Easier

Sitting in the living room, which he realized was also a home library, the Client decided to write down what he had discovered so far. The Coach wanted to give him some space and said he would check back in a few. The Client was interested in another peek at Livewired. He sat down with the book, alone, on the sofa.

Inside Eagleman's book, the Client read about how scientists wanted to see how quickly our brains could begin rewiring and adapting to new inputs. The premise was simple, as he discovered on page 20: “Our DNA is not a blueprint, it is merely the first domino that kicks off the show.”¹ The show, he came to realize, was our incessant and never-ending ability to adapt. That adaptation didn't come when we were thinking of ourselves. Adaptation wasn't a function of self-image, belief, or will. Resilience was part of our DNA.

He read about a researcher, Alvaro Pascual-Leone, who was curious about how quickly the brain could adjust to extreme circumstances. Together with his fellow researchers, Pascual-Leone blindfolded a group of study participants, inducing blindness. The scientists witnessed neural reorganization, the same thing that happens with the blind, when they learn to read via Braille. The subjects’ brains were literally reorganizing, remodeling themselves to ...