Tag Archives: mental practice

Customize Your Brain

Customize Your Brain

When I was in high school I went to this party.

I’m not sure what the occasion was, but there was a mix of kids and adults.

I don’t even remember if it was a kid party with a bunch of grownups, or a grownup party with a bunch of kids.

Anyhow, I was in the garage, and I noticed the homeowner had a car covered up.

But it was a pretty small car.

After a few questions, the owner (of the home and the car) came out and took off the cover.

I don’t even remember what kind of car it was (I was never a “car guy”) only that was a little red convertible.

And he was spending his free time customizing it, down to the super cool looking dash board, with all kinds of gauges and dials.

One thing that struck me was how this guy lit up with enthusiasm when he was describing it. Something he was obviously passionate about.

Most people buy a car, and they’re good. They may put down some custom mats, or maybe even put something cool on the dash, but that’s about it with how much people “customize” their cars.

Most people use their brains the same way.

They figure they’ll use their “stock model” without doing any custom work to it.

Sure, they’ll go to school, like everybody else.

Fill it up with enough data to pass the next test, like everybody else.

Then get a job, like everybody else.

And show up on time, and do what they’re told, like everybody else.

That strategy works, until it doesn’t.

Then what?

What happens if you want to do something, and you look upside your brain for a strategy, and come back with nothing?

What happens if you (gasp!) have to try something you’ve NEVER done before, in an attempt to get your needs met, but your factory-setting brain says, “No way, dude!”

You could vacillate, like everybody else.

You could look for somebody to blame, like everybody else.

Or you could do something different.

You could get started TODAY learning how to customize your brain.

How to practice thinking, so the when the inevitable situation comes up, you won’t be stuck.

You’ll take action, leaving everybody in the dust.

How do you do that?

Here’s How:

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Self Service Brain Surgery

Self Service Brain Surgery

When I was a kid I had this 150 in 1 electronic kit.

It had a bunch of raw circuit elements, with these little springs.

You could connect the various elements together by sticking a small wire into the spring, and into another spring.

All in all, you could make 150 separate circuits.

The two I can remember are a lie detector, and a strobe light.

Of course it came with an extensive manual; connect point C3 to point D9, for example.

Each circuit had 5 to 10 connections.

It’s a good metaphor for how our brains work.

They have all these separate “components” that can be “wired” together in different ways.

It also helps to understand how our subconscious processor works.

I think it’s better to think of it as an ultra-fast computer rather than some metaphysical mystery.

It computes ultra fast, base on sensory inputs (sights, smells, etc.) and memory, and it’s output is a “feeling,” either a good one or a bad one. Good means go, bad means don’t.

Like when you hear a song that is associated with all kinds of good memories or experiences, that song triggers all those memories on an unconscious level, which then delivers a good “feeling.” You can then take that feeling and consciously recall all those good memories. That’s kind of what happens when you “zone out” for a few minutes.

Similarly, when you encounter some sensory evidence that brings up a ton of “bad” memories, you get an opposite reaction. A bad feeling that makes you freeze. You suddenly want nothing to do with anybody, and get that feeling of wanting to curl up into a ball and hide from the world.

The good news is that you can use the “circuit theory” to rewire HOW those automatic feelings are generated.

Those original circuits were wired when you were very young. Too young to even process language in some cases.

But you learned that some “experiences” were bad, and were best if you didn’t act.

You also learned that some “experiences” are good, and told you to charge ahead.

So way later on, in your current life, any similar experience will trigger those same bad (or good) feelings.

But they are NOT hard wired in there. They are only connected (metaphorically) like on those springs. All you have to do is bend the spring a little bit, pull out the wire, and stick it somewhere else.

Now, you don’t really need to open up your brain pan and look in the mirror while you work on your gray matter with electrical tools.

You can rewire your noggin by imagining certain things in certain orders.

This is a lot of what NLP is, conscious manipulation of emotions and images.

Only what they usually leave out of most NLP trainings is you have to do it A LOT for it to “stick.”

It’s not a “once and done” thing like it’s usually taught.

But just like playing the piano or juggling, the more you practice, the better get.

And if you want to “practice” feeling fantastic in as many situations as possible, check this out:

Fearless

How To Rewire Your Fears

Re Wire Your Fears

I’ll never forget the first time I went skydiving.

It was about an hour drive to the jump place. All the way out I was secretly hoping we’d get into a car crash so we wouldn’t have to go.

The first split second I jumped out of the plane, I was pretty out-of-my-head terrified.

But the next sixty seconds (free fall) was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever experienced.

They say that’s one way to get over your fears.

“Feel it and do it anyway.”

And they are right. Truth is that most of our fears are false. So if we just FORCE ourselves through that, we’ll notice the fear is not there. The experience can be exhilarating, or it could be boring.

But who the heck wants to FORCE themselves through their fear?

Sure it works, but just because it works doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

Yeah, on the other side of your fears are your greatest resources. Your greatest strengths.

There’s that old story that the gods who created us hid our greatest powers behind our fears, since that’s the last place we’d look.

(I guess the gods didn’t want the competition.)

But still, who the heck wants to make a daily habit out of getting into a brawl with your inner demons?

We’re hard wired to NOT do stuff like that unless we feel our lives are dependent on it.

(or we’re afraid of wimping out in front of our buddies).

Is there another way?

There sure is.

See, our fears are based on FALSE assumptions. A lot of them. We imagine doing something, and then our lighting bast brain imagines the WORST possible outcome. Then delivers a horrible feeling to keep us from doing what we want to do.

This keeps up from realizing that WORST possible outcome (that we didn’t even know about since it happens below conscious awareness).

The trick is to RE-WIRE your brain, so that when you think of doing something, instead of your lighting fast reptile brain automatically going to the WORST possible outcome, it either goes to the BEST one, (giving you a really POSITIVE feeling) or a more likely, neutral outcome.

Think of it like a circuit. One wire splitting into two wires. At the end of each wire is a possible outcome. One good, one bad.

But since our brain’s PRIME DIRECTIVE is to keep us safe, the “wire” leading to the WORST outcome is a lot thicker. So our brain impulse more easily travels down THAT wire to the WORST outcome.

But by taking the time to BUILD UP the BEST possible outcome, so that wire is AS THICK as the “fear” wire, you’ll have a more realistic imagined outcome. Meaning BOTH WIRES will be “checked” by your brain impulse, and you’ll have a more neutral feeling.

There are plenty of ways to do this.

You’ll find them all here:

Fearless

Obliterate False Fears

How To Deprogram Yourself

I read an interesting history book a while back.

It’s premise was that all of human history could be described as a timid, lazy people.

All of the major historical events were driven primarily by two goals.

One to make things less scary, and two to make them easier.

Scared and lazy people making things easier and less scary.

Now, this is just one way of looking at things. One thing about NLP is you learn that “meaning” is pretty flexible.

Sure, if you’re measuring how many grams something is in a laboratory, there’s not much room for coming up with different meanings.

But any time you have anything related to the human experience, or even a biological experience (trees growing, etc.) meaning really IS flexible.

Which is good news when we’re talking about things that scare us.

I’m sure you’ve heard the popular “self-help” description of FEAR:

False Enemies Appearing Real.

Sounds cool, sounds like you know what’s up, but just coming up with smart sounding sayings like that doesn’t really help much when you’ve got to stand up in front of people and give an impromptu speech.

You can tell yourself that your fears are false until you’re blue in the face, but when you stand up, everybody gets quiet and looks at you, it’s kind of hard to logic your way out of being petrified.

So, how exactly do make that “truism” real?

How do we actually FEEL that our fears are false, rather than pretending we’re all that?

Practice, that’s how.

One of the things about being human is we are all born WAY before we are fully developed.

Meaning the first years of our lives, our brains are a sponge.

Unfortunately, we tend to soak up both TRUE things about the world around us, and FALSE things.

Since our brains were designed for a much different time, being “safe” rather than “sorry” makes our young brains a lot less discriminating.

So we learn that a lot of things are scary, even when they’re not.

Problem is that here we are as adults, with those learned experienced programmed into us like they are instincts.

So they those “false” fears FEEL just as real as the REAL fears.

Luckily, we can slowly dismantle the false ones, and keep the real ones.

By focused visualization, mental exercises, journaling and other “tricks.”

It’s not magic, and it does take time.

But imagine what you’ll be able to do when you’re ONLY afraid of things you SHOULD be afraid of? Like escaped tigers and jumping out of airplanes.

Learn How:

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