The Brain as a Metabolically Demanding System

As I mentioned before, because of its importance for superlearning, the human brain accounts for approximately 2% of body weight yet consumes close to 20% of total energy. This disproportionate demand reflects its ongoing activity, including the maintenance of ionic gradients, synaptic transmission, and neural plasticity.

From a neurobiological perspective, cognitive performance depends on a steady supply of glucose or ketone bodies, efficient mitochondrial function, and adequate micronutrient availability. These factors influence neurotransmitter synthesis, myelination, synaptic plasticity, and the balance of inflammation.

When these inputs remain stable, the brain maintains what I describe as signal clarity. Neural communication becomes efficient, memory consolidation strengthens, and attention stabilizes. When deficiencies or imbalances emerge, this clarity is gradually replaced by noise, reflected in fatigue, reduced focus, and impaired learning.

This principle is central to my work on cellular intelligence. Neurons do not operate in isolation. Their function reflects the quality of energy production, molecular signaling, and environmental inputs they receive.

Purpose of this Chapter

In this chapter of How I Accelerated My Learning Effortlessly for a Happier Life, inspired by a recent study, I discuss how dietary patterns influence cognitive function, particularly in the context of aging and long-term brain health, using one of the components of my SMART MIND Loop™: Neuronutrition

My intention is to clarify how nutritional adequacy, metabolic stability, and micronutrient balance shape the brain’s and nervous system’s ability to learn, adapt, and maintain function over time. I don’t promote or criticize any specific diet, as my focus is on nutritional biochemistry.

I also introduce recent large-scale research exploring associations between vegetarian dietary patterns and cognitive outcomes in older adults. These findings offer an opportunity to reflect more deeply on how dietary restriction, when not carefully managed, may influence neurobiology. At the same time, they remind us that the relationship between diet and cognition is complex, multifactorial, and highly individualized.

As you read this chapter, I invite you to shift focus from labels such as “vegetarian”, “omnivorous,” or “carnivorous” toward a more fundamental question: Does the diet naturally support the brain’s structural, metabolic, and neurochemical needs across the lifespan using the principles of nutritional biochemistry?

Insights from a Recent Study on Cognitive Decline

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Sample chapter of How I Accelerated My Learning Effortlessly for a Happier Life

During the early stages of my doctoral studies in the 1990s, I found myself in a state that I can now describe with more precision than I could at the time. I was not lacking discipline, curiosity, or intellectual capacity.

On the contrary, I was deeply engaged, highly motivated, and immersed in a rapidly expanding body of knowledge in academia and the corporate world.

Yet despite this engagement, my learning became increasingly inefficient, fragmented, and mentally exhausting. My health was also declining due to elevated cortisol in my bloodstream.

The experience felt paradoxical. The more I learned, the less clarity I seemed to gain. Information accumulated, yet understanding did not deepen at the same pace. I got frustrated and disappointed, blaming myself as a person with learning difficulties.

My attention became unstable, my thinking less coherent, and my sense of direction increasingly diffuse. What I interpreted then as a personal limitation, I now recognize as a systemic overload of cognitive processes operating without coordination.

At that time, I lacked the conceptual language to explain what I was experiencing. I did not yet understand cognitive load as a measurable and manageable construct.

Nor did I recognize that unresolved tasks, heightened by what is now called the Zeigarnik effect, were occupying cognitive bandwidth and fragmenting my attention. My mind remained persistently engaged, even during rest, creating a background noise that reduced both clarity and efficiency.

It was during this period that I began working closely with a thesis supervisor and mentor whom I will refer to as Dr. Wise. His role extended far beyond academic supervision.

He observed patterns in my thinking and working habits that I could not yet see in myself. Rather than offering more information or additional techniques, he introduced a shift in perspective that would gradually alter how I approached learning.

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Sample chapter of my book, How I Accelerated My Learning Effortlessly for a Happier Life,

When Learning Requires Letting Go Before Moving Forward

In this chapter of How I Accelerated My Learning Effortlessly for a Happier Life, I will introduce a set of psychological assumptions that I have repeatedly observed among learners across different environments, including my younger self.

These assumptions are rarely questioned because they are absorbed early in life through education systems, cultural norms, and professional expectations.

Over time, I realized that some key learning challenges do not originate from a lack of ability or effort. They emerge from beliefs that shape how we approach learning, success, and personal growth.

Some of these beliefs might appear useful on the surface, yet they might gradually limit curiosity, long-term development, and cognitive resilience.

Through decades of recorded observation, teaching at the tertiary level, and personal learning experiences, I found that meaningful progress usually begins with unlearning, subtracting non-useful things from the memory by weakening the associated neural pathways.

This process requires examining familiar ideas with care, curiosity, and an open mind, understanding their origins, and replacing them with new perspectives that better reflect how the brain and mind actually function.

Once new knowledge becomes available and functions well, the undesirable ones gradually fade away, although they never get erased from memories. They just integrate into more functional and useful knowledge and experiences. This reflects the lifelong power of neuroplasticity.

Although the items I discussed in this chapter have strong scholarly backing in the educational and pscyhology literature, I refrained from going into too much scientific or technical detail to keep this chapter useful and easy to understand for a broad audience in eight short sections.

My goal in this chapter is to offer valuable perspectives, principles, and practical tips for unlearning what’s useless and learning what’s useful, aligned with our personal and professional goals.

Part 1: The Cost of Confusing Success with Sacrifice

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As I used to, some people associate brain rewards with pleasure, excitement, or short-lived happiness. Of course, these experiences matter; however, they represent only one side of how the brain reinforces well-being.

Over time, I have observed that the most content and resi…

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The longer I observed human thought, emotion, behavior, learning, and well-being, the clearer one truth became. Boundaries are not optional skills. They are conditions for survival and growth.

Across every layer of being human, from the body to meaning itself, life functions only when boundaries exist and remain intact. I can’t emphasize its importance e…

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Why the Brain Honors Needs Over Wants And How the Subconscious Decides What Truly Matters

Once, I asked my mentor why I could not achieve a goal I wanted so intensely. He paused and asked, “Did you really need it?” That question opened my eyes. It changed how I manifest, shi…

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Dear members, I decided to share this early access chapter with our superlearners community, as the subconscious mind plays a critical role in accelerating our learning. I believe this chapter can give you valuable information and useful perspectives regarding methodical use of intention to leverage the power of our subconscious.

Sample Chapter of “How Tapping Into My Subconscious Mind Changed My Life”

As Carl Jung wisely stated, until we make the unconscious conscious, it will direct our lives, and we will call it fate. Earl Nightingale added another layer of clarity when he explained that whatever we plant in the subconscious mind and nourish with repetition, intention, and emotion eventually becomes reality.

These insights reveal an essential truth: the subconscious is powerful not because it is mystical, as some might think, but because it quietly governs how we think, feel, behave, and live.

We are manifesting every moment of our lives. Some of us manifest outcomes we do not want, and some create outcomes that feel extraordinary enough to be called magic. One difference is the intention.

Last month, I announced that I was writing a new book on this exciting subject and shared a few early chapters, such as this one, titled The Rhythm of the Subconscious: How I Let My Inner Mind Lead the Way. I will continue doing so throughout this month.

The title of the upcoming book is How Tapping Into My Subconscious Mind Changed My Life: A Scientific and Personal Exploration of the Mind Beneath Awareness. It was recognized by discerning readers and has already reached the top 100 of the Best Sellers in Behavioral Psychology and is trending in Cognitive Psychology.

Therefore, I decided to make this version exclusive to Amazon, as it is the only publishing company that fairly distributes my content without paid advertisement. I will also add it to Kindle Unlimited and Audible so that many readers can read or listen to it as part of their subscription.

Some people describe that outcome as the manifestation of our desires. To me, it is the natural result of working with the multiple layers of the brain in a structured way.

It may look magical from the outside, yet every outcome I achieved followed methodical, replicable mechanisms grounded in neuroscience and cognitive psychology as recorded in my research journal and personal diary.

What is this chapter about?

In this chapter, I will explain how intentions become embedded in the subconscious and start shaping behaviour without constant effort. While many view the subconscious as mysterious or spiritual, neuroscience gives us a clearer picture.

The subconscious operates like the brain’s automation engine. It manages routines, emotional reactions, default interpretations, and the micro-choices we make without noticing.

When an intention reaches this layer, behaviour aligns naturally. When it does not, we depend on willpower alone, and willpower is a limited and rapidly depleting resource.

That is why people can know exactly what they want yet struggle to act on it. They rely on conscious effort instead of subconscious alignment. If we truly want to achieve our dreams, we need more than determination. We need all layers of the brain and mind on our side.

The Quiet Decision-Maker in the Background Depending on Intention

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The Brain That Cannot Stop Looking for Meaning: An Introduction to Apophenia and Pareidolia

Through my research across neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology, psychiatry, and anthropology, one theme appears consistently: the human brain is wired to search for patterns.

The brain groups shapes, connects events, builds narratives, and predicts what comes next. This ability underpins language, science, creativity, intuition, and innovation. However, there is a darker mirror to this natural gift.

Sometimes the brain detects patterns that aren’t actually there. It forms connections without evidence, interprets randomness as meaning, and turns ambiguity into certainty. This tendency is called apophenia, pattern-seeking pushed into overactivity. I also cover pareidolia.

In this chapter, I explore apophenia as a continuum that stretches from creative insight to cognitive distortion. You will learn how the brain produces patterns, how this ability can enhance superlearning, and when the exact mechanism risks tilting toward confusion or delusion.

What Is the Difference Between Apophenia and Pareidolia?

The human brain dislikes randomness and instinctively tries to impose meaning on chaos. This broad tendency is called apophenia, perceiving connections, patterns, or significance in unrelated or random information.

Pareidolia is a specific, sensory subtype of apophenia. It occurs when the perception system detects familiar objects, most often faces, in ambiguous stimuli: a smiling car grille, a human figure in clouds, the “man in the Moon,” or a voice heard in static.

In a short formula: Apophenia = seeing meaning or connection anywhere (events, coincidences, ideas, narratives, symbols) and pareidolia = seeing or hearing familiar objects, especially faces, in noise.

Pareidolia is especially striking because it recruits actual perceptual machinery. fMRI studies show that when people see a “face” in clouds or toast, the fusiform face area activates, not as strongly as for real faces, but clearly above baseline.

The illusion feels convincing precisely because it is not imagination; it is the brain’s real face-recognition network misfiring on random input.

Apophenia, by contrast, is broader and more conceptual. It can support creativity, hypothesis generation, and intuitive leaps, and in other contexts give rise to magical thinking, conspiratorial meaning-making, or, at the extreme, delusional beliefs.

Both phenomena spring from the same underlying evolutionary engine: A predictive brain that would rather risk a false positive (“There’s a face!” and “There’s a pattern!”) than miss a real threat or opportunity.

The Predictive Brain: Priors, Precision, and the Roots of Apophenia

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My SMART MIND Loop™ framework for superlearners provides a clear path to this renewal. I will summarize relevant aspects of the framework.

Why I Wrote This Book Chapter for the Superlearners Community

We know that, sadly, millions of people suffer from cognitive decline, usually manifesting as memory loss or impairment. However, there is hope of preserving and even sharpening memory before cognitive decline.

In this chapter of How I Accelerated My Learning Effortlessly for a Happier Life, I will explain why recalling information becomes more challenging with age and what we can do to keep our memories sharp and flexible. I exclude memory decline or loss from neurodegenerative disorders like dementia.

You will gain insights into how the brain’s architecture changes over time, what mechanisms limit retrieval in later years, and how we can use neuroscience-based strategies to restore access to our stored knowledge.

Without overly scientific and technical details, my goal is to help you, of any age, understand how memory works and that learning never needs to stop, despite its challenges in older ages, no matter how old the brain becomes.

If you are pessimistic about your memory and feel deep concerns like many older adults, this chapter can help you become a realistic optimist. The hope I give in this story has sufficient scientific backing and also aligns with my observations and personal experiences.

Part I: The Science Behind Memory Decline with Age

When a young adult recalls a vivid moment, many brain regions work in harmony. The hippocampus retrieves contextual details, the prefrontal cortex directs attention, and neurotransmitters fine-tune the entire process.

In older adults, those same pathways still exist, but their communication becomes less efficient. The message travels more slowly, and sometimes it arrives blurred. Understanding why helps us discover how to reverse some of that loss.

I explain the scientific mechanisms under seven subtitles before addressing the memory decline or improvement points using my SMART MIND Loop™ framework for superlearners.

1 — Overview of Hippocampus

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Mastery Begins Where Control Ends: Letting the Subconscious Lead

Like many academics, I once believed that learning was primarily about control in the prefrontal cortex, such as conscious focus, deliberate practice, and sustained effort to achieve our goals.

Nevertheless, years of teaching superlearners and studying how the brain and mind truly work have reshaped that belief. I now see learning as a dance between effort and surrender, awareness and unawareness, structure and spontaneity.

The most powerful breakthroughs come not when we force them, but when we allow space for the subconscious mind to emerge.

That insight did not arrive from scholarly theories. It grew from close observation of my own mental rhythms, and from watching gifted learners do something remarkable: trust what they could not see yet feel.

This is part II of the subconscious mind chapter of How I Accelerated My Learning for a Happier Life. I shared Part I yesterday and linked it here if you missed it, as it sets the context and gives my research background with reasons.

The Hidden Engines of Learning and Mastering What We Desire
What Teaching Superlearners Taught Me About the Importance of the Subconscious Mind in Gaining Desired Knowledge and…medium.com

How I Started Educating My Subconscious Mind Subliminally

I studied the mechanisms of the subconscious mind from the remarkable works of several eminent scholars and practitioners in human development, leadership, neuroscience, cognitive science, anthropology, linguistics, psychology, and mental health.

I used many techniques and wrote thousands of pages of scripts for my research journals. In this story, I want to share one of the relatively newer experiments that might be relatable to you.

One day, I wanted to give more methodical and clearer instructions to my subconscious mind, so I decided to write down how I respond to different mental states and place the laminated posters in various parts of my home and on my desk at the workplace. Apart from using it as a research artifact, I also shared it with family, friends, students, and colleagues.

My purpose was not to write it as just a productivity hack. My goal was to methodically educate my deeper intelligence (subconscious) that guides my behavior, calm my turbulent thoughts, and regulate my emotions. This is what I wrote clearly with my hand:

When I feel anxious, I walk, swim, dance, or do calisthenics.
When I am full of ideas, I write.
When I am mentally energetic, I work or help others.
When my mind is empty, I read, take an online course, listen to podcasts, or watch videos.
When I am exhausted or have low energy, I wind down, meditate, hum, or sleep.
— Dr Mehmet Yildiz

At first glance, this may read like a simple to-do list, and it can be used for that purpose. But it reveals something essential to create harmony in my life: a conscious partnership with the subconscious mind.

Rather than fighting a mental state, I work with it intentionally and with empathy, understanding, and compassion. Rather than suppressing or overriding my internal rhythm, I respond to its message.

This approach is not indulgence, a cop-out, or a productivity hack. It is strategic alignment with my whole brain to achieve my goals, produce desired outcomes, and live a healthy and happy life.

The Subconscious Responds to Rhythm, Not Pressure

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This …

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Dear Subscribers,
Today, I will share another chapter from my upcoming book to inform, …

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For thousands of years, chants have echoed in temples, monasteries, and community gatherings. They carried rhythm, meaning, and a sense of collective breath. To ancient practitioners, chanting was not only prayer or ritual but a way to align the mind, body, and spirit.

Today, science is beginning to sho…

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The Dichotomy of an Obese Academic and Extraordinary Wim Hof

When Wim Hof lost his wife to suicide, he found himself alone with two sm…

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I have had a deep…

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We Are Moving From SEO to GEO, From Web Indexes to AI Interfaces, From Search Engines to Answer Engines

Whe…

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Nuanced Life Hacks from Cognitive Science Studies

I have written about the glymphatic system before, but many of those stories have remained quietly tucked away, unseen by most readers. This is surprising and concerning because the glymphatic system is one of the brain’s most i…

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