Author: Volker Busch
_Volker Busch_
Reading time: 20 minutes
Synopsis
Gute Nacht, Gehirn (2025) looks at how our mind moves between stress and rest. It also shows how thinking, feeling, and sensing work together in the brain. We give you scientific ideas. We connect them with tips you can use every day. These tips help you control your brain better. This will make you feel better in the long run and switch off more easily in the evenings.
What you’ll find inside: 5 mental strengths for your well-being.
Do you also have many thoughts spinning in your head in the evenings? Do you find it hard to just close your eyes and fall asleep peacefully? Sometimes your brain just cannot rest. Thoughts pop up like messages on a screen. Too many things demand your attention. You toss and turn. With all these thoughts, you lose your inner peace.
The strange thing is: Your brain is not the problem. It starts all these thoughts. It only works with what you give it. So, it is also the key to more peace. You just need to ‘feed’ it correctly. But what does an overstimulated brain need to calm down? How can you think in a way that helps you, not hurts you? We will show you five mental powers. They will help you clear your mind. They will help you switch off in the evenings. This will make you feel better in the long run.
Blink 1 – Imagination is much more than just a nice extra.
Imagine you could turn on your head like a projector. In seconds, a whole world of pictures, sounds, and feelings appears. This is exactly what happens when you use your imagination. It is not a child’s toy. It is one of your brain’s most amazing tools. Imagination means thinking and feeling in pictures. It works even if your senses do not see or hear anything.
When you look forward to a concert, meeting friends, or a holiday, your brain plays out this moment beforehand. It includes all the colours and sounds. Just imagining it makes your heart beat faster. Imagination activates your body. It prepares you emotionally for what is coming. Sadly, it also works the other way. If you worry, you create real stress reactions. But the good thing is that you can use this ability on purpose. You can use it not only to think about problems and make them bigger. You can also use it to find solutions.
People who can imagine their goals clearly often reach them. Why? Because these inner pictures make your brain work like a training room. You practice future situations. Then you are better prepared. The same idea works for learning. If you imagine numbers, words, or steps, your brain connects them more easily. It can then remember them faster later. So, imagination is not a luxury. It is a mental shortcut to success and understanding.
Empathy also comes from this ability. If you can imagine how someone else feels, you feel it inside too. This is the base for real connection. Without imagination, there would be no empathy, no stories, no culture.
In the brain itself, the ability to imagine spreads across many areas. The visual cortex creates inner pictures. The hippocampus brings memories and experiences. The emotion centres add feelings to everything. Only the strict control parts at the front of the brain hold back. This shows that imagination works best when you don’t judge too much or think too logically. In these moments, your thoughts can freely flow. You are not crazy. Instead, you create beautiful new ideas.
To feed your imagination, your brain needs fresh food. This means new places, new people, and new experiences. Read stories or listen to them. Your brain automatically creates pictures then. But with films and videos, your brain stays in ‘receive mode’. The pictures are already given to you.
Before you sleep, try a short mental journey. Imagine something beautiful and peaceful. These inner pictures will go with you into your dreams. They will also affect how you feel the next morning.
Blink 2 – Intuition is a smart shortcut for your brain.
You feel it. It’s a quiet pull in your stomach. Or a sudden feeling that you should do something, or not do it. This is intuition. It is a kind of inner knowing. It reacts faster than your mind can think.
This happens all the time in daily life. You choose an apartment because it immediately feels like home. Or you call someone at the exact moment they were thinking of you. Often, this is not by chance. Your brain processes many impressions, experiences, and memories in the background. It quickly makes a judgment. The result feels like a feeling. But it is actually very fast experience in action.
You can imagine intuition like a huge library in your head. Every moment, every meeting, every success, or mistake is stored there like a note in a book. When you face a new situation, your brain quickly looks through all these books. It searches for similar patterns. If it finds a known pattern, your gut feeling speaks up. So it is not magic. It is stored knowledge that shows up before your slower mind has checked all the facts.
People with a lot of experience in one area have a special sense for it. A surgeon feels when something is wrong in the operating room. An experienced firefighter pulls his team back in time because something does not feel right. And a doctor knows by instinct that a patient is seriously ill. This happens even before lab results show it. These quick insights come from years of practice. Intuition grows with knowledge and practice.
It is interesting that your body often gets involved. Maybe you remember a pull in your stomach when something felt bad. Or a light tingle when you were excited. Your body stores these feelings along with the experiences. If you meet a similar situation later, the feelings appear again. They are like an inner warning signal or a green light. These body signals, also called somatic markers, help you make good choices.
But be careful: Your gut feeling is not always right. When chance is involved, like in gambling, intuition does not help at all. In completely new situations, it lacks experience. Strong emotions can also cloud it. If you are frozen with fear or full of joy, you often hear your inner voice wrongly. In these cases, it is good to step back. Take a deep breath and decide later.
You can train your intuition. Gather many experiences. Go through the world with awareness. And stop regularly. Watch people, listen, and notice what is happening around you. Write down briefly in the evening what you saw. This is how you feed your inner library. And next time you have a gut feeling, check it again the next day. If it stays, you can trust it.
Blink 3 – Silence is not a luxury, but a need.
Sometimes, the best thing you can do for yourself is to simply become quiet. No noise, no distractions, no talking. Just you, your breath, and the gentle hum of the world slowly fading away. In silence, something begins that we rarely feel in noise: clarity.
We live in a time when almost every moment is filled with sound. Cars rush by, phones ring, screens flicker. Even when you are alone, the fridge hums, or thoughts fill the air. Our ears are always ‘on’. They never take a break. At some point, even a soft noise becomes too much. It’s no wonder that sometimes you long for peace. You want a place where simply nothing happens.
Noise is more than just annoying. It stresses your body, even if you do not notice it. Your heart beats faster. Your muscles tense up. Stress hormones fill your blood. In the long run, this makes you tired, easily annoyed, and sick. But there is another kind of noise. It is often louder than any street: the jumble of voices in your head. Thoughts spinning, tasks pushing, worries gnawing. You cannot turn off this kind of noise with earplugs. It needs something else: distance.
Silence does not mean nothing is happening. It is a conscious pause. You stop, inside and out. Like a mother calming her child, you calm your thoughts. They gently settle down again. In this calm, you suddenly hear something you have ignored for a long time: your inner voice. It does not judge. It guides you. In moments of silence, it becomes clear again. You feel what is right for you.
It is interesting that your brain also uses these breaks to grow. Research shows that new nerve cells form and connect better in quiet moments. Muscles get stronger after exercise during rest. In the same way, your mind needs these breaks to become stronger. So, silence is not wasted time. It is renewal.
But how do you find silence in a noisy daily life? Start with small ‘islands’. Leave your phone at home when you go for a walk. Just look out the window on the train instead of listening to music. Turn off the TV in the evening and just sit there for a moment. The first few minutes might feel strange. But this is where the biggest effect happens. Your heartbeat will become calmer. Your mind will become clearer. Your thoughts will sort themselves out.
Sometimes, uncomfortable feelings also appear in silence. Let them be. They show you what is truly important to you. If this is hard for you, turn your attention to something beautiful. For example, the light on a house wall, a familiar face, or a happy moment from the past. Gratitude is a quiet friend of peace.
You do not need to book a week in a monastery to find silence. A few minutes a day are enough. Especially when life is loud. Find your quiet place, wherever it may be. It could be in the park, by the river, on your balcony, or even in a sauna if you like. The main thing is that it is a place where the world stops for a moment.
Blink 4 – Purpose gives us strength.
Many people look for the big answer to why we live. But they miss that purpose is not out there somewhere. It is right in our daily lives. It is less about knowing the one meaning of life. It is more about finding purpose in life for you. It is not about the final truth. It is about the feeling that what you do has value.
You feel purpose when you make a difference. At the end of a long day, you look at your work and think: ‘That was good.’ You helped someone. You built something. Or you simply made things tidy. Even small things give you this feeling. An organized room, a well-kept garden, a thankful look. These make you feel that what you do matters. It is the opposite of Sisyphus’ endless climb. In that story, every effort is for nothing. Purpose comes when you see that your actions leave a mark.
For this feeling to grow, you need some things, like for a good meal. First, importance. This is knowing that what you do is important for you or others. Second, connection. This is the feeling of being part of something, of belonging. Third, direction. These are values and goals that guide you. And fourth, coherence. This is feeling that what happens to you makes sense and fits together. When these four parts work together, you get this deep, warm feeling: My life has purpose.
Of course, your brain also plays a role. Purpose is not just one thought. It is not a place you can find on a brain scan. It appears when many parts of your brain are active at the same time. These include parts for motivation and self-choice. Others create physical comfort. And some process social closeness. When you feel purpose, your brain works in harmony. It sends a clear signal: ‘This is right, this fits.’ This teamwork explains why purpose feels so complete. It is not just in your head, but in your whole body.
Purpose does not have to be big or amazing. It often shows itself in small moments. A grandmother playing with her grandchild. A neighbour helping others carry groceries. A person singing, painting, or gardening simply because it feels right. These activities do not need to save the world. They create connection, clarity, and joy in a quiet way.
If you want to bring more purpose into your life, start with yourself. Take a quiet moment and ask yourself: What is truly important to me? Write down five values that support your life. Maybe love, learning, freedom, health, or creativity? Think about how you can live each of these values every day. Maybe by having dinner together without phones, taking a walk after work, or starting a small personal project.
Blink 5 – Confidence is your superpower for hard times.
There are times in life when everything seems unsure. Plans can change. Paths lose their way. We ask ourselves how to go on. In such times, you see what truly helps you. It’s not just hope, but confidence. But what is the difference?
Hoping that everything will be okay is easy, but often it does not work. Confidence only shows when you act. You apply again after being rejected. You keep walking regularly even with back pain. You talk after an argument instead of hiding. These are small, real steps. They make you feel that you are not helpless against fate.
It is interesting that your brain immediately feels this attitude. When you develop a positive outlook, your reward system starts to work. It releases dopamine, also called the ‘anticipation hormone’. This not only makes you feel good. It also gives you drive and motivation.
And the good thing is that you can train your confidence. Here are three tips for practice:
First tip: Ask yourself what a clear improvement could be in four weeks. Write down a specific goal. Imagine how it feels to reach it. Just thinking about it ahead of time activates your brain. It starts an inner engine. Here, your imagination helps you, which we talked about at the very beginning.
Second tip: Get active! Don’t set too big a challenge for yourself. Instead, choose a small action you can do within 24 hours. Fifteen minutes of exercise, sending an application, making a clear phone call, breaking down a task into small steps. Every small success sends a message to your nervous system: ‘Things are moving forward.’ Repeat this daily and slowly increase the amount.
And third: Collect proof! Keep a short confidence diary in the evening. What did I do today that made my situation a little better? And how did I know that I was not helpless against fate? This look back connects experiences into a story of success. Your brain remembers this path. It automatically calls up positive experiences when the next low point comes.
This helps you get through hard times more easily. And the best part: With every challenge you overcome, your trust in yourself grows. This creates a positive cycle of confidence.
Summary
These were our five mental powers. They help you calm your mind. Attention is the base for all five. If you learn to guide your focus and quiet the constant noise of outside things, you will feel again what is truly important to you. Then intuition helps you make smart choices.
Silence gives you space to hear your inner voice. Also, your brain can heal and gain new strength in silence. This strength comes mainly from two sources. First, purpose. This is the deep feeling that what you do matters. It’s feeling connected to what supports and feeds you. Second, confidence. It gives you trust that you can influence your own life, even in hard times.
All these powers can be trained like muscles. This way, you strengthen your brain. And this will also improve your well-being in the long run.
Thank you for listening. See you in the next Blink.
Source: https://www.blinkist.com/https://www.blinkist.com/de/books/gute-nacht-gehirn-de