Get brain in gear for new year

People sometimes make New Year's resolutions for the wrong reason.

John Medina knows a lot about how people operate. He doesn't make resolutions, but he does have some advice for anyone who wants to have a better life in 2009. Take care of your brain.
--Read Jerry Large's column in the Seattle Times

--Excerpt below from Compete.com interview

Given the 12 Brain Rules, what advice do you have for marketers?

Three pieces of advice:
1. The brain is not interested in learning. And it is not interested in buying. It is interested in surviving.

2. It fleshes out this pre-occupation by creating and responding to two internal motivations, both strikingly Darwinian. The brain is interested in anything that will provide it a benefit. And it will do whatever it can to avoid pain.

3. Both motivations are related to a single goal: passing our genes onto the next generation. That sounds like it all comes down to sex, but it really comes down to endurance – in terms of millions of years. We barely survived our womb in the Serengeti, but we did so because of the overwhelming dictatorship of these twin interior forces.