experiences to feel positivity.
15. Because this brain heavily relies on personal experiences, anything that one has observed in life is perceived as truth and anything that is not yet observed is perceived as false.
16. As it is impossible for anyone to experience everything in a single life, anything that one sees for the first time creates a surprise. The brain hates surprises(bad surprises) but loves to give surprises.
17. Because anything unknown or unseen, or unheard, is an abstract model for the brain, and a structured brain doesn’t know how to handle the unknown efficiently, fear of the unknown(which is called anxiety) looms large in this brain.

b) A Garden Brain

Problem with the structured brain

We have already seen how a structured brain is much more efficient, energetic, quick to take decisions, and quick to start. However, on the downside, such a brain is much more prone to manipulation, depression, anxiety, getting struck, making repetitive mistakes, attracting the wrong people, and negative experiences.

We have also seen that the structured brain is more efficient in repetitive tasks. However, with the advancement of Artificial Intelligence(AI) and machines, rigid models and repetitive tasks are being better handled by machines. Machines are also more efficient in taking quantitative decisions.

Therefore it will become difficult with each passing day for one with a structured brain to find livelihood as the repetitive tasks will be continuously given to the machines.

A classic example is proofreading. A proofreader reads a document and checks for spelling and grammatical errors. As spelling and grammar are fixed, the structured brains could do proofreading better than other forms of the brain. However, with the arrival of software like Grammarly, proof-reading is online, live, and has eliminated the need for proof readers.

Therefore, today if one has to survive the age of machines and AI, one has to become much more fluid and adaptive, capable of learning and unlearning fast, capable of solving abstract problems, comprehending unforeseen and unknown circumstances, building models in the brain that can be changed easily, capable of correlating knowledge from different fields. This need is the key idea behind creating a garden brain.

How to create a garden brain

One of the most difficult brain patterns to achieve is what is called a fluid brain or a Garden brain.
Consider your brain to be a barren land first.

i) You plant some seeds here.
ii) Now you nurture the seeds by watering and putting compost and other soil fertilizers.
iii) You protect the part of the seeds from excess sunlight and excess watering.
iv)Slowly you see plants germinating there. Some plants will grow fast, some slow, some will give fruits in the future, some will give flowers, some will just hold the ground together(like grass), and some will become bigger and give you a shadow.
v) As you nurture the plants, you will see an ecosystem getting created here; more birds, and insects, are coming to your garden.
vi) You will see birds seeding your soil and new plants that you did not seed will arrive, many of which will be of no use, and many of these will be productive.
vii) You keep nurturing the garden and grow the garden as a fully blossomed forest with small plants, large plants, creepers, shrubs, herbs, trees, butterflies, rainfall, sunshine, cloud, ants, sloths, birds, and a complete ecosystem.

The key idea is to think of your brain as an ecosystem, rather than a housing complex. You are much more open to surprises, and unseen experiences. You hold no rigid belief but the belief that what you know may not be optimal. You welcome any contrasting experience and incorporate that experience into your belief.

You let the ecosystem grow itself. The ecosystem is the emotion. Each of the seeds you planted are different ideas rather than the structured buildings of tools.

Now new ideas will be created in this brain, and some of the old ideas will get you fruit, and some will give flowers which are feelings. Flowers will have different fragrances which are different intensities of feelings. You will also get fruits, which are productive output. You may have vegetable plants there and large plants to give you wood and energy.

Whenever you face a problem, you start taking a walk in this garden(rather than finding the shortest path) and your brain will identify the needed tools.

For instance, if you are hungry and you see a mango tree, you will try to find for the stones to get the mango. If you created and nurtured a mental forest then your brain will be less afraid of a potentially threatening unknown future, as it will know that it will be able to gather the necessary resources and make needed tools. find the energy sources in the forest itself. Once your ecosystem grows and becomes self-sustainable, you may make smaller structures such as a home.

Rainfall will create ponds, where you will see fish.

The garden or forest model of the brain will not give you fast solutions to problems like the structured concrete habitat gave. However, it will eliminate the fear of not having a solution or running out of fuel. The ecosystem will further heal you and your brain stays connected to nature.

As many people over spending time in nature, many more people will come to your ecosystem to get benefits or healing from the ecosystem. They will offer you a better exchange and will be ready to lend as you have a fulfilling ecosystem.

Because nature will offer more varieties, you will face less rigidity from the environment. That is how your brain can become one and the same as real nature.