Page 99 - Hard Goals

90 HARD Goals

to a right-hemisphere, image-based system in addition to a ver-
bal system. A competing argument says that concrete words
activate a broader contextual verbal support but do not access
a distinct image-based system. Who’s right? Well, some recent
fMRI studies detected the brain regions involved in encoding
concrete versus abstract nouns and found that, here’s a shock,
there’s probably a good bit of truth in both theories.

A LOT OF GENIUSES ARE VISUAL

If you embrace the science of thinking visually, you’re not alone.
You’re joining some of the greatest minds in history. “Tesla
came to the idea of the self-starting motor one evening as he
was reciting a poem by Goethe and watching a sunset. Suddenly
he imagined a magnetic fi eld rapidly rotating inside a circle of
electromagnets. The energized-circle imagery apparently was
suggested by the disk of the sun and the pulse of rotation by
the poem’s rhythm.” So writes John Briggs regarding the great
physicist and inventor Nikola Tesla in his wonderful book on
the process of creative genius.
Tesla devoted his lifetime to rethinking the possible. And
we know from his own recorded words the substantial role ani-
mated visualization played in his many successes. “Before I put
a sketch on paper, the whole idea is worked out mentally. In
my mind I change the construction, make improvements, and
even operate the device. Without ever having drawn a sketch I
can give the measurements of all parts to workmen, and when
completed all these parts will fi t, just as certainly as though I
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had made the actual drawings.”