Synaptic Self. Book Review

Today I celebrate a month in my 1001 ranger challenge. I continued to write everyday for one month and continuing.

I also finished reading the book Synaptic Self.

The book is a deep reference about neuroscience and how brain synapses shape who we are.

Quotes I liked from the book: Self image is perpetuated. This resembles another theory I read about involving the self fulfilling prophecy.

The book tells how all brain regions exhibit plasticity in earlier years and learning in later years of the human.

How all brain areas change their connections based on their functions. Sensory regions neurons reform to perform their function better, motor neurons in the cerebellum change their connections and also all other areas are modified by thinking as a behavior that controls how they communicate.

I read about the part of the brain stem that called the reticular activating system. This part makes the creature more alert. 

The researchers found that modulators like dopamine can stimulate this part of the brain in cases of unfamiliar, unexpected, novel or painful experiences. 


Those modulators are released in the brain and make what looks like a fire alarm in a small town.

This alarm can make every person in that town alert and stands to look for the source of fire. This is exactly what happens when you activate you reticular activating system.

I figured out why having a cold shower in winter makes this mood alternation. It happens because sudden and unexpected feeling of pain due to the cold water.

Just as Tony Robbins said, at the beginning, you feel that every cell in your body has heard the alarm for war, and then you start to calm down with a pleasant feeling of openness and activity.

I also started to read Elon Musk book for Ashlee Vance.

The book starts as a sci-fi movie or a space odyssey.

For the first look, the writer is trying to catch the reader's attention to Elon's nature as a nerd. 


I'm continuing to read the book and will keep updating.

Check our books on Amazon we created on our way to find happiness.

A Trip To Siwa Oasis

The Ultimate travel bag list

Why to Travel?

3 Easy steps to plan your trip

Solar Artwork

Backyard Wind Turbines

How to take control of your life

How to make things done on will? How to pursue your own goals?

How to take action on your targets?

The world travels, time flows and events happen. You just feel like a tree leaf n the wind. When you want to make a change in your life you are surprised by many demands that you must make.

If you only live in the critical actions zone of life, how would you feel if you want to make something useful?

Do all entrepreneurs live the happy and comfortable lives?


Today I thought how Elon Musk is doing with his life with all those companies he is working on.

Elon Musk is a strange phenomenon. Some people think he is an alien coming from outer space and wants to go home. Some others think that he is a visitor from the future and he is the first known time traveler.

But let’s get real. The guy is successful in what he is doing. Even with those crazy and weird ideas he has but they really work.

I heard him saying many times that he has no secret recipes. His knowledge comes from reading a lot of books. And his success comes from his work.

He reads a lot and he works a lot. That’s his secret recipe.


What’s your secret recipe of success?

Check our books on Amazon we created on our way to find happiness.

A Trip To Siwa Oasis

The Ultimate travel bag list

Why to Travel?

3 Easy steps to plan your trip

Solar Artwork

Backyard Wind Turbines

How and Why You Should Publish Your Book on CreateSpace.com

Writing and Publishing a book may be a dream for many people around the world. The good new is that we are actually living in a world that technology has made this dream possible.

That's not all. You also can publish your book in Electronic version on Kindle and other electronic forms but you can also publish it in the old paper pack form as a printed book.

And guess what, you don't have to pay anything for getting all this. You just need to write the book and start publishing it and wait for sharing royalties with publishers.

Last year I started publishing books on Kindle Electronic version using KDP Kindle Direct Publishing Platform. I shared the experience on this instructable.

The next step is to publish my book in printed form. Here is how I managed to do it.

The Problem

I used KDP to publish my first electronic book on Kindle. However, when I wanted to publish a paper pack version of it things got so weird.

When you work with a giant company like Amazon, you'd expect everything to go smooth and systematic, especially when you have tried them with something like Kindle eBook publishing.



If anything goes wrong, first you may think that it's caused due to lake of understanding from your side. Then you expect to get detailed help and technical support from the company.



But strange things started to happen. First, when I wanted to upload the paper pack version of my book, the systems gave me notices that the picture in the book had low resolution(Below 300 DPI) although it had good printing resolution already.

However I searched for software that reveals the actual DPI of my photos and I looked for a way that could enhance the resolution of my images but the system always checked the images and found them incompatible.

I even wanted to test it further so I scanned images with the highest resolution the scanner can give. But still the systems refusing to approve my images.

I thought there were some error or the images may look a little bit blurry(as the system mentioned to me)but after I finally submitted the files of my book and made a proof copy of it then it was the big surprise.

I found that all the images in my book showed as a big red X mark. Not a single image showed normally on my book.

After a lot of communications with Amazon and searching the web I found that this is an old chronic problem on Amazon KDP systems for paper pack publishing.

The problem is very obvious that it's even mentioned on the KDP official forum. 

The alternative option that many publishers suggested was to use CreateSpace.

It's an Amazon company specialized in paper pack printing and even Kindle eBook creation.

The Solution : Createspace

Createspace makes it easy for you to publish your paper pack version of your book.

Just as easy as you create your Kindle version on KDP, it only take minutes to complete the whole process.


Start from your project dashboard, you can see all steps of the process with green marks for completed steps, red for uncompleted, yellow for steps that needs your action and white for those steps are in review state.

Enter Your Book Data

First, you start by entering your book’s data: Title, Subtitle, Author, etc.

Then choose whither you enter ISBN or let Createspace generate and assign its own ISBN. 

Upload book interior

This is a PDF file format.


Choose background and pictures colors.

Then enter book description, category, keywords, author biography, book language and country of origin.

Add a Cover to Your Book

Then open cover creator or upload you own PDF cover file.

Cover creator is an easy interactive application that lets you create beautiful covers for your book using many templates or using your own photos.

Choose cover finish.

Finish, Submit and Review Phase

Choose distribution channels: 

Amazon US by default,
Amazon Europe,
And Extended channels like Createspace direct, Libraries and other retail stores.

Choose list price for each channel.

Press Submit Files For Review.

Wait until the progress bar finishes uploading.

Now your book is awaiting the review process.

Once your book is reviewed, you get an email indicating that your book is ready for proofing.

You can order a proof copy or you can download a digital proof copy of the book.

Press Approve to start lunching your book on Amazon US and Amazon Europe.

After a couple of weeks your book will be ready at the stores.


Check our books on Amazon we created on our way to find happiness.

A Trip To Siwa Oasis

The Ultimate travel bag list

Why to Travel?

3 Easy steps to plan your trip

Solar Artwork

Backyard Wind Turbines

How to avoid being trapped in Monkey Brain State – AKA continuous distraction

Focusing in the current age we are living in has been a difficult task even for grownups, most effective, and most productive people.

This is due to the fact that all of us has to do many things daily and react to thousands of interruptions every second.

The flow of information – even the useful f them – is overwhelming.

 The problem has far gone beyond little kids or ADHD. The problem is touching every person of us in the social media era, abundant connectivity and oceans of knowledge.

As far as I can frame the problem, there are too types of distractions state:

The first kind of distraction is short term distraction.

Like what happens to children and teens when they try to concentrate to their lessons or when solving problems while they are being tempted to watch TV or to go out with their peers.

I think productive people and most grownups in general can easily overcome this kind of distraction and get to focus their attention properly to complete tasks in front of them.

The second distraction state is the shiny objects syndrome.

This is what happens to productive people and especially entrepreneurs who always searching for new ideas and new targets to pursue.

The second type is the hardest. Since it makes the person trapped in the state of continues search for new ideas but unable to complete old ones neither stick to one idea to the end.

Are you feeling the same?

How could Elon Musk managed to create many companies that have so little in common while still be focused to get all of them successful?

I’m searching for this topic because frankly I’m suffering from it from a long time in my life and didn’t knew about it until recently.

Remembering an old interview

Once I was interviewed for a software scholarship and the interviewer asked me about what I had of technical skills. I answered about a lot of things.

The guy response was devastating but it was all real.

He told me that he wouldn’t be able to accept me for the scholarship because I had such more things to be interested in.

And this would lead me not to complete the scholarship.

In fact, I’ve been applying for this scholarship as trial to get specific about one topic in technology and master it on a solid ground.

Many years after I realized that I’m a multi passionate person. I have multi passions that I want to try and make.

After I started reading productivity and self-help books I knew the term Shiny Objects Syndrome. I thought it could happen to anybody.

Just today as I sit to write this article and searched the web for the term ‘Shiny Objects Syndrome’ SOS as I found that this syndrome affects entrepreneurs and creative people not just the ordinary people.

Now I’m being sincere to myself and have managed to stick to one project during a long time until now and it made my mind more concentrated into the target of getting better at writing.


After searching for cure to this illness as they call it, I found that the best cure for it is 

1. Focusing on one project to the end
2. Writing new ideas until the time come to pursue them
3. Keeping slower pace of action
4. One article even suggested that you have a dream killer person who is so skeptic that if you told him about your new idea he would find many reasons for it to die.

Try to focus your attention and keep your ideas safe until you finish those in progress.

Check our books on Amazon we created on our way to find happiness.

A Trip To Siwa Oasis

The Ultimate travel bag list

Why to Travel?

3 Easy steps to plan your trip

Solar Artwork

Backyard Wind Turbines