Category Archives: Brain Power

BAM! BAM! BAM!

As you read this, sitting in that chair, noticing the sounds in your environment, take a moment and remember something that makes you feel good. Any memory will do. Yesterday, last week, three years ago. Got one? Good. It’s nice to have good memories, isn’t it? Try it again. Choose a different one. Like that one time, when you did that thing that was so, you know. And when you think of that now, you can remember how that made you feel? Ok?

Sometimes though, you’ll be walking down the street, minding your own business, and you’ll see something, and it will remind you of something else, and that will remind you of THAT, and instant blah. Now you’re in a bad mood. Why did you have to think of that? Don’t you hate it when that happens? Well this is your lucky day. How would you like to go in and surgically change the feelings of bad memories? So when you remember it, it makes you feel neutral, or even good? How would that be? Ok?

Ok. Here’s what you need. Think of a semi bad memory (after you learn to do this easily, you can go and destroy bigger and badder memories, pick an easy one for practice.)  Choose one where there is a specific picture you can think of to get that old yucky feeling. Ok, got it? Ok put it aside for now, we’ll mess it up in a little bit.

Now think of a good memory. Something that you can think of where a picture of it will give you a good feeling. Anything will do.

For example, my bad picture is of this kid that used to tease me in grade school. Called me Georgie Porgie…kissed the girls…etc.  And my good picture is of my friends kid, who’s four and always smiling and laughing and full of energy.

Ok, here’s what you do. Take the bad picture, and put it in your left hand (in your imagination) and slowly bring it to your face. When you do this, you should slowly feel the semi bad feeling increase in intensity. When your hand gets about halfway to your face, IMMEDIATELY and powerfully bring the other hand, which contains the other GOOD picture to your face, and REALLY FEEL the good feeling hit you full on in the face.

BOOM!

Ok, shake your hands out, think of something neutral, like the middle name of your second cousin spelled backwards or something. Do it again. Remember, left hand slow to your face, semi bad emotion getting more intense, and then BAM (Just like Emerill) right hand with the good feeling suddenly flooding your surprised brain with good feelings. Remember to see the pictures. If you can’t see the pictures, just pretend. Your brain doesn’t know the difference.  Do this 10 or 15 times. It shouldn’t take more than a couple minutes.

What most people notice, is that after you do this a few times, when you try and think of that old memory that used to give you that old emotion, it doesn’t work any more. You’ve successfully scrambled your own brain. Isn’t that fun? You might have to do this a couple days for it to take, but that’s normal.

So now, when you are walking down the street thinking about lolly pops and puppy dogs and something hijacks your good feelings with a stray memory, you can straighten it right out. BAM!

Permalink

Towards Pleasure and Away From Pain

As I write this article, it is a time of year where many people around the globe resolve to do certain things, or stop doing certain things. While this article can help in that regard, you can easily use it to create new goals, or get rid of bad habits any time of the year.

If you’ve read my articles on goal setting, or creating a compelling future, this one will blend right in. If you haven’t had the chance yet, you might consider it so that you can receive maximum benefit.

In this article, you will learn an easy to learn and simple to implement technique to motivate yourself to put into action a plan that you’d like to begin, but for some reason, haven’t yet (until now) been able to find the motivation.

It’s based on the idea that all humans are generally motivated by two broad categories. Toward pleasure, and away from pain. And this procedure makes use of those two tendencies to supercharge your brain to naturally move you in the direction you want to go.

Step One

Think of something you’d like to do more of, or something you’d like to do less of. For example, lets say exercise more. So the thing you want to do more of is exercise more.

Step Two

Brainstorm all the great things that will happen on three different levels, if you exercise more. On three different levels, I mean three different levels of cause/effect. For example, if I exercise more, I’ll sleep better at night. If I sleep better at night, I’ll be able to do better at my job everyday. If I do better at my job everyday, the chances I’ll get promoted will increase. See how that works? Keep in mind your main goal is to start to exercise more, and the second and third things are simply the carrot to keep pulling you in that direction. Once exercising more is a firm habit (in this example,) you can move on to other things.

Step Three

Brainstorm all the negative, things, along with the three levels of cause/effect of the bad things that will happen if you don’t start your program. For example, if I don’t start to exercise, then I’ll gain weight, and if I gain weight, then I’ll have to buy more clothes, and if I buy more clothes, I won’t have as much money, and so on and so on. Remember, these are to keep you focusing on negative aspects of life, but to give you impetus to move away from the things you don’t want to happen.

Now if you picked something you wanted to stop doing, like biting your nails, the process is the same. Brainstorm all the good things that will happen if you stop, and all the bad things that will happen if you don’t.

If you spend a few minutes to do this every night, you will soon find that you almost automatically start to move in the direction you want to go. And before you know it, you will be keeping a journal filled with all your easy successes in life.

If you enjoyed this article, remember to check back often for more, as I update this site daily. And be sure to share or link this site, because when you help others, you are really helping yourself.

Permalink

Going Deeper, Even Still

I got it in my head once that I wanted to run a marathon. And of course, instead of starting to train slow, two miles a day for a week, and then three miles a day for a week, I decided to jump right in and run 7 miles for my first training run. Let’s just say that walking the next day was a little bit less than pleasant.

My coworker, being the incredibly nice guy that he is, would walk up and pretend he was going to punch me in the leg. Naturally I involuntarily contracted my thigh muscles, causing an unbelievable amount of pain. He did that all day long. I grimaced, he laughed. Even when I saw him coming, and knew what he was up to, I still couldn’t help but to contract my muscles when he wound up on me. Kind of when the doctor hits your knee with that little hammer that he has. Except that is kind of cool. This was rather painful.

I’ve heard from psychologists that stress effects the mind the same way. Something happens in the world, and no matter how much we are expecting it, or see it coming, our mind contracts, causing unneeded and unresourceful mental anxiety. So what’s the answer?  One way to train your mind to relax is through meditation. There are many medically proven benefits to a daily meditation practice. Lower blood pressure, better sleep, more energy during the day, better clarity of thought. When you think about it, all these benefits can easily be explained by a mind that has been trained to be relaxed when you want it to.

And just like when you relax your body by not moving your muscles, you relax your mind by not moving your thoughts. One way to still your mind is to count your breaths. One, breath in. Breath out slow. Two, breath in, breath out slow. Focus only on the numbers. Release all other thoughts. If other thoughts drift into your mind, just allow them to continue drifting, until they float all the way past and fall off the edge of your consciousness. It doesn’t really matter if you sit in a chair, or on the floor, or even lie on your bed when you do this. Breath in, one. Breath out. Breath in, two, breath out. A good goal to aim for is to get to three without noticing any other thoughts. When you can get up to three, shoot for five, and then ten. Slow. In. Out. And it doesn’t matter how long you do it, a few minutes is really all you need.

As you continue to improve your skills, you will notice that because you are able to release thoughts easier and easier, those old ideas that used to cause you anxiety can’t do so as much any more. And sooner or later, you will come to the liberating realization that it wasn’t those ideas at all that was doing it, it was your mind’s reaction to them. And the more you train your mind, the more it seems you can shape your reality.

While you walk through the world with your less reactive mind, you will naturally start to see opportunities that you didn’t see before, so much so you will wonder why you didn’t realize you could do this earlier.

Permalink

Develop Powerful Appreciation

There is a scene in the incredible movie Taxi Driver where the main character is holding his hand above the open fire of his stove, in order to strengthen himself, or perhaps to prove to himself how tough he is. The power of this scene is that the character, who is completely psycho, holds his hand above the stove without flinching. Stone faced. The reason this is such a powerful scene is the audience can’t help but to imagine how incredibly painful that must feel.

Psychological experts know that the only two fears humans are born with are heights and loud noises. The rest we have to learn. How long do you think it took you to realize that fire was dangerous? A second? Less? Have you ever drank too much of a certain liquor (for me it was Tequila) and then later just couldn’t even stand the smell of it? How long do you think it took your brain to learn that liquor is poison, and you should stay away from it? (Or at least too much of it.) Probably not very long.  How long did it take to learn that speaking in public could be a dangerous thing? Probably not very long. Probably all it took was once in second or third grade when you spoke out in class and the results weren’t quite what you expected.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you’re one of the lucky ones that can feel really comfortable whenever you stand up and speak persuasively with confidence and charisma as if you were Cicero speaking to the Roman Senate. If you are that confident, I’ll be sure to vote for you when you run for congress. The rest of us will have to continue hiding behind our 3×5 cards. 

The reason we learn so fast to be afraid of things is naturally because it is matter of safety.  If you’ve read the article on memory, you know that pain, or potential pain is one of the key elements of forming a strong neural connection.

But what about learning skills that are enhancing? How cool would it be if we were able to learn new habits as quickly as we learned our fears?  What if we could unlearn false fears, and replace them with feelings of safety as easily as we learned real, physical fears?

In order to do that, we need to charge our neural pathways with the same strong emotions that we charged them when we learned it was dangerous to stick our fingers in a light socket. (It only took me once to learn that was a bad idea.)

Let’s take exercise as an example. You get up in the morning. Look at the clock. Ugh. It’s cold outside. If you didn’t get out of bed and go for a walk like you were hoping to, you’d get an extra hour of sleep. You could always starting walking tomorrow, right? But if it didn’t have to be that way? What if you could train your brain to automatically feel motivated when your alarm went off? What if the idea of going for a walk made you feel as good as the prospect of polishing off a bucket of ice cream?

The emotion to use when training your brain for good habits is appreciation. We humans like to worry. Whenever something good happens, some of us have a voice in the back of our heads saying “I don’t know, this might not last very long.” I’m sure that’s happened to you at least once, right? The key to increasing appreciating for something, is to quiet those voices that silently nag you. And the way to do that is through simple practice. The more you focus on your appreciation, for anything, the more it grows. It’s just like exercise for your brain. It doesn’t take long. Take a deep breath, and really feel appreciation for the air as it comes in your lungs. Feel appreciationthat you can use the internet to read email from your friends, read cool articles, and learn fascinating stuff.  Feel appreciation for anything. The more you practice this, the more you will naturally notice that it gets easier and easier. 

Experiment with this for the next week. Pick a color. Lets say red. Everytime you see the color red, appreciate something. Anything. Only for a few moments. The more you practice, the stronger it gets. And when you develop the natural ability to feel appreciation, you will realize something amazing. I’ll leave to you to find out exactly what that amazing discovery is.

You can relax, and feel comfortable, because I’ll be posting many more articles on exactly how to use your new versatile skills of appreciation in the near future.

Permalink

Instantly Develop a Powerful Memory

Have you ever wished you could develop a potent memory that would cause you to never ever again need to write anything down? Have you ever been amazed by those guys on TV who could instantly memorize a room full of people that they’d just met? Can you imagine how cool you’d look to a room full of your friends when you stand up to give a speech with absolutely no note-cards whatsoever? Well, after you read this article and put these techniques into practice you’ll be able to easily develop such incredibly powerful mental skills you’ll not only have useful strategies but a set of wildly entertaining party skills. Ready?

The basic method is to learn a technique called pegging. This is a wild form of association.  Association is when you immediately link two ideas or words together. Like for example, when you think of the word baseball, you might immediately think of glove, or bat, or stadium. That is an association. Technically it’s because inside your brain there’s a strong neural connection between those two words. The idea behind pegging is to create a strong association between something that you already know well, to that which you want to remember.

Normally, these associations take time and effort. Like spelling. Many words don’t follow any normal spelling rules, like psychology, for example. The only way to remember to spell it without thinking is to write it over and over. Similarly, unless you can count really fast in your head, the only way to remember that 12 x 12 = 144 is to repeat the equation enough times so that you can create a strong neural connection.

However, pegging is an easier, quicker, and much more fun way to do this. Here are the simple steps:

Step 1: Create a list of items that you already know inside and out. For example, five things that are almost alwasy in your bedroom. (Like your bed for example.)

Step 2: Create an itemized list of the things you want to remember. Points in a speech, items at the grocery store, steps of the Kreb cycle, anything will work.

Step 3: Create a fantastically crazy cartoonish action and sensory filled picture containing any item from Steps 1 and 2 from above. It helps to involved yourself in this action cartoon picture. And if you are comfortable with it, add in the two secret ingredients (more on these later.)

For example, let’s say you are going to the store, and you need to buy eggs. You choose an item from your bedroom, let’s say your bed. So then you need to create a fantastical mind movie starring the eggs and your beds.  How about this: You are really tired, and you walk into your bedroom and collapse on your bed. Only somebody has put about a thousand eggs under your sheets, and all the runny egg stuff oozes out all over you, in your hair, under your clothes, inside your socks, between your toes. Or how about this: You come home, tired liked before, only this time you go to collapse on our bed, but you realize too late that your bed has magically changed into a giant egg, complete with sheets and covers and bed spread. As you collapse on your bed/egg it naturally breaks, but only partially and you find yourself inside a giant egg with all the bedsheets soaked in egg goo, and wrapped around you. Make sure to really feel the egg goo in your mind as you create this picture. It sounds complicated, but it really only takes a couple seconds.

So after you easily create this image, when you go to the store, and think of your bed, the egg image will instantly pop into your head.  You peg things to items in your bedroom, your bathroom, your car, any landmarks between your place and the closest 7-11, anything will work.

After you practice for a while, you’ll naturally become extremely proficient. I once gave a demonstration in front of a speech class I was taking.  People were amazed. When you do this, especially at parties or happy hours, people will think that you are a genius. Which, actually, you are as you start to use these mind development techniques that many others, like you, have learned.

And the secret ingredients? Sex and pain. Yep. If you involved sex and pain in your picture, it will be impossible NOT to remember it. Just make sure to keep the sex and the pain involving yourself (and the eggs and the bed in the above examples.) Be as graphic and creative as possible, but make sure not to let anybody peek inside your head while you are doing this, because they might think you are a little weird. And be sure that after you do this at parties and impress your friends with your new super powerful memory techniques, not to tell them about the sex and the pain part. You might be walking home.

Make sure to check back often to read these articles.  Because I will be posting as often as possible, please link or share this site as well.

Permalink

OH BABY!

I was sitting in a coffee shop yesterday, minding my own business, when a young, happily beeming woman walked in carrying a very recent addition to the human race. Tightly bundled in a comfortable looking baby sling, his head poked out and his eyes looked around, ceaselessly amazed at the colors and lights and sounds and activity. Imprinting his fresh young brain with stimuli to later categorize into learnings and beliefs and ideas about who is he and how he fits into all this amazing unfolding of stuff that is always presenting itself to us.

I tried to think back to when I learned something, really able to truly discover something and give it meaning. Through some slippery power of thought, connect cause to effect. When I first noticed that when you turn that round thing on the door, that other part that looks like it’s the same material goes in and out of the side of the door.  Or when you are holding those sort of round white things, and you open your hands, they fall and crack open on the ground into a yellow gooey mess. Or those squiggly lines that my first grade teacher wrote on the board, and made us copy over and over, that had no meaning at the time, but later, through some voodoo magic that I am still trying to wrap my mind around, became letters with which I could build words and sentences and express complicated ideas and desires and plans that were inside my head, waiting for me to give them life.

But then I realized that something happens to us as we grow old. For some reason, we stop being able to see the world as an exciting unfolding of learning and discovery.  We somehow learn, or believe, or pretend, that once we get to a certain level of knowledge, the learning stops.  We trick ourselves into thinking that instead of being people who always find new and exciting things to learn about, we slip into the comfortable habit of doing, instead of becoming. Does it have to be that way? Do we have to give up any idea that we are able to continuously learn and grow and change? And if we do change and learn, does it have to be to satisfy some external requirements by society? Can we not set our own course of our lives so that we can not merely serve others, but to serve others in a way that can benefit us both?

As the young woman sat down to join her friends, they all took turns holding young child. A child who has a long journey ahead of him. Clearly enjoying the support of the caring adults around him. Well equiped by nature to pull from his environment all the resources he will need to survive and thrive. In his young mind the few, yet to be voiced thoughts soon to be joined by many others. The thoughts we all too soon let go of. The thoughts we should never forget, as they can help us to master our reality in any stage of our life.

What is this?

What does it mean?

How can I use it? How can I share it?

I like it! How can I get more?

 

Permalink

This Mind For Rent

I had an interesting thought this morning while I was out for my daily walk. I make a trip through the neighborhood, and then finish up on a small hill hear a temple where I do my daily Ki Qong. As I was on my way back home, I passed by an apartment complex,  with a big sign out front saying “For Rent.” For some reason, it immediately reminded me of a line from the song Tom Sawyer, by Rush:

“…though his mind is not for rent, to any god or government, always hopeful yet discontent…”

Which naturally caused my mind to drift, as it usually does after a nice walk, to thoughts and where they come from. I’ve read and heard form a variety of sources that fully ninety percent of our thoughs are a rerun of thoughts from before. Yesterday, the day before yesterday, and so on.

I started to think about memes, which are thoughts but follow a certain set of rules, or patterns. They were first described by Richard Dawkins in his book “The Selfish Gene.” Memes can be described as self replicating bits of information passed on from person to person, or even to a whole culture.

Religious doctrines, political propaganda, cake recipes, and even The Macarena are examples of memes. Ideas or concepts passed through different levels of groups and culture. There has been much debate on what makes a good meme.  What makes some memes replicate, what makes others die off quickly. What makes some easy to believe and keep in your brain, and others to seem foolish and ridiculous. How much thought have you given to your thoughts? Are they yours? Do they really serve you? Do they make your life easier? Do they make your life happier? Where did you learn them from? Who taught them to you?

We are all born with a semi blank slate. (There is much debate on the blankness of that slate.) As we grow, we learn much from others.  Thoughts, strategies, languages, gestures, what is important and not important, what is scary and friendly, what we are capable of and not capable of.

There comes a point in our lives, though, when it becomes important to make a decision on what we accept in our brains, and reject.  It becomes evident that you need to stop blindly following others, and choose your own path.  Problems can occur if when we become adults, we still rely on the “I’ll let other people do my thinking for me” strategy that was useful as a child. If we cling to this way of thinking, it can be severely restrictive as we get older. What was a blessing early in life can be a burden later on. Not to say we should immediately reject all other thoughts that aren’t are own, but perhaps we should at least give them a quick once over, and hold them against the scrutiny of our own chosen direction in life. Are they helping us move forward, or are they holding us back?

Imagine for a minute if you could take out each thought and belief, examine it, change it around so it better serves you, and then stick it back into your head. What beliefs would you like to have? Making money is easy? Falling is love is natural and blissful? There are enough resources to go around for everyone? You are capable of achieving anything you set your mind to?

Would you like that? Would it make life more fun and enjoyable? What would be different?

Be sure to check back often, as I will post many more articles related to this subject.  I think this is fascinating. And please share this site with others, because the more you can share, the easier it is to feel better about what is possible. 

Permalink

Easily Develop Incredibly Powerful Brain Power

Imagine being the go-to-person when your company has a problem that they need solved. Now. Imagine you are talking with a client or on a date, and you have an almost magic ability to steer the conversation wherever you want it to go, and the other person thinks that it was their idea. Imagine being surrounded by stressed out executives who are almost ready to call it quits when you tilt your head to the side, think for a moment, and say “Why don’t we try…” and they look at you in utter astonishment. “Why didn’t we think of that?” They ask. “You’re a genius! We’re saved!” Would you like that? Would you like to develop the mental dexterity of thought that Bruce Lee demonstrated with his nunchucks?

Well, here I give you two strong tips that when practiced, will allow you to develop so much flexibility and creativity of thought that you won’t know how you managed after you naturally become incredibly smarter.

Since they both work on the same principle of how the brain is physically set up, you’ll probably find yourself able to make up new exercises after you make these a habit.

The first one is simple, but it’s pretty weird, so make sure you don’t do it if anybody is in earshot. Especially at work.  What you do, is look at ordinary objects, but give them a different name. For example, if you look off to the left of your computer, now, and see a pen, look at it and say “apple!” Then look at something else, say a piece of paper, and say “pickup truck!” The key here is to make sure your ‘new’ names for the objects don’t fall in the same category.  Like in the above example, if you called your pen an ‘apple’ and then called the piece of paper an ‘orange,’ it wouldn’t be as effective, because orange and apple fall in the same category of food, or even fruit. So try to pick your new names completely different categories, sizes, colors, uses, as different as possible. Beware, this sounds deceptively simple, but when you start to practice this regularly, you’ll realize it is anything but. The reason it isn’t as simple as it sound is because you are literally building new circuits in your brain.  Be prepared to have some wild dreams when you start this.

The next trick requires a pen and paper, or better, notepad or some other word processor.  Think of anything, any regular object, for example, potato. Then pick something in a different category, but starting with the same letter, in this case, the letter ‘p.’  So let’s say you choose potato, and Porsche. Next, you just start rambling off anything that comes to mind regarding those two objects, AND, whatever comes up after that, just let your brain flow, and everything you think of, write it down.  Don’t worry about spelling, or grammar, or anything like that. Just write your thoughts out as fast as you can. This also literally causes you to build new connections in your brain, so you will be able to connect ideas in ways that will astound your friends.

One word of caution. It’s difficult to see results with these exercises because it takes time to build new neural pathways, and as you build them, it feels normal, and you can’t really notice the results right away. It’s not like you’ll have to change hat sizes or anything. What will most likely happen, is if you put just 5 or 10 minutes a day into either of these exercises, you will have a powerful ‘Aha!‘ moment.  After about a week or so you will suddenly realize that you have an ENOURMOUS amount of data stored up in your brain. And I’m talking about the whole size of the internet enourmous. And trust me, this is a really cool feeling. It will make you feel incredibly confident in a way that you never have before.

Because you will soon be developing your new super brain power, I won’t have to remind you to check back often to see what other articles I’ll be posting on a daily basis. But if you want to share or link this site, please feel free to do so.

Permalink