Five Ways to Expand Your Mind

In order to live a fulfilling life there is one thing that must be apart of the whole process and that is expanding your mind. Your brain possesses the capacity for thinking big and thinking rich, it is unlimited. You therefore must utilize your brain and the abilities it gives you. How then can you expand your mind and what should you be weary of when doing so? Here are five ways you can expand your mind:

1. Always keep in mind that there is no limit to your brains capacity.
Barring unforeseen mental defect, you possess all the elements needed for success. Scientists have said for years that we do not use about eighty percent of our brain and because of this there are areas that we have not yet tapped into. Some of us don’t even use the small portion that’s active properly. There is great creative potential within our brain, which will be there for the rest of our lives if we keep on using it. You must be aware that no matter how you think big your brain has the ability to think even bigger.

2. Increase Your knowledge.
Do not allow your brain to ‘tire’, when this happens it is usually the result of inattention, boredom, and inconsistent focus and the waning of interest. So fill your brain with information and sensation. Go back to school, attend lectures, listen carefully to what others are saying, read books on how to do things. Learn about things you know little or nothing about.

3. Learn and Develop Mental Control.
You can never hope to expand your mind and use it efficiently without taking control of it. You have to direct and discipline its activity. To take advantage of your brains capacity you must learn to concentrate and develop your memory and recall. Do not be affected too easily by or be at the mercy of what is happening in your environment. You must learn to control your reactions to things and make them what you choose them to be. Many times when we react to things we end up regretting our behaviours. As you learn and experience things you will become much more understanding, efficient, capable, knowledgeable amongst other things. As your ability for mental control grows you will also develop an understanding of yourself and others that is necessary for your growth as someone who is thinking big.

4. Feed Your Subconscious Mind Constantly.
We are all built with the ability to totally control the information that reaches our subconscious mind through our five senses yet many people do not exercise this control. You must understand that your subconscious mind is a great receptacle for information, its analysis and interpretation. Because of this unwillingness to control the subconscious mind many people experience a lifetime of pain, distress, poverty and the inability to think big much less think rich. Your subconscious mind can become a powerful leeway to conscious thinking if it is developed and used efficiently. It is your storeroom of information and if you would use it you will solve problems as you sleep. You must therefore feed your subconscious mind constantly with the things you desire.

5. Develop Your Memory.
Your memory is an ‘upper level’ function of your brain. It is only as good and as strong as the workout you give it. It has no maximum capacity except that which you give it. How you use or abuse your memory in expanding your mind will determine its extent. People who have limited memories tend to have limited imaginations and limited creative ability. They also have personal deficiency, insecurity, communication problems and minds that are retarded by negative emotions. Most of this can be eliminated by properly developing your memory. So give yourself small tests everyday, do puzzles, solve problems, read, try to recall. Develop the ability to remember faces, names, places and events. Challenge yourself to always find solutions to problems by analyzing the information at hand or after further research and increase your memory. Remember that your subconscious and conscious mind uses your stored memories to send you feedback when you need it.

In expanding your mind you are no longer placing limitations on your ability to be a success. You will begin to see that you have what it takes. Remember that the capacity of our brain is so enormous that we are yet to use it to its maximum potential.

Your Life Values: Knowing What's Important to You

When you value something that means you place importance upon it, so the things that you hold dear or have a fondness or liking for can be considered a value. Your life values therefore are those things that are most important to you in your life. What you value most can be anything from money to family, to love, to success. Your values can either be one you are now pursuing, such as love, where you seek a particular emotional state. It can even be one that is a way for you to ignite the emotional states you desire.

If it is that you seek the deepest level of fulfillment in our lives then there is only one way for us to achieve it, by deciding on what it is we value most in life, what our highest value are and then making a commitment to live by these values each and every day.

It is unfortunately common for people to have no clear or specific idea of what is important to them. These folks tend to have little or no grasp of any issue, they are neither one way nor the other on anything or anyone because they fail to take a stand. How can we lay the base for a strong self-esteem and the ability to make effective decisions if we are never clear about what’s important in our lives, that which we truly stand for.

Once we know what it is that’s important to us we make decisions easily. People who are unclear about what’s important to them in their lives tend to have great difficulties making decisions. If you look around at the most respected and admired people in this world what we find is that they all are people who have a mastery of their own values, proclaim them and then lives by them. These people are all well liked and respected by all and they all will take a stand for what they believe in even if no on else agrees with their ideas about good and bad.

It is necessary to understand that our values are what directs our lives and they cause us to make decisions that takes us in a direction that leads us to our life’s destination. So it is important in our lives, whether it’s our personal or professional, that we get absolutely clear about the important things in our lives and decide once and for all to live by these values no matter what happens. We must do this regardless of whether or not life rewards for living up to our own standards yes even when bad things happen to us consistently, even when our friends and family think we are crazy and lend no support.

If you do not live by your highest ideals it is very, very, very unlikely that you will have long-term happiness. So you must at all times or as best as you can, act in line with your own beliefs about what your life is really about. Once again all of this is not possible if you are not clear about what your values are. Most of us know what we want to have in life but what we lack is the knowledge of who we want to be. Acquiring things, eventually, won’t make you feel fulfilled, you must live and do what you believe is the correct thing for you that is the only way you will gain a sense of inner peace and feel fulfilled.

One of the challenges many people have or experience in life is that they develop certain patterns off behaviour that cause them distress, frustration, and even self-distruction. Things like illegal drugs, drinking alcohol, smoking, overeating seeking excitement, controlling others to name a few. These kinds of behaviour are generally the result emptiness, anger, and frustration we feel because we do not feel fulfilled in our lives. What these people are really trying to do is to get away from those empty feelings by engaging in behaviour that will fill the gap and produced for them a ‘quick fix’ change of state.
In other words they distract themselves so that can feel better. These kinds of behaviour is repeated over and over again until it becomes a pattern causing people to concentrate on changing the behaviour and not deal with the root cause. So they don’t have a smoking problem, they have a values problem. The reason why they smoke is to change the emotional state they are in because they dislike the way they feel as each day goes by. If you don’t know your values in life then you will not be able to make any clear decision about what will meet your deepest emotional needs.

There are two types of life values, ‘result’ values and ‘how’ values. If you say you value happiness, giving, and family, then happiness will be your result value, which you are pursuing, or the emotional sate you are after. Family and giving are therefore how values, that is, they are just a way for you to set off the emotional sate you desire. You see when you value giving what you are really saying is that giving means to you feel joy, happiness and a sense of purpose which are the results you are after and hence they are what you truly value.

Many people experience great distress because they are not clear about the difference between result and how values. Often times they are too caught up going after how values and end up not achieving their true desire which are their result values. You see the result values are those that will bring you fulfillment and make your life worthwhile and satisfying.
If you were asked to list some of the feelings you would like to experience on a day-to-day basis what would you put down? Here is a list I made for myself some years ago:

1. Love
2. Intimacy
3. Success
4. Wealth
5. Freedom
6. Security
7. Comfort
8. Adventure
9. Health
10. Happiness

This list was written down and ranked in order of importance to me with one being the most important and ten the least important. Now please do not misunderstand my ranking, I am not saying that happiness is not important too, quite the contrary, it is just not as important to me as say adventure.

We all value certain emotional states more than others and so we will do more to achieve them. It is this hierarchy of values that controls how you make your decisions from moment to moment. Form my list above you will see that I value love and intimacy over adventure and happiness. For someone else it may be that they value happiness over success or security over love. How about you, in what order would you list be? Take a moment and write down your own list or use the one above and put it the order that is relevant to you. If you choose to write your own list then to discover what your values are ask yourself “What is most important for me to feel in life?”

No matter what order you put your values in one thing is for sure you are going to make your decisions differently than someone whose values are in a different order of importance. So if you value wealth as your number one value you are going to make far different decisions than someone who has happiness as their top value. Once your values are known to you then you can begin to understand why you move in the direction you are moving consistently.

Knowing the order of importance of your values also gives you insight to why you have conflicts in your life and why decisions are difficult for you. So if your top value was security and the next is adventure then you may be having conflicts because of the incompatibility of the two values.
What you choose as your top values is likely to be those that will bring you the greatest amount of happiness. It is therefore imperative that we accomplish our highest values first and understand that there’s always a way we can do them at the same time.

If you top values are not empowering, or bringing you any amount of happiness them it may be that you need to change them. These change don’t have to be major like changing your whole list of values maybe just the one that you are focusing on. So if your top value is money but you find that you are very unhappy, and the tenth value on your list is love maybe if you switch their places you may find that your life becomes much happier. It is always good to review your list of values from time to time to see if they are empowering and guiding you in the right direction.

In the same manner that you identify the top values you want to live by every day, you also want to identify those emotions that you want to get away from experiencing on a regular basis. What are those emotions you most want to avoid experiencing? Write them down and look at them. When I did mine this is what I came up with:

1. Rejection
2. Frustration
3. Guilt
4. Failure
5. Anger
6. Anxiety
7. Depression
8. Loneliness
9. Hurt
10. Inadequacy

As with the first list there are emotions that you will avoid much more than others so when you do your own list find the one you will do most to avoid experiencing and then put them in that order going down the scale to those you will do the least to avoid. Take a look at your list when you are finished, what do you have as your number one emotion to avoid? It will tell you why you make the decisions you make. If anxiety is your top such emotion then you will avoid any situation where you might fell anxious about. From my list you can see that rejection is my top get away from experience hence I would do everything to avoid it.

Now you have to be aware of the paradox that happens in life concerning your values both those you want to live up to and those you want to get away from. Consider what would happen if you had selected wealth as your top emotion to experience and disappointment as your top emotion to avoid. You would tend to experience some challenges in your life because if you want to attain wealth without going through some disappointment you are unlikely to have success in the long term. You would have sabotaged yourself and made it harder to succeed since most of us will do much more to avoid things that are painful and for things that are pleasurable.

How then do you get your values to be what the need to be in order to create the destiny you desire, become the person you always wanted to be and affect you for the rest of your life. Even though you may feel that those values you possess now are bring you some joy, what other values could you add that can bring you closer to your destiny. Also should consider what values you may want to eliminate from your list that will bring you the same result.

One key evaluation you must make is to consider each value on your list and ask yourself what benefit you get by having that value in this position on your list? Then ask yourself what will it cost me being at this position on the list. Then you ask what order does my values list have to be in order to achieve my destiny. When I did this I came up with:

1. Love
2. Health
3. Happiness
4. Passion
5. Wealth
6. Contribution
7. Learning
8. Creativity
9. Achieving
10. Adventure

These small changes to my list of to achieve experience changed my life and made me a much happier person with a lot more confidence to achieve the things I want to. By making health my number two value I began to focus on me and all the elements that made me healthy, both physically and emotionally. Am I perfect or there yet, no, I am continually working at it and exploring better ways of achieving it. Because I began to feel better and healthier I must admit I became happier as a result and that translated to how I behaved amongst other people.

Once you know your values you must use them, they are of no use to you if you don’t. Remember life continues whether we want it to or not and it will constantly test our commitment too our values and our living by them.

Change Your Paradigm for Abundance and Prosperity

To demand more out of life, desire more abundance, set your sights high and aim only for the best, requires no more energy or effort than that which is used in the acceptance of, or surrender to, poverty, frustration, misery and lack. What it comes down to is your level of awareness and your ability to employ it.

Far too many people are controlled by what is going on around them in their lives. They make statements like “The bills are overdue, what am I going to do? Nobody loves me. I am poor! I will never amount to anything! Woe is me”. Statements like these tend to confine and limit them and their way of thinking. The irony, however, is that if you ask them what they want they will say they want to be free from the limitations they experience in life that prevent them from realizing their fullest potential and live the life they desire.

But no one can ever be free, realize their fullest potential, live a life of abundance and prosperity until they know and understand exactly what it is that controls, shapes and directs their behaviours and by extension the results they achieve.

Your paradigms are what controls your thinking and directs your results. Your paradigms are your ideas, your way of thinking, the habits you have developed over time, in a nutshell your mindset. The way most people view, experience and make sense of our world is done through their own paradigm window.

When you experience something, no matter what it is, your mind will quickly go through your information bank, your brain, for all the required information it can get on that particular experience and decides where it should fall in the larger scheme of things. Whether good or bad, happy or sad, needed or not. So if you have positive paradigms you will tend to possess a healthy self esteem, strong self-image, be happy and able to changes as things change. If however, you have negative paradigms you may experience lots of pain, feel stuck in your old behaviours and ways of thinking. If you desire the abundance and prosperity you deserve then you must create that change in your paradigms.

How to change your paradigm in five steps

First step. Think about and write down that one major goal, dream, or challenge that you have not yet been able to conquer in your life. Being as detailed and as specific as you can describe it, say what it is. This will help your subconscious mind to focus.

Second step. Think about and write down what you associate with the goal or aim you have chosen. Write down the thoughts that come to mind when you think of it, both the positive and the negative thoughts. These are your paradigms. To help you tap into how you think about your goal ask yourself questions like “How does this make me feel?” to make the process simpler may I suggest that you draw a line down the canter of your notepad, head up one side as “positive thoughts” and the other side “negative thought”. You then list your thoughts under the corresponding heading.

Third step. Choose from your list what you consider to be your top four most powerful negative paradigms and ask yourself “Why did I think of this? What’s the source of this feeling? How has this served me? What will it cost me and my family?” and keep asking such questions until you have a clear understanding of your paradigm.

Fourth step. Once you know and understand your negative paradigm, find or create for yourself an effective affirmation that will help you to re-programme your mind. Your affirmation must be something that is opposite to the negative paradigm. So if you have a paradigm that says that you will never be wealthy, your affirmation may be ‘I believe that I will be wealthy and I can now see my wealth before my eyes, I am drawing wealth to me, I now have the wealth I desire’.

Fifth step. Place a written copy of your affirmation where you can see it every morning and every night and be sure to read it before you go to sleep and when you arise until it is memorized. You can also write said affirmation on a 3x5 card and take it with you when you go out each day and read it as often as you can. When you read your affirmation do so with emotion and feelings.

Once you have done these steps, over time you will begin to notice that you are thinking and behaving in a different way and a whole new source of power will open up for you. Follow these five steps for each of your paradigms and watch your life become prosperous.