Mental training isn’t necessarily like physical training. “No pain – no gain” isn’t the way it works. Look, you could practice running faster, or just use a car, and if all you want is to get from here to there, the latter makes more sense. Similarly, brain “exercises” will strengthen the functioning of your brain, or you can just use better tools. That’s what this brain training is about – making habit of using simple tools and techniques.
Mental Training In Simple Rules
Simple rules, used habitually, can enhance your brainpower. For example, if you’re considering investments, you can apply the “rule of 72.” It’s a formula for determining how long it takes to double your money. Divide the rate of return you expect into 72, and the result is the number of years it takes to double your money. If an account pays 6% interest, you divide 72 by 6 and you know that it will take about 12 years to double your money. The rule is based on the compounding of interest, and assumes that you reinvest all interest or investment income.
Real estate investors use simple rules such as “Don’t pay more than 100 times monthly rent for an income property.” This isn’t a replacement for real analysis, but when you train your mind to use such a rule, it speeds up the process. You can eliminate properties selling for 150 times monthly rent, even while an investor with a better brain for numbers is still analylizing them.
Mental Training In Simple Questions
It’s not all about mathematical formulas. Simple questions can also help you more quickly reach the result you want. For example, comedians use such questions unconsciously, and write jokes even more efficiently if they consciously use them.
Suppose a friend mentions that having children gives him a sense of immortality. The comedian’s question, “What’s wrong with this picture?” makes you realize it means dying, so you reply, “I don’t want immortality through my children. I want to immortality by not dying!”
“Mental algorithms” for a comedian might include asking questions like, “What if I take this to the extreme?” “How would this look to a dog?” “Which words in this have double meanings that I can play with?” or “What is the stupidest part of this situation?”
Mental Training In Simple Techniques
Use problem solving techniques enough, and they become a habitual part of your thinking process. For example, try the powerful problem solving technique of challenging assumptions. It’s an especially effective way to bring more effective brainpower to personal issues, where there are so many hidden assumptions.
 
Suppose your kids are fighting over the television, and you’re tired of it. Perhaps you are assuming the following: 1. You need to have a TV; 2. Fighting over the TV is the problem; 3. The fighting needs to stop; 4. It’s your problem.
The process of challenging these assumptions may suggest the following solutions: 1. Get rid of the TV, or limit it’s use; 2. Deal with the general issue of the kids’ behavior; 3. Leave the room, close the door and let them fight; 4. Tell the kids it’s their problem, and they have a week to come up with a solution, or the TV goes.
Each human activity has it’s own most useful rules and guidelines that you can train your brain to use. Then there are general “life rules” that can help you make better decisions. For example, you might train yourself to ask, “How does this advance me towards my important goals?” and “Is there a better alternative?”
We all have patterns and mental habits in our subconscious minds, but they are not necessarily the best ones, are they? Why not consciously train yourself to use the questions, rules, and patterns of behavior that are most useful? This can start with simple mental training.

 

 

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What’s the biggest problem with memory tricks? Remembering to use them, of course. There are many memory techniques that work well, but you’ll forget them when you need them most – unless you make using them a habit. So when you take the time to learn a technique, use it until it becomes automatic. Here are some to try.
Using a Story-List
I went to a party as a child. There was a game that involved looking at a table covered in 15 various items. After a few minutes, we were taken to another room, and each child was given paper and a pencil. We had to  write down as many items as we could remember. I recalled seven or eight, but one boy won the prize by remembering all 15 items.
Years later I learned why he won. His father taught him a simple trick that none of us other kids knew. The technique is to tie the items together in an imaginative story. For example, what if you want to remember a list of the following things: Soap, milk, honey, fork, and flowers.
Start a vivid story in your imagination, adding each item to it as you go: At the sink, you reach for the SOAP. The soap dish is full of MILK, so you wash your hands in that. Then you comb HONEY into your hair with a FORK, and finally pick up a bouquet of FLOWERS and smile at the mirror. Say each item while mentally reviewing your “movie,” and you’ll remember all five things, even the next day.
Some Other Memory Tricks
Tell yourself to remember. When you learn a person’s name, for example, tell yourself, “remember that”. This signals your unconscious mind to rank this input as more important.
Know WHY you want to remember something, and HOW you’ll remember it. To remember a person, for example, ask why they’ll be important to you in the future, imagine where you’ll see them next, and connect that to anything you notice about them. Seeing the importance of remembering really helps, and additional associations (where you expect to see the person next) set the memory more firmly in your brain.
Do you ever forget where you put your car keys? You’ve probably tried retracing your steps, at least doing it in your imagination. This can work well, but even better is to prevent the forgetting beforehand. When you set the keys on the chair, see yourself walking in and setting the keys on the chair. You won’t forget where they are.
There are many more of these memory tricks. If you want them to be useful, though, don’t just read about them. Make a memory technique or two into a habit, starting today.

 

 

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Nearly every day I hear someone say something along the lines of ?Why does life have to be so hard? or ?Why can?t I ever get a break? and sometimes even ?Why does everything happen to me.?

It seems that the majority of people in our world these days seem to struggle from day to day in one area or another in their lives.

Most believe that they are just a victim of circumstance and that they have no control over these seeming difficult situations. The majority believe that it is simply by fate or chance that they must endure these unpleasant and uncomfortable situations and circumstances, and that there is absolutely nothing that they are capable of doing that will change them.

This reasoning, as legitimate as it may seem, couldn?t be further from the truth. The fact is that whatever may be happening in ones life is happening because that is exactly what the individual is causing to happen on either a conscious or subconscious level.

Sound crazy? Many think it does, but it doesn?t mean that it isn?t the truth. It is the absolute truth.

Everything that manifests in our world must begin as a seed whether it be humans, plants, animals, illness, or disease. It is absolutely impossible for anything in the universe to exist without starting from something.

So what does that have to do with your thoughts, whether they be conscious or subconscious? Allow me to explain. The human mind is made up of two components. The conscious mind and the subconscious mind. Your conscious mind is the rational portion of your mind and it establishes it?s beliefs based on the 5 physical senses of hearing, sight, smell, taste and touch. The information that is gained from these senses is sent to the brain, which is the physical tool of the mind, and then combined with an emotion which in turn establishes a belief.

Each and every belief you currently have or that you have held in the past, concerning anything, at one point was established through your conscious thought process and has been stored in your subconscious mind as fact. When the rational conscious mind comes upon any situation, it accesses the data storehouse of the subconscious to assist it in making a determination regarding an event, situation or circumstance, that it previously stored there, and makes a choice as to how it will react to the circumstance based on that information.

The subconscious cannot differentiate between what is true or false, good or bad, right or wrong. It has no reasoning ability whatsoever. It has no way of knowing what the conscious is giving to it. The only functions that the subconscious has the capability of is?

#1) Accepting and storing whatever data has been sent to it, whether it be true or false, by the rational thinking conscious mind.

#2) Going to work to manifest the data that it was given, and bring it into physical being through the law of attraction.

Each thought that is created and each belief that is established acts as the seed. If the thing that you want creates conflict in your subconscious based on an old belief, negative energy is created and the seed can only produce negative results. If the conscious and subconscious are in harmony regarding the thing wanted, positive energy is created and only positive things can be produced.

When a firm belief is established at some point in life (usually in the childhood years) and then later in life that belief is challenged, it creates conflict, between the conscious and the subconscious which in turn creates negative energy which then attracts additional negative energy to it, and actually creates those very things that you consciously claim that you don?t want to happen.

In other words, if you consciously want something, whether it be money, relationships, etc. and aren?t receiving it, you have a subconscious belief that is contrary to what you consciously claim that you want and it is that belief that is keeping whatever it is from being realized in the physical world, and in many cases creating exactly the opposite of what it is that you want.

Although this isn?t knowledge that is held and accepted by the majority, it has been scientifically proven through quantum physics and has actually been known and shared by spiritual teachers for thousands of years. What many used to call un-provable nonsense is now actually being discovered and proven by modern day science.

So how can you overcome this conflict and begin producing only the desired results? By releasing the old negative emotions that have been stored in the subconscious and guarding what you allow to be stored in it in the future. Become conscious of what you allow the subconscious to absorb and begin the habit of feeding it only the information that will serve your needs.

Begin each day by absorbing some positive information from some source and eliminate the constant negativity that is continually shared through people, TV, newspapers, etc.

It is this constant bombardment of negativity that plays a huge role in shaping your thoughts, both conscious and subconscious, and it is those thoughts that determine your life.

Whether or not you choose to believe it….. 

What You Think About You Bring About.

? Chuck Danes. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

 

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What exactly is Lateral thinking? For starters, it’s a word invented by Edward DeBono in 1967. At some point since then it became a part of the English language (it is in the Oxford English Dictionary and most others now). DeBono, on his official web site, says there are several ways to define it.
Lateral thinking is a way of attacking problems from other angles, as opposed to the more traditional linear and logical ways. Debono uses chess as an example of where logic normally suffices, if the pieces are a given. Lateral thinking, however, acknowledges that in real life we mostly just assume the pieces are given, when really we need to change those pieces or look beyond them for the most useful solutions.
Lateral Thinking Puzzles
Enough with the definitions. Here are a few lateral thinking puzzles instead. These will give you a good feel for what the term means, and let you practice this “out of the box” kind of thinking.
Two Coins
Bill is on a raft in the ocean with several other survivors of a shipwreck. The others are too weak, so he or Mike must swim to a nearby island to look for help. It’s almost certainly suicidal, due to the circling sharks, but there is little else to hope for. Mike takes the lose change from his pocket and puts two pennies in a hat. He tells John that one is a 2005 penny, and the other 1975. If Bill picks the newer penny he can stay on the raft, and Mike will risk his life. If John picks the older penny, he must go. Bill has seen that both pennies were actually dated 1975, but he doesn’t want to say anything, because Mike is a big guy. How does he win, and get Mike to go, without exposing him as a fraud in front of the others?
The Speech
A well-known politician wrote a long speech. How did it help his career even before he gave the speech?
The Convent
John came to visit at a convent while the superior mother was out of town. He left before she returned, and was careful to leave nothing behind. The nuns said nothing about his visit, so how did the superior mother figure out that a man had been there?
Switching On Your Lateral Thinking
You are shown three switches outside a closed room. There are three lamps inside the room. You can flip the switches on and off as much as you want while the door remains closed, but then you must enter just once and determine quickly which switch is connected to which lamp. How can you do it?
Solutions To The Lateral Thinking Puzzles
Two Coins: Bill reaches into the hat and takes out either penny. He lets it slip out of his hand and fall into the ocean. Apologizing, he suggests that if the remaining penny in the hat is the 1975 one, he must have drawn the 2005 penny. Mike cannot argue with the logic unless he wants to admit to lying. Since the others won’t tolerate a liar anyhow, he makes the swim.
The Speech: A true story solution: In 1912, President Teddy Roosevelt was shot in the chest. The folded-up manuscript of his speech was in his breast pocket, and slowed the bullet, saving his life, and so helping his career.
The Convent: John left a toilet seat up.
Switching On Your Lateral Thinking: Turn on the first one on for a minute, then turn it off and turn the second on. Enter the room and feel the two bulbs that are off. The warm one was turned on by the first switch, the light that is on is connected to the second, and the other to the third.

 

 

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You only possess one mind, but it has 2 totally different functions – and the names generally used to distinguish these 2 different functions are as follows.

1, The Conscious Mind
2, The Subconscious Mind

There are many other terms used. But the 2 listed above, are the ones used most to represent the 2 main functions of your mind.

To help us better understand the conscious and subconscious mind, they may be compared to a tree and its roots?

? You?re conscious mind being the tree, which helps you with daily situations like, decision-making, rational thinking, or just simply figuring out what to do and how best to do it.

When we think of ?me? we think of our conscious mind, the mind of which we are fully aware. This part of the mind makes decisions for us and directs our activities; it also analyzes, criticises and even commands us.

? You?re subconscious mind being the roots; it deals mostly with the repetitions of learned behaviour. This can be very helpful for you, as it enables you to deal with situations much more easily the next time they arise.

Whatever we see, hear, smell, taste, touch or feel passes through the conscious mind and reaches the subconscious mind where it is stored.

Once you have learned how best to deal with the situation you find it much easier the next time around? this is because you are using information which is already stored.

For instance, once you have learned to ride a bike you don?t have to consciously think about it anymore. This is because the stored information will come to you automatically the next time you get on your bike to ride it.

Just as if you were to learn where each letter on your keyboard is – you can now type without looking because you have formed a mental picture in your subconscious mind, of what the keyboard actually looks like.

The above are only two instances (of how the subconscious mind stores up relations of learned behaviour) and we are sure you would be able to find many more examples of this in your everyday life!

Information from the conscious mind gets past into the subconscious mind, and there is a very strong link between the two. It is said that everything you have ever seen, heard and experienced is perceived by your conscious mind, and then stored away into your subconscious mind as a memory.

Not only is this memory stored as the incident itself, but also any feelings which went with it at the time are also stored.

Your subconscious mind does not only store your memories and feelings. It is the maker of all the great ideas you have ever had, and is also the seat of your intuition and creativeness?

Your subconscious also keeps you going without you even being aware of it. It takes care of your bodily functions ? your heart beat, and automatically runs such activities as, movement, language, visual perception and a whole host of other processes of your mind and body for you.

It also scans your mind for conflict and distress; assesses your environment for danger and threats, and relays and interprets perceptions, sensations, and feeling? last but not least it is also the storehouse of all your experience and decisions ? everything which makes you the person you are.

Dale Odeyemi, is the creator of some excellent <a href=”http://www.YourMindPowers.com” mce_href=”http://www.YourMindPowers.com” target=”blank”> mind power ebooks </a>
which are sure to help you on your quest for personal power and development? You can also get your hands on 10 Mind-Power-Lessons at absolutely no cost to you whatsoever! By simply visiting his website. http://www.YourMindPowers.com

Create the life you desire – Starting Right Now…

Source: High Quality Article Database – 365Articles.com

 

When I ask for guidance, I receive it.  Sometimes I receive it in unexpected ways, but I always receive it.
Some people hear voices if they?re clairaudient.  Other people see pictures or symbols if they?re clairvoyant.  Still others are clairsentient and simply have a knowingness or a strong feeling.  One woman I know has a strong sense of smell that guides her.  The truth is that all of our senses are tuned in to receive higher channels of wisdom and knowledge, and our bodies are perfect receptors. 
We may also receive guidance from synchronicities in our lives ? those chance coincidences that aren?t really coincidences at all.  It?s my general rule of thumb to pay attention and take action if I hear or see anything 3 times.  If the guidance is strong, I take immediate action.
The question is: Are you asking for help and guidance?  Are you expecting to receive it and then paying attention?  When you receive guidance, do you act on it or do you ignore it out of the fear and doubt habit?
As we quiet the chatter in our minds and relax into the certainty that the guidance, clarity, and direction we desire is present, we are in a receptive state.  When we receive the guidance and have the faith to act on it, we are affirming to the Universe that we are paying attention.  The more we listen, the more we respond, the more we receive.  The more grateful we are for the guidance we receive, the quicker the clarity comes.
Like any muscle, the more you use it, the stronger it gets, and the more confident you become in your ability.  The more you know you have a direct connection with higher wisdom, the more calmly, confidently, joyfully, and successfully you can move forward in your life. 
If you?re new to this practice, here are some techniques I suggest to begin: 
1. Sit in a quiet place with your eyes closed and begin to breathe deeply.  If any thoughts of the outside world come into your mind, just allow them to drift and float away and refocus on your breathing. 
2. Become clear on what you choose: perfect health, money, love, or help with a specific dilemma.  Remember, nothing is too small and anything that is distracting you from living a life of love and joy is significant.  Say silently something like this:  ?I ask for your help with this situation.  Please give me the clarity, direction, and guidance that I need so that I may be the person I came here to be.  My mind and my life are full and busy, and I?m new at this, so please make the guidance really clear and bring it to me in a way that I absolutely will recognize it.  Thank you.?
3.  When you are complete, hold the thought that your guidance ? the answer you requested ? is coming to you in a wonderful way.  Before you go to sleep at night, repeat the process. 
4. It?s often helpful, too, to write out your request on a piece of paper and put it underneath your pillow.  As you drift off to sleep, allow yourself to focus on the thought that the entire Universe is working on your behalf to bring you the perfect answer to your request, and that you are ready, willing, and able to receive.
5. As you move throughout the day, expect the answers to come and pay attention.  When you receive the guidance you?ve requested, take action immediately even if it doesn?t make sense at first.  Then, become grateful for the guidance you?ve received and celebrate how wonderful it is that the Universe cares about your every need and desire.
You are a precious being with great gifts to share, fully supported by the Universe to live a life that is rich, wonderful, joyful, loving and FUN!  You are in this wonderful playground of life, and these resources are here for you to use to help you create the life you love to live with great ease and flow.
Most of all, remember that YOU DESERVE IT!

 

 

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Does your mind sometimes feel like a television station you can’t quite tune in? You know there’s an interesting program on – or several, but everything is mixed with static. What if you could “tune in” at will, have clear thinking whenever you want it? Try some of the following.
Ten Clear Thinking Techniques And Tips
1. Take a walk. Science will eventually prove this to be a great way to improve the quality of your thinking, but don’t wait for the proof. Aren’t there enough other reasons to take a walk anyhow?
2. Stay away from sugar. If you want to understand what brain fog is, eat a sugary donut on an empty stomach, then do math problems twenty minutes later. What you will experience, along with the “sugar blues,” is brain fog. At least lay off sugar and simple carbohydrates when you need to think clearly.
3. Organized space means clear thinking. It’s rare that a person can actually work better in clutter. Organised working space means you won’t have the thought “where is that…” distracting your mind.
4. Get better sleep. Sleep requirements vary, but the minimum for most is somewhere around five hours. Some suffer if they sleep less than eight hours. The research, however, indicates that after a certain minimum quantity, the quality of sleep is more important to normal brain function.
5. Try meditating. No time? Just close your eyes, relax, and watch your breath for a while. Accept that your mind will wander, but continually return your attention to your breath. Five minutes of this, and afterwards you’ll feel a boost in your brainpower.
6. Resolve your “mind irritations.” Watch your busy brain. Maybe a call you need to make has been bothering you, just below consciousness. Find these stressors, and do something to let them go. For example, make that call, or put it on a list, and your mind will let go of it for now. Just seeing a problem and saying, “There’s nothing I can do about this until Friday,” will often stop unconscious worrying.
7. Don’t drink alcohol. At least don’t drink too much. While moderate amounts can be conducive to creative thinking, all the evidence says that it is bad for the long-term health of your brain.
8. Make decisions quickly. Nothing gets in the way of clear thinking like a dozen decisions hanging around unmade. If nothing else, decide when you’ll make the decision.
9. Get some fresh air. Go outside and breath deeply through your nose. You’ll get a good dose of oxtgen to your brain, and the change of surroundings can help clear your mind.
10. Satisfy your physical needs. Clear thinking is easier if you aren’t too hungry, thirsty, or hot.
You can think more clearly starting today. There are certainly more than ten ways, but you really only need to make a few of them a habit to have a more powerful brain. Why not try one or two right now?

 

 

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