Some person's picture from their house of a neighor's house and some tree branches.

The following is a list of 11 ways that you can keep your brain active and processing and ready for new events that occur.  Your brain is like a muscle, and so you can only have it at top shape by keeping it used on a regular basis.  If you’re not using it much, you will soon see your brain’s ability to process declining, although it is hard to notice from a first-person perspective.

Here’s the list my fellow people:

1. Read material from a category you don’t normally read, like economics or physics

2. Ask someone a question after thinking about what they will say in response

3. Learn 5 phrases in a new language

4. Work on an instrumental song you have not tackled before

5. Do some exercises to get your circulation going before using your brain

6. Talk to a new person, and ask them question based on what they tell you

7. Read a How Things Work page online until you figure out how the gadget works

8. Do something uncommon and then quickly respond to any reaction it gets

9. Write poems to 3 people you know with the lines of it made up on the spot

10. Approach a member of the opposite gender and tell them some facts about yourself

11. Mess up the options on some electronic appliance and then correct them

This guest post/poem is by Ashwani Kumar of Motivational Thoughts For You.

I came into this world with a blank slate
I was eager to make my own fate
I dreamt of becoming great
I wanted to grow at a phenomenal rate

I decided not to be swept by circumstances
I learnt that life is not a game of chance
I decided to hold fast to the helm of life
I learnt to push through all the strife

I learnt that greatness was bestowed only upon a few
I realized I can be one of them too
I decided to achieve it at any cost
I decided to fight for it even if everything was lost

I embarked upon the journey for greatness
Armed with courage and confidence
I faced countless challenges
I overcame innumerable obstacles

The path was rough and dangerous
It was filled with difficulties enormous
I had to use every bit of talent and skill
And carried on with an iron will

With hard work and pluck
I decided to make my own luck
I was determined not to give up
Every time I fall I decided to get up

No matter what the journey would go on
This is my destiny for which I was born
I want people to speak of me even after I am gone
To become great at any cost, an oath I have sworn

-Ashwani Kumar

Motivational Thoughts For You

Post picture added by me, Armen, from Flickr.

Random picture of a fish, not related to article

Here is a lyric from a recent rap by Eminem:

guess it doesn’t matter now, does it

Out of context, this quote doesn’t really give you much value.  Let me explain it.  First, Eminem was saying how people were rough to him, and that the past doesn’t matter now, because he is in a great position and the people who were rough to him don’t matter anymore.

This is material for you to use.

The difficulties of your current day, or frustrations involving others, are fleeting.  If you stay focused and positive, you will reach a point separate from where you are right now, and those difficulties and people won’t matter.  None of it will matter at that point.  Therefore, spending your time thinking about those difficulties or people keeps you away from your potential future, and so you have to keep in mind what WILL matter, as opposed to what SEEMS to matter right now.

Sometimes you have to do things that seem very small or insignificant, right now, so that you can get to what is big to you, in the future.

How many times do we hear of people who are socially prominent talking about their difficulties getting there.  Who wants you to become well-known?  Noone.  Who wants you to be more successful than them?  Find me that person.  Good luck finding that person.  People may act fake-nice about others around them succeeding, but most do not want it to occur at all.  When someone around you succeeds, you look a little worse off than you did before in comparison, right?

Right now, there are people who are wanting to rise up in some business or position or group who are being indirectly kept down by their peers, and to them, their peers views really matter.

When you get to a high point, those items will no longer matter.

Let’s say people made you feel inferior for being a dishwasher and then you saved up money and got your own townhouse.  Their talk doesn’t matter now does it?

I could type up other examples, but you know what things you do that can make a person feel self-conscious.

Spread my content yo~.

I had a recent article here about 18 benefits of learning facts about the world.  A person reading that article told me that she had seen very similar material in a textbook.  By similar, I mean that the writing in the textbook also used my car example, about how we see certain cars much more often after we have owned them or been in them, similarly to how we start to see usage of facts we just learned shortly after we learn them.  Our mind usually ignores things we don’t understand, but once we do, we see those things regularly.

Now, the topic of this article is about how we have similar thoughts to other people.  The similar thoughts I am referring to here are not simple ones, but the more complex ones that we are not sure others may be having.

Let me tell you.  People out there are having thoughts very similar to some of your cool thoughts.  I see proof of this in numerous internet threads, where a person will post an article or message, and at least a few people are exactly on the same page(mentally) as the writer/author.  Were it not for the large readerships that some sites have, we would not see this occur much, but since they are there, we see this a lot.

One thing to take from this is that you have to put your thoughts out there to be able to connect with similar people.  It is the only way.  You can’t play basketball on a tennis court and you won’t find people similar to you without putting yourself out there.

Sometimes people tell me that my writing is too complex or something, so the following is a summary: people have thoughts that you have had, and you have to find them if you want to talk with them about how you are similar.

I am probably going to be posting more short posts from now on.  Short posts seem to better fit me.  We will see.

This article may come off a bit wordy.  I’ll put a summary in at the end for those who would prefer one.

There is something funny/odd about how we are responded to.  Let’s say I created and posted an article titled “5 Ways You Are Like A Plant”, that listed multiple ways we are similar to plants, and compete in life like plants do.  I might not receive any negative comments about the post, but there would certainly be some people who would read the article, or just the title of the article, and think of it as stupid or foolish.  These individuals could be people I knew long ago as peers, or those in some certain industry, or people from my hometown, and they would think condescending things about me for having posted the article.

I can hear their hypothetical thoughts now.  “What kind of loser compares us to plants?”  “Here is another useless list article.”  “Armen is not socioeconomically where I am if he is putting out this content.”  “Who does this writer think he is?  Why should I even read this?”  The list goes on.  There might not be any comments posted like this, but they are in the thoughts of some readers.  I know this because I see these types of comments posted on sites where the names are anonymous or easily create-able.

The Burden Is On Producers

There are a few funny things about this.  Before I would have posted the article, it would not have existed.  After I created it, it was an item that could be made use of and learned from.  It is not like a new article forces itself upon the world’s population.  It is important to keep this in mind.  All the items people have created are available to be used or not used.  It is not until something becomes so large that it is constantly in your face that it can actually become a hindrance to you, and even then, it is probably not a big deal.  How we act by ourselves and respond to others defines our life.

What you must do is not allow the possible negative responses of others to hinder your efforts.  If we all did that, there would be no research done, no articles written, no inventions made, no architecture attempted, and so on.  Those who create certainly do have the pressure on them to put out material that is worthwhile, but also must keep in mind a certain concept when they are creating: many of those who would put out negative comments about your work are voicing their opinion from a consumer standpoint.  It is one thing for a consumer of your product to attack it, but you have to remember that they are not responding to you with the perspective of someone who tried to make what you made.  You should still take the criticism, but it loses its ability to hurt you if you keep in mind that it is coming from a consumer standpoint.

On the other hand, at rare times, another creator will weigh on it what you have produced or made, and they won’t be trying to tear you down, but instead will be trying to give you guidance from their creation perspective.  This is to be desired.  Creators can be very strong allies of other creators.

Apples And Oranges

Now, I realize that I have separated consumers and creators in this description, and while that may seem too black-and-white, it is necessary to take into account the perspective someone has when they provide their input.  A music producer generally understands what another music producer struggles through and tries to improve upon, but a TV interviewer of a music producer can only ask questions from an outside perspective.  We all have a good feel for whatever it is that we do regularly, and only have a vague understanding of projects or efforts that we have not tried(which is why specific relevant experience is so high on employer recruitment desires).

Using site-writers, or bloggers, as an example, you will see that it is not often that one writer will attack another writer.  Although part of the reason for this is that people do not want to stick out as the one aggressive writer in a group, a more important reason for this is that writers of, for example, exercise blogs, know the difficulties each one faces in getting their thoughts out to the public.  As a community, they may know that it is tough to compete against certain bigger exercise sites, or that putting out regular fitness content takes dedication to finding new and varied methods of improving one’s health.  There might be 10 things that are similar in that writer’s niche, and only other writers in that niche know the feel of tackling similar issues.

I sure do get wordy at times.  Now I will do the summary.

Summary

Criticism is relevant, but you must distinguish between criticism that comes from a consumer of your product versus a fellow creator of a similar product.

This guest post was written by Joseph Kao, who writes for Uncommon Knowledge.

If you want to develop a more positive, optimistic outlook on life, it’s important to understand how your brain can be primed to think in new ways by incredibly small changes in your environment. And there is an ever-growing body of research which supports this fact.

Picture the scene. You’re a university student participating in what you think is a linguistics experiment. You’ve been sitting in a room for a few minutes, arranging a selection of apparently random words into sentences. What you don’t know is that the experimenters don’t give two hoots about what sentences you form, and this is no linguistics experiment. All they are interested in is what you’re about to do next. Unknown to you, they’re going to measure how fast you leave the room.

You see, without your knowledge, you’ve been subtly influenced by the words you were arranging. A small number of those words were related to old age. Maybe one was “wrinkled”, another was “retire”. And because your brain processed those words, you are now about to walk measurably more slowly out of the room.

The psychologist John Bargh has verified this experimentally. Students who had been “primed” with a few words associated with old age walked significantly more slowly out of the room than students presented with neutral words.

Similar experiments have found that if someone hands you a drink to hold for a moment, the temperature of the cup will influence how much you like that person. You will typically feel emotionally warmer towards the person if they gave you a hot coffee to hold, rather than an ice cold soft drink.

Other experiments have shown that something as simple as having a plant in a room will make you more likely to come up with more ideas, or that sitting on a hard chair makes you less willing to compromise in a negotiation than sitting on a soft chair.

So the research is mounting up to confirm what advertisers have always known. The details really do matter. Food manufacturers know that changing tiny elements in the size, shape or colour of food packaging will make people more likely to buy it. The lighting in supermarkets, the aromas, the floor-plan, all these things measurably affect how likely you are to spend more money there.

So the thought I’d like to offer you today is this. It’s now clear that we are significantly influenced by subtle details around us. In which case… look around you. Right now.

How is your environment affecting your mood? How is your desk priming you to feel right now? Is it cluttered, and suggestive of being disorganised? Or is it ordered and efficient? Are there images around you that inspire you, or remind you of friends, family and personal goals? What about the colours, the lighting, your chair, your posture?

Studies have shown that if you sit with a more upright posture, or if you allow your face to form a relaxed, half-smile, you will, again, significantly improve your mood and your attitude to the task at hand.

These are all remarkable and interesting findings, but I believe the most important question is: “How can you put this knowledge to practical use?”

So here are three ideas to prime your brain to be in a more positive mood:

1. Spend three minutes listing as many words for cheerful as you can. They can be synonyms, like “upbeat” and “happy” or just related words, like “giggle” and “high five”. Try this exercise with other topics, like “determined”, or “sociable”, and then notice the after-effects over the next few hours
2. If you don’t tend to put pictures up of friends, family, or symbols of your goals and dreams, try it. If you don’t have a plant in your workspace, try getting one. Have a think about the colours and lighting around you. What changes could you make to subtly lift your mood?
3. If you’re feeling stuck, use your body to prime your brain to develop a better attitude. Sit up straight. Form a little smile, or if you don’t mind your colleagues thinking you’re a bit eccentric, a huge cheesy grin. Look at a spot a little above eye level, and take a few, slow deep breaths. Retain some of that smile and upright posture as you return to your work, and notice how you feel different.

Remember: your environment is constantly influencing you, whether you’re conscious of it or not. So why not make it work for you?

As my entry to the Life Lessons Series created by Abubakar Jamil, I want to discuss the concept of self-doubt, and how I can relay the lesson to you that self-doubt needs to be cleared from your thoughts.  In one video I have watched of Puff Daddy’s words of wisdom, he mentions in part of it that he never doubted himself.  We must take this to heart as well.

Why Is Self-doubt So Damaging?

This one is an easy question to answer.  People won’t believe in you more than you believe in yourself.  If you believe in yourself some arbitrary amount like 50(just a random number), no one will believe in you more than 50.  They might believe in you 20 or 10 or 5.  I didn’t put any units there, but hopefully I was able to transmit that message.  Your belief in yourself is the maximum amount that others will believe in you.  People are quite skeptical of others, so they are very unlikely to put more belief into you than they see you putting into yourself, for fear of being cheated or manipulated.

Now, taking this into consideration, your self-doubt only lowers this maximum value.  If Rachael Ray or Isaac Mizrahi aren’t speaking confidently about products they created that they are selling on QVC shopping channel, viewers are far less likely to put any faith in purchasing their merchandise.  Buyers think to themselves: “If the creator isn’t going to fully stand behind their work, there must be something wrong with it that they aren’t mentioning.”

Keep Clear On Where Doubt Can Be

Self-doubt is not helpful at all, but doubt in some facts or procedures is okay.  The distinction to make is that you don’t doubt your own abilities, but you can doubt whether a certain path or effort will work out.  Doubting whether pushing against a wall will ever make you profits is certainly reasonable, but doubting the idea that you could sell a product or produce a new solution to a problem is not.

Also, as somewhat of a link to this, I have seen messages on the internet putting down personal development sites for “selling hope” in the same way that they describe Oprah as being the biggest manufacturer of false hope.  Not that I am defending Oprah here, or even referring to my writings as personal development writings, but I want to mention that this self-doubt concept isn’t saying to be hopeful for no reason.  It is just to prevent you from stopping early in your tracks because you see someone else winning, and then thinking that you don’t have what it takes.  Who is to say you don’t have what it takes(unless you are not looking to put in much effort)?  Doubt and hope are somewhat connected so I wanted to bring that up.

Now, since this was to be a post about past mistakes causing learned lessons, I should be bringing up some past mistakes of mine so that it fits the description, but I am not one to bring up items from the past like they were wrong or errors of any sort.  The only mistake I can possibly make is to not move forward.  Also, if you are always looking 5 seconds ahead, there is no such thing as a mistake, as it can’t have possibly been made 5 seconds into the future from now.  What I will say is that it is clear to me that self-doubt is detrimental to any plans you have.  This seems obvious, but next time you are doubting yourself, it will have relevance for you.

You might be thinking to yourself: “This is quite generic.  Obviously I shouldn’t doubt myself.”  This certainly is generic, but that is because you are reading this article right now as you think about it.  You have to save this material for when you are working on something important to you, and you get stuck due to that self-doubt.  If you let it kill your momentum, it is game over.  Your production needs to be fluid and continuous to prosper.

Conclusion

Thanks goes to Abubakar Jamil for creating this Life Lessons Series, and to Farnoosh Brock for letting me know about it.  It is cool to participate in other folk’s creations from time to time.

Critical thinking is one of those very important skills.  If you are not doing it at times, that is no good, because your mind is not being activated to a high enough level to tire it out a bit.  It’s like not working out a muscle in a long time, as it will start to be weak for regular activities.  Activating your mind at times will keep you “in the game” so to speak, if you aren’t already.

Do You Push Yourself Mentally?

This type of effort-based thinking requires much more energy than simply responding to an issue or problem with quick words.  It is “level-2″ thinking, so to speak.  I would start with some examples here, but my message is more about doing critical thinking every day or two if you are not already doing so.  How can you assess if you already are doing this?  Do you actually get mentally tired trying to figure out the ramifications of a deal, or the reasons behind both sides of a policy, or so on?  Do you do a little research on the side to find out information related to something, or just take words given to you as the main source?

Use Societal Or Personal Issues To Do This

My mind keeps wanting to stray off the main topic here, but what I want to convey is that doing heavy thinking is good for you at times.  You see an issue like a political one, and you can look at the “two sides” that are provided to you by each side of the political debate, or you can spend a bit longer to see whether those are really the only two options, or if you have any new ideas related to the concept, as well as if you can see the reason behind the whole conflict, and items of this nature.

Switch To Your Hard Mode Sometimes

It is like you are playing a chess game and analyzing other possible moves, and other ways you could have played the game before the point you are at.  When you set a computer to Easy level in chess, it does “simple thinking”, in comparison to us, as it only looks at the closest moves and the simplest attacks.  When you set the computer to Hard mode, it suddenly is analyzing multiple moves ahead, different variations of attacks, how to take a position, or so on.  The Hard setting certainly uses up more CPU clock cycles, but it gains a huge advantage by doing so.  We are different from computers in that if we don’t use Hard mode sometimes, our brain gets comfortable sticking to Easy mode, and then Hard mode is a more difficult option later on.  You have to keep your Hard mode running smoothly.  It is like changing the oil in your car to keep it able to accelerate and switch gears smoothly.

Activating Your Brain Requires Conquering Friction Each Time

One item to add here is that doing critical thinking does not come naturally.  It takes effort every time.  It might get easier over time, but for the most part, it requires your diligence each time you make use of it.  It is like going to fourth gear in a car, which requires having been at first, and then switching to second, third, and then fourth.  This takes much more work than staying in first gear(from the transmission’s perspective).

There Are Many Items To Use For Critical Thinking

How can you work on this critical thinking if you are not doing it regularly?  There are multiple paths you can take.  You can take a political policy apart and analyze all the sides of the issue, and maybe come up with your own sides, or you can take a problem in your own life and create a whole page about reasons for why it occurred, different paths that could have been taken, different ways out of the issue, reasons for why you are or are not taking one path or another, and material of this type.  Another way is to do some type of logic puzzle that will get your brain working on possibilities and options, crossing out those that don’t work.  By searching, I just found a cool site that generates logic puzzles as you get there, so go here if you want to do one: Logic Puzzles

You Want To Feel Some Difficulty

I was going to include a sample logic puzzle at the end of this article, but after finding that site, there is no need for that.  I changed the title of this piece a couple of times, but it is mainly about activating your mind at times if you are not already doing so.  Some of you will think to yourself that you push your mind to the limit at times to solve issues, and some of you will be thinking that you barely use the high-level thinking that your mind can do.  I know I can tell when I have used my mind to high capacity because I can only do it for so long before it gets tough to continue.  This is one sign that you are doing it correctly.  I don’t know if I would recommend continuing at that point, but that is up to you.

Mind As A Muscle

Since the brain is like a muscle in how it builds neural connections, and in how connections are only made strong depending how often they are used, this high-level thinking should be done regularly, somewhat like as if you were working out your abs.  “While the underlying mechanisms are different, neuroplasticity research suggests that challenging learning experiences can lead to the development of brain tissue analogous to the way physical exercise can lead to the development of muscle tissue.” (Research paper on neuroplasticity)

A Completed Logic Puzzle

I went ahead and did one of those logic puzzles so that I’m not just saying, but am doing/showing.  Solving one provides a good feeling.  Here is my solution grid for this randomly provided puzzle(I didn’t include the clues or description):

To those who decide to do a logic puzzle, feel free to report back on how you did.

How often are you presented with some message about how popular a product or service is, in order to make you feel as though you are missing out by not purchasing it or using it or taking part?  This is done all over the place, from in politics, to on sites, to on television, to anywhere where persuasion has a place, and some areas where it doesn’t.  Here I discuss what you want to watch for and how to protect yourself from getting manipulated:

Blue Is Blue And Green Is Green

If I try to convince you that something that is blue is actually green, you will think I am a moron.  If I try to convince you that something that is green is actually blue, you will continue to think that about me.

This doesn’t change if I have 200000 people supporting my contradictions.  Yet, all over the place, an effort is made to do something like this.  I have also done this at times.

A politician who happens to not have a solid sense of economic policy, who presents a plan that is not sustainable or realistic, and who happens to have some hundreds of thousands supporting him, still has a plan that is not sustainable or realistic.

A writer who is providing information that is not useful or compelling or based on valid examples or past knowledge, but who has many readers, can use that readership to try to steamroll certain ideas through, or to try to confirm their presence.  You have to be watchful of this.  Also, quality tends to diminish with greater support because it is often the case that a big ego starts to build from that greater support, and so lower quality output is tested to see if it is good enough to keep the cycle going.

Look At What You Are Getting

Going from a sites example, if one site with 300000 subscribed readers has a piece that has a line saying to eat fish every 3 days for good health, and another site with 10 subscribed readers says the exact same thing, it’s not like you are getting more value from the more popular site.  Popularity only has an effect on those who allow themselves to be swayed by it.

This also relates to celebrities.  What are you getting when you are sitting next to a celebrity?  Any value is only residual value about telling your friends that you met them or showing a picture of the time.  They get large amounts of money for showing up at a nightclub or other location, and they leave just as quickly.

If you are getting a certain item from an interaction or purchase, make sure you know what it is.  You are not getting the 300000 subscribers when you read an article from a site with that many, and are not getting celebrity status by shaking hands with a celebrity of some type.  It is an ephemeral transaction and the value you get is rooted in the foundational components, like guidance you get, or enthusiasm that is passed on.  Look for what matters and disregard manipulative tactics.

If something is popular, it is more likely to go south than to increase in value and popularity.  The difficulty of maintaining popularity is that human nature is directed towards getting used to what has been acquired and starting to expect good to come on its own.

There are many “how-to” articles on the internet.  Many of them are intuitive ones that answer questions.  Some examples are “how to make spaghetti” and “how to grow a fruit tree“.

There are also many that deal with people-to-people interactions, like “how to make friends” or “how to get the man of your dreams” or “how to be persuasive”, and these indirectly say a lot about how people are viewed.  If people are as simple to work with as spaghetti, then that says that there is more of a stimulus-response effect going on than is normally assumed.

A Step Towards Reverse Engineering Life

Very recently, the first synthetic life form was created by Craig Venter and his team, and it was a defining moment in scientific efforts.  This had not been done before.  This says a lot about humanity and what people represent as living organisms.  The way that Dr. Venter speaks about the organism he created is like he is talking about a created computer program.  He talks about it booting up to life and being able to reproduce.  This is a signal that can be taken as a message about our own functioning.

As Dr. Venter and his scientific group work on finding out the smallest amount of necessary genes and elements for creating a reproducing organism, the perspectives of many folks will change.  Many folks are not interested in hearing that their growth and actions are so based off of their own programming.  It is not appealing to hear that so much of our presence is based on stimulus and response patterns related to our genes.

With the research continuing, teams of scientists will slowly be able to create reproducing life of many types, figuring out what genes are necessary for living, and which ones can be added as enhancements, and what we can alter in our own code in the future.

Information Was Placed Into The Code Like In A Program

Dr. Venter and his team also made sure to put in some code into the genetic code of the synthetically created organism they made, including some names and quotes.  The fact that information can be coded into the genetic code shows how far research has come.  This is a big step toward the future where organisms are designed to create compounds which we are able to use, or that produce fuel, or that consume some form of waste, or that consume excess carbon dioxide, or so on.

This Is A Step Towards More

This will also later translate into perfecting the types of organisms we already have, because potential for certain diseases or afflictions will be removed, and then things that are nuisances will be removed, and this process will continue as each genetic code gets more and more enhanced.  It is somewhat of a form of sped-up evolution.

There are  a lot of advertising methods that prey on those who don’t see themselves as being people that mainly follow stimulus-response mechanisms.  When you feel like you are very intelligent, which most do, it is hard to believe that you can be hit by certain triggers that cause you to buy things without thinking much.

This type of discovery means so much because a new age is beginning.  Just as we have had computers and programs and software and viruses, this is the introduction to the age of cellular programs and software and viruses.  While it will take time to get to the point where ‘cool’ cellular entities are created, a large step has been taken.

Perspective About Life Can Change Often

This information getting out there means quite a bit to me because people will be opened up to a better sense of what life is.  Knowledge opens the mind by clearing up any items that we were wrong about.  It is easy to be against some viewpoint until it is proven that the viewpoint is correct, and then it looks foolish to be against it.  This is what research brings to the table.

The question that is the title of this article is one worth pondering.  Again, I would say, no advertiser would even hint at this, because much of advertising tries to give the notion that people have so much life and are at the beach and so on, in order to sell product, when actually every step of the commercial or advertising is engineered to acquire purchases from the customers as though they were robotic.

I may have rambled a bit here but I wanted to get some of my thoughts across.

photo credit: à voir etc…