Yesterday, Roger Seip wrote about training your brain to make that muscle stronger. For today’s Top 10 Tips Tuesday, we offer 10 ways you can improve your brain’s fitness.
Be Free!
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Brain fitness has basic principles: variety and curiosity. When anything you do becomes second nature, you need to make a change. If you can do the crossword puzzle in your sleep, it’s time for you to move on to a new challenge in order to get the best workout for your brain.
Curiosity about the world around you, how it works and how you can understand it will keep your brain Read More...
What does it take to Grow?
In almost every workshop we deliver, we try to teach the principle that the mind is a muscle. What does this mean? Well, your mind and really your whole life operate on the same growth and strengthening principles as any muscle in your body, and almost everyone misunderstands what it takes to make a muscle grow. Pay attention, here.
I always ask my students “what do you need to do to make a muscle grow stronger or larger?” They always reply with great enthusiasm, “You need to EXERCISE!” That is totally incorrect. You can exercise your muscles all day long and they will never get one iota stronger.
To make a Read More...
Download the 4 Barriers to Growth mp3
(1. Right click the link 2. Choose “Save Target As”)
If you are reading or listening to this, I would guess that it is because you have a strong desire to improve the quality of your life and to grow. It is amazing to me how in our quests to grow how often we seem to get stopped. It makes us wonder what is wrong with us.
Well you know what I find out that when we get stopped or block in our quests for growth it is usually not the result of a character flaw nearly as much as it is the result of one of what I call the Four Emotional Barriers to Read More...
You have heard the cliché, “Rome was not built in a day” many times and you have been told countless times that, “Patience is a virtue.” My question to you is, Can we afford patience in today’s world? Don’t we have to keep up? Technology is changing exponentially, it doubles every 18 month. Do we have time to be patient?
In my humble opinion, we cannot afford not to learn more patience. Think about all the things in this world that show greatness, things that are awe inspiring and think about the patience required to create them.
Look at the nature. It takes a sequoia tree hundreds of Read More...
“The only thing constant is change.” I heard that for the first time while watching the Broadway production of Jekyll and Hyde when I was in my early twenties. I’ve always remembered it because it struck me as one of the most simple, yet profound, statements I’d ever heard.
Everything, everyone, everywhere will always change. We are wise to accept this because it is an inevitable part of life. Yet, humans resist change more often than not. Why is this? It’s the one of the only things we can truly count on. But with change comes uncertainty……the unknown….the unfamiliar. This is why it can also be uncomfortable. It can be like Read More...
Download the Embracing Change mp3
(1. Right click the link 2. Choose “Save Target As”)
As a natural part of our evolution, we are faced with constant changes. In addition to our biology, the world around us is also changing offering a wealth of opportunities and choices.
Every morning when you wake up, you make a choice – you choose to grow or you choose to die. Now I am not suggesting that Read More...
We just finished celebrating Halloween and, I don‘t know about you but, I am still eating Halloween candy. Halloween is a time when we often think of and dress up as good vs evil, dark vs light, angels or devils, trick or treat, are you a good witch or a bad witch? Ok, so that one was more Wizard of Oz but you get the picture.
Do you view life in this same fashion? There are good things in life and there are bad things in life. Is that how you see it? What if instead, you chose to embrace BOTH the positive and negatives…..together, as they exist.
Like it or not, you cannot have pleasures in life with out also enduring some pains along the way. Read More...
“Why in the world would you want to do that?” “Why, did you do it?”
These are common questions that many people hear after they do something that to the outside world would appear to cause pain or suffering of some sort. Things like climbing a mountain, or hiking the Appalachian Trail, or competing in an IronMan triathalon, or adopting twins are just a few of the events that come to mind.
I know this because I have either asked these questions or heard them myself. Personally, I have climbed Mt. Elbrus in Russia, Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa and just completed my first IronMan this fall. And the answers can vary from person to person but I wanted to share with you my favorite answer. My Read More...
Download Own Up to and Grow with Mistakes mp3
(1. Right click the link 2. Choose “Save Target As”)
No one particularly enjoys making mistakes yet none of us are perfect. Mistakes are an inevitable part of life. I don’t know anyone who is truly living and doesn’t occasionally trip up and make a mistake.
We don’t do ourselves or those around us any favors by covering it up, denying it or trying to place the blame somewhere else. But this is often the response when we fear what others will think about us Read More...
Think of a beautiful landscaped yard. It didn’t get that way without proper care, sun, watering and pruning. By definition pruning is the act of trimming, or removing what is superfluous. Pruning gives us a great example and analogy of the power of focus in our lives.
As I sit in my office, I look out at a small river birch tree that was planted about two years ago. I have watched the three main trunks of the tree grow and expand from my office window. But…when I look at the tree close up, I notice that there are often small sprouts growing from the main trunks—not branches, but Read More...
