Emulating successful people is one key to success. Be careful, though, if you ask them for advice. Often, people don’t really know why they succeed, but they will give you as many explanations as you want anyhow. One night on the news, I saw a 100-year-old man explain that smoking a big cigar every day was one of the secrets of his longevity. It might be nice to know why he has lived so long, but I’m pretty sure we won’t learn by asking him.

Key To Success – Study Successful People

One key, then, isn’t in doing what successful people say, but rather doing what they do. This is how to learn success. Naturally you have to look closely and apply a little brainpower to see what they are really doing that is causing their success.

A successful real estate investor told me he didn’t believe in setting goals. However, watching him and listening to him, I came to realize that he knew just where he expected to be with his projects in six months. This, of course, is goal-setting – he just called the process something else.

Never stop listening to what successful people have to say, but read between the lines. Listen for insight into how they think about things, how they approach their challenges. Suppose the advice of a successful basketball player is just to practice more, but he casually mentions “I saw that going in,” after a great shot. Isn’t it time to start visualizing your shots going in?

Key To Success – Model Successful People

You won’t always know what is causing a person’s success. Internet marketers promote their websites by exchanging links, but when I first tried to exchange links with other websites, the owners didn’t respond to my emails. Then I found a simple email letter used by a successful internet marketer to get links. It sounded silly to me, and I wanted to change it, but I tried it anyhow. It worked repeatedly.

It is more important to do the right things than to understand why they are right. To also understand is great, but at first it may be best to just copy many of the actions, attitudes and approaches of someone who is succeeding. Try to model success, even before you understand it.

As you learn more, you can drop those parts that aren’t contributing, and add elements of your own. If you model a successful parent, for example, and life with your children gets better, does it matter if you know right away which changes were the most effective? Of course not.

Is it better to understand why what you are doing is working? Certainly, but you may not ever understand why some things work, and this is okay too. It is better to have success than to explain it, so find successful people and do what they do, not what they say. It is an important key to success.

What do your dreams mean? This hasn’t been clearly answered by science yet. It is possible that they are a way to exercise the brain and keep it functioning efficiently. Some scientists theorize that dreaming is a way to categorize and “file away” things that weren’t sufficiently dealt with during the day. This would explain why daily events so often become a part of that nights dreams.

Dreaming seems to be necessary. In experiments, people have been prevented from dreaming by being woken up whenever they start a dream, as evidenced by their REM or “rapid eye movement,” which accompanies dreaming. This seems to cause mental distress, although this was often shown in nothing more than increased attempts to dream. Those woken an equal number of times, but randomly, didn’t seem to suffer as much.

We may need to dream, but we don’t know why, and we could argue endlessly about the meaning of the content of our dreams. However, despite this essential ignorance about what dreams mean, we do know that there are ways we can use our dreams. A couple examples follow.

Dreams Mean Entertainment

You may occasionally remember a dream you had that was better than most movies you’ve seen. Sometimes you may not even want to wake up from a dream, because it is so enjoyable. Perhaps you wish you could have more dreams like these.

You can, by waking up IN the dream, and taking control. Want to fly over that lake? Or join that party? You can direct your dream if you know that you are in a dream. That is the idea behind lucid dreaming.

Does it work? Many swear that they regularly are conscious and in control during their dreams. I have had more than one dream where I argued with someone that we were in a dream (and of course proved it by waking up). Without getting into an debate about what consciousness is, it is still easy to see how much fun such “controlled dreams” might be.

One common way to induce lucid dreams is to have a “trigger” that reminds you that you are dreaming. This trigger can be any common object you’re likely to see in a dream. If you choose a clock, for example, then whenever you see one during waking hours, you say “I am dreaming right now and can do what I want.” Once this is habit, you are likely to say it when you see a clock in a dream, thus “waking yourself up” to the fact that you’re dreaming. Then you can take control and have some fun.

Dreams Mean A Chance To Solve Problems

I have had a number of good ideas come to me in dreams. In fact many of the pages on my web sites started out as dreams. To have creative ideas or solve problems in your dreams, try some of the following.

1. Do some mental work in the area you want ideas or a solution. Think about it, write some notes down, and consider some solutions. This work signals the brain that the topic or problem is important, so it will continue to work on it below consciousness.

2. Turn off the alarm clock. If you wake up naturally, you are more likely to remember your dreams.

3. Keep a recording device or a pen and paper next to your bed. Note any ideas you have if you wake up in the night, and especially when you first wake up in the morning.

4. Lay still when you first wake up, and review your dreams. This process “sets” them in your mind, so you won’t forget them as easily. You can think back on them later, to search for any useful ideas.

These techniques are not yet scientifically “proven.” However, having had lucid dreams, I can say that they are least entertaining. Also, having used numerous techniques to get good ideas from dreams – and always with more success than when I do nothing – I am convinced that there is some value in this playing with our dreams, whether or not we ever completely understand what dreams mean.

There are many techniques you can use to temporarily increase your brainpower. These include problem solving techniques, exercises in imagination, and stimulants like deep breathing or caffeine. Some argue that these don’t actually increase IQ, but only temporarily improve performance. But since you can choose to use them all the time, including during IQ tests, the improvement can be effectively permanent.

Of course, to do anything consistently and repeatedly over time is a difficult goal. What if you want to make real and permanent improvements? Can you increase brainpower permanently, or at least as permanently as things can be for mortals?

Yes, you can change the physical structure of your brain, in order to improve its function. There are two basic ways to do it. The first is to physically build and strengthen your brain with mental exercises. The second is to strengthen it by doing certain physical exercises.

Mental Exercises To Increase Brainpower

Mental exercises do not just create temporary changes in your thinking. Exercising the brain has been shown in many studies to actually generate new neuronal growth. It has even been shown to halt the decline of mental function that often comes with age.

What mental exercises should you do? Ideally ones that you enjoy, because you will get more involved and be more likely to keep doing them. There have been many activities used to test neuronal growth that results from exercising the brain. No specific ones have been singled out as more effective yet, so we are left using our common sense.

Watching TV, for example, is not mental exercise, because it is too passive. Doing crossword puzzles certainly is good mental exercise, as is playing word games, arguing philosophy, or doing mental math while driving. Other possibilities include learning and using memory techniques, habitually redesigning things in your imagination, and inventing lyrics as you sing a song.

Physical Exercises To Increase Brainpower

Physical exercise has been shown to improve brain function indirectly. This is easy to understand. A better cardiovascular system means better blood flow, and it is blood that carries that much-needed oxygen to the brain. Of course, this better oxygen supply to the brain will persist only as long as you stay in shape. Are there physical exercises or activities that will make more permanent changes in the brain?

Yes. Activities which involve timing and coordination cause dendrite growth in the brain, resulting in more possible connections in your brain. Having more connections means learning and thinking can be more flexible and efficient. Physical exercise, then, can increase brainpower – if it is the right type.

Athletic activities likely to help include tennis, basketball, soccer, and tossing around a Frisbee. Less athletic activities that require a lot of coordination and timing will also accomplish the same thing. These include playing musical instruments, especially those that require precise timing, like piano playing. You can also try activities which involve hand-eye coordination, like painting or drawing.

Meditation, which is part physical and part mental activity, also changes the structure of the brain. Recent research shows that it increases the thickness of the cortex in those areas that are involved in sensory processing and attention – the prefrontal cortex and the right anterior insula. Other studies show that highly skilled musicians and linguists also have thickening in the relevant areas of the cortex.

What’s the bottom line? Areas of the brain that you exercise grow bigger, from new neurons, and from bigger blood vessels and supporting structures like glia and astrocytes, and from increased branching and connections. It is clear that you can increase your brainpower by physically improving your brain.

I had my own math shortcuts when I was a child. Using these meant that I didn’t “show my work” in math class, as was required. This annoyed many of the teachers, and lowered my grades. I did get the correct solutions to my math problems, however. I was simply using different algorithms, ones which I had a hard time expressing on paper.

In my thinking, for example, 97 x 16 became 100 x 16 (1600) minus 3 x 16 (48). It was easier that way, and thinking this way became almost automatic. As a result, I might just write down 1552 even though I couldn’t explain very well how I arrived at the answer. My teachers called that a problem, but many years later such math shortcuts were being sold in seminars and books.

Making Your Own Math Shortcuts

You can make your own math shortcuts. The following may give you some ideas on how to do that. Alternately, you can try any of the shortcuts and algorithms you read about and adopt the ones that are best suited to you. There are no perfect techniques for all people, because our minds work in slightly different ways.

For example, suppose you want to multiply 68 x 6. My mind immediately thinks “60 x 6 = 360 and 8 x 6 = 48, and 360 + 48 is 408.” That is one way to quickly arrive at a solution without pen and paper. It is essentially this: (60 x 6) + (8 x 6) = 408.

Want another way? Think of it as (70 x 6) – (2 x 6). The “internal dialog” might be something like this: “70 x 6 = 420, but that is two “sixes” too many, so take away two sixes (12) and I have 408.” The point is that there is often more than one way, and you can use whichever math shortcut is easier for you.

If the problem was 68 x 9, by the way, my mind immediately focuses on the 9. Why? Because it is close to 10, and multiplying by 10 is easy. 68 x 10 is 680, from which I just have subtract the extra 68 to arrive at the solution of 612. Always look for the numbers that are close to 10 or 100 or 1000, and you’ll find the easier way to do the math, especially if you are trying to do it in your head.

Percentages can be trickier to do as mental math, but there are ways. Suppose, for example, that you want to figure what the 4.6% sales tax will amount to on your $29 book. One quick way to estimate it is to take 10%, or $2.90, cut that in half to arrive at 5%, or $1.45, and then just guess at around $1.35, because you know 4.6% is a little less than 5%. Alternately, you could think of 5% as a 20th of the price – if this is easier – and then round that figure down a bit.

What if you want a more precise solution? 1% of $29 is easy to arrive at (.29), so multiply that by 4 to arrive at $1.16. (You might think of this as (4 x 30) – 4.) Now you just need to add .6% to that. Think 6 x 29 = 174, and then put the decimal in the right place: .174. Add that .18 (round it up as the store will likely do) to the 1.16 and you have $1.34 in sale’s tax, pretty close to our quick estimate. This is not as difficult as it might seem once you practice these shortcuts a bit.

These simple methods do require a basic understanding of math. If you don’t understand that 123 multiplied by 199 is just adding 123 to itself 199 times – that multiplication is just another way to do addition – you will have problems with these math shortcuts. In that case, you may want to simply use the easiest of the math shortcuts – a calculator.

If you want better brain function, start by asking yourself if you are intelligent. What answer comes to mind? Consider your IQ level, but also ask how well you use your brainpower. Can you solve problems easily and creatively? Can you think clearly?

Whatever you think and feel about these questions, those thoughts and feelings will have an effect on your brain function. Some still argue that basic intelligence is unchangeable after childhood (not true), but we can all agree that some people use that brainpower better than others. Psychology plays a role.

Brain Function And Psychology

I know a man who never graduated high school, yet makes very good money in his business. Is the fact that he spent much of his childhood with wealthy kids and their families a coincidence? No.

His rich friends did not give him money, by the way, nor did they help him in his business. Ultimately, how they helped him is by altering his expectations. He expects to find a way to make a certain amount of money. He feels that a certain level of income is normal, and so his mind will always try to find a way to push him towards that level.

Here is another example of expectation altering brain function for the better. I used to read the occasional book on chess puzzles. Checkmate in four moves, the puzzle might say, and the reader has to find it. Of course, I would look until I found it, because I knew the solution was there.

However, I used to think those elegant solutions were not often possible in real games. Then, after doing enough of these puzzles, I started to look for them. I started to find them more often too. Without the expectation of finding them, I had previously settled for less worthy moves.

How do these examples relate to improving your brain function? Directly: Expect to increase your brain power, and you are far more likely to. Think of yourself as a problem solver, and you’ll find more solutions. Consider yourself a creative person, and you’ll express more creativity.

Changing Your Expectations

Do you think you can improve in these areas? Yes, even if you are not sure, you still can. Yyou can at least leave open the possibility, and look for the evidence. This, in my opinion, is a much better way than standing in front of a mirror repeating positive affirmations. It is also easier.

What we look for, we tend to find. This is the key to changing your expectations. You can prove this to yourself in almost any area. For example, watch for generous people for a few days, and make a mental note to yourself each time you see one. You’ll start to see them all over. Then watch for greedy or selfish people for a few days, and you’ll begin to see them all over. You’ll get the point.

How do you apply this to increasing your brainpower? Find your successes. When you learn something new, write it down even. List problem-solving successes, and you’ll start to have more of them. See how creative you already are, and you’ll soon have even more creativity.

Evidence is more convincing than affirmation. Just start finding examples of progress, however large or small. Then focus on them, and remember them, and watch for more. Start doing this now, and soon you’ll see that your brain function is improving.

What is your IQ score? If you don’t know, you can test your intelligence quotient for free at many websites now. What is an average score? The tests are theoretically designed so that half the population will score below 100 and half above. They are scored according to age of the test taker. Here is a quick breakdown of IQ scores in a typical population:

2.2% of the population scores below 70.

6.7% of the population scores 70 to 79.

16.1% of the population scores 80 to 89.

50% of the population scores 90 to 109 (This is considered the average).

16.1% of the population scores 110 to 119.

6.7% of the population scores 120 to 129.

2.2% of the population scores 130 or higher.

How To Raise Your IQ Score

Of course, since the IQ test is supposed to measure your innate intellectual capacity, and not your knowledge, you shouldn’t be able to raise your IQ score. However, there certainly is evidence that you can become more intelligent, which would be one way to raise your score. Then there are the specific techniques that are aimed at just doing better on the specific tests you take. Here are four of them.

1. Prepare and have the right conditions for optimal brainpower. Start by sleeping well before the test. During the test, breath deeply through your nose, and sit up straight. These have been shown to improve performance on almost any intellectual test. Eat fish before taking the test. Recent studies show that eating fish actually speeds up brain waves and increases concentration.

If you’re allowed to listen to music during the test, make it Mozart. Otherwise, listen to it just before taking the test. In one study, those who listened to Mozart’s sonata for Two Pianos in D Major, K. 448 for ten minutes before an IQ test scored nine points higher than those who didn’t. Do anything you can to have your body and mind ready for the test.

2. Learn to be a better test taker. There are techniques for better test-taking. They include rules like skipping over questions you aren’t sure about, and returning to them later. On a timed test it is usually better to answer the easy questions first. This way you won’t leave questions unanswered just because you spent too much time trying to get the answer to a tough one.

Answer every question on multiple choice tests, unless the score is reduced for wrong answers. If in doubt, eliminate the answers that you know or suspect are incorrect, then choose one of the remaining. Eliminate two of four answers on a number of questions, and you’ll get half of those questions right on average.

3. Learn more. Knowledge shouldn’t affect your IQ score, but it can. A recent test asked “Which of these fruits is different?” and you needed to know something about the fruits (one had just a pit, while the others had numerous seeds). Tests have subtle cultural biases, so learning more can help, as can taking a test that originates from your own cultural background.

4. Do brain exercises. This longer term strategy assumes you can permanently improve your brain function and intelligence, and thus increase your average IQ score. It’s a safe assumption in my experience, but in any case no harm will come from the effort.

A final tip. In my experience my score is higher on an IQ test the second or third time I take one. This suggests that you might benefit by taking an online test the day before your scheduled test. This might just increase your IQ score by a point or two.

What is self discipline? It is the ability to control your behavior, to motivate yourself to do the things you should be doing and not do things you shouldn’t be doing. Willpower may be considered an element of it, but sometimes trying to “force” yourself to do something just makes things worse. When you learn to associate negative feelings with an activity, it can become more difficult to do, and so less likely that you will do it.

Is there an easier route to self discipline? Actually, there are many. Here are some of the most effective self discipline tricks and techniques. Why not try them today?

1. Start the process. Suppose you are procrastinating about doing your taxes. You feel stressed when you think about doing your tax return. Then don’t think about it! Once sufficient thought has been given to any project, more thought just creates more stress. The negative feelings that develop make it harder and harder to force yourself to do what needs to be done. You feel like you have no self discipline.

Action is the cure for this. In the case of the tax return, just lay out the forms where you can work on them. Later, just gather all the other necessary materials and put them with the forms. The next day, do just one form, and then another. Whatever the task is, you can find enough motivation for some small step. Training your mind to take that first step as soon as you think of it. The next steps (and so the whole project) become easier once you start.

2. Enjoy what you are doing. If you have ever stayed up all night talking about something interesting, you know what power the mind has over the body. How easily we put off sleep when we are motivated by a passionate discussion. It doesn’t take much willpower to keep doing something when you are enjoying it, and that gives us another key to self discipline.

When you enjoy what you are doing you are energized. Willpower goes up and down with energy levels, so play energetic music, move around, laugh, and look for ways to enjoy whatever project you are working on. The more you associate good feelings with a task, the easier it is to discipline yourself to do it.

3. Reward yourself. Break a task into s few steps, and give yourself a reward when you complete each step. This could be a bowl of ice cream, watching your favorite movie, or just relaxing for a few minutes. Reward yourself with a pat on the back too. When you recognize your successes, large and small, the possibilities become more real to you, and more likely to be repeated.

4. Become more aware of how you work. Suppose that piece of cake calls to you, or that television takes your attention away from your more important work. It can be hard to resist temptation, right? Stronger willpower is a nice theory, but here is a simpler solution: stop standing in front of the cake! Turn off that television!

This is an easy lesson to understand, but try to train yourself to apply it habitually. You shouldn’t keep beer in the house if you don’t want to drink it. You shouldn’t go alone to the single’s bars if you want to maintain a faithful marriage. You should just stay away from people that lead you to trouble.

Self discipline doesn’t mean being immune to temptation. Develop the willpower to say no, if you wish. While you are doing that, though, why not also have the wisdom to avoid temptation? Learn where your resistance is low, and don’t put yourself in those situations. Doesn’t this make more sense than fighting useless battles with yourself?

Fighting with yourself is no way to develop self discipline. It’s better to learn about yourself. How are you energized? What motivates you? What are your strengths and weaknesses? Why not learn about yourself, and start using what you learn to make the behaviors you want easier. That’s smarter self discipline.

You may have used affirmations before, writing positive statements on cards and repeating them every day. Hopefully you stuck it out and got the results that you wanted. More often, we find it hard to take the time to read them every day, and without that constant repetition, we don’t get the effect intended. That is why affirmation CDs and audios have become so popular.

The idea makes sense to anyone who has noted how depressed they get when they repeat certain thoughts or say certain things over and over. If repeating negative thoughts and beliefs “works” to produce a negative state, why wouldn’t positive affirmations work as well? And with a CD, it doesn’t even take time as with written affirmations. Just push that play button and go about your business while constant repetitions reprogram your mind for success.

But what if you don’t like the affirmations that you hear on the popular CDs? What if you don’t want to spend the money to buy eight different ones for eight issues you are working on? Why not make your own? Use a tape player, or get a microphone for your computer and make a CD. Then follow the guidelines below.

Rules For Making Affirmations

There are a couple “rules” for making good affirmations that are likely to affect your mind. The first is to keep statements in the positive form. Say, “I don’t bite my nails,” and your unconscious mind – which has a hard time with negatively stated instructions – may take it as “bite my nails.” Instead you would say something like, “I take care of my nails with a nail clipper and nail file.”

The second rule for making affirmations that work is to use repetition. This means not only listening to your CD as often as you can (and at least once per day for three weeks), but also repeating the statements several times each on the recording. A little trick to make them even more powerful, is to use inflection with each repetition to create a slightly different meaning. For example:

I create my future with the actions I take now.
(The basic belief you want to program in your mind.)

I CREATE my future with the actions I take now.
(Emphasizing that your future is created, and doesn’t just happen.)

I create MY future with the actions I take now.
(Emphasizing that it is your future.)

I create my future with the ACTIONS I take now.
(Emphasizing that your actions are what matter in creating your future.)

A final “rule:” Stick to one area at a time. Don’t try to work on losing weight, motivation, quitting smoking and making money all at once. Start with a clear goal, such as “Improving my relationships,” and make a CD for that purpose. Listen to that for several weeks before starting the second one.

Make positive statements. Repeat them several times. Use inflection to “squeeze” the most meaning out of each statement. Finally, listen to them often and consistently. That is how to make and use your own affirmations.

Your mind power is not your IQ. It is not the innate potential of your mind, but the actual and habitual use and development of that potential. In other words, it isn’t how smart you are that counts, but how you use it. Here are three things you can do to make your mind more effective.

Brain Exercises

Regular use and “exercising” of the brain has been shown to generate new neuronal growth, and even halt the decline of mental function that often comes with age. Try numerous brain exercises, and when you find the ones that you enjoy, make doing them a habit. A study will someday prove that old people who do their crossword puzzle every Sunday morning maintain their mental function longer. Some other ways to increase that mind power:

- Do mental math while driving.

- Look around at things and redesign them in your mind.

- Sing a song, inventing the lyrics as you go.

- Learn a memory technique and use it daily.

Discipline Yourself

A recent study, reported in the journal Psychological Science, found that while IQ level did correlate with academic performance, there was actually a much stronger correlation with self discipline. Those students with high self-discipline have much better grades than high-IQ students. They also found that there was no correlation between IQ and discipline (they varied independently).

Again, this shows that it isn’t how smart you are, but how you use it. Self discipline doesn’t necessarily mean willpower, by the way. It can be accomplished by starting with simple and easy steps and creating good habits over time. A great mind power practice is to get in the habit of regularly building good habits.

Train Your Body

It has been shown that activities which involve timing and coordination cause dendrite growth in the brain. More dendrites mean more possible connections in your brain. More connections mean your thinking and learning can be more flexible and efficient. Physical exercise, then, of the right type, is also mind power exercise.

The activities most likely to help include any athletic activities that require a lot of coordination and timing, such as basketball, soccer, and tossing around a Frisbee. Other good mind power activities are playing musical instruments, especially when it requires precise timing (piano playing), and painting or drawing, which involve hand-eye coordination.

Brainpower algorithms is my own term for the rules that we develop to help us think more efficiently. There are examples from every area of life. Salesmen more effectively sell once they are trained to smile and match the pace of the buyer’s speech. Real estate investors can more easily analyze a property if they have a mental checklist that they run through. Writers think in terms of headlines that “grab” the reader by using words like “top secret.”

Universal Brainpower Algorithms

Some of the most useful rules of life are simple questions that cut through the clutter in our minds and point to the most essential aspects of things. Consider the question “What would (insert hero here) do?” Asking this is a powerful way to quickly resolve ethical issues. A Christian facing an ethical problem, for example, can usually quickly imagine what Jesus would do. This process bypasses the rationalizing that often passes as rationality, and lets our powerful unconscious mind show us the way. Here are some other questions that can be useful.

- What can I learn from this?

- How can I use this to my advantage?

- How can I most quickly and effectively resolve this?

- What is good about this situation?

- What is the key element here?

- How can I look at this differently?

- Do I have all the information I need to make a decision?

More Specific Brainpower Techniques

To develop your brainpower in specific areas, find out what successful people in those fields are thinking. For example, consciously or not, a good comedian is always looking around and asking things like, “How can I take this to the extreme?” “What is the silliest part of this situation?” “Which words in this have double meanings that I can play with?” or “What’s wrong with this picture?” He may also be imagining things reversed, done differently, or from another perspective.

An inventor thinks about how things work, how to apply those principles of function to other things, or how to make them work differently. He challenges assumptions, asking things like, “Do chairs really need legs, or would there be advantages to hanging them from the ceiling?” These idea-creating techniques are just specific brainpower algorithms.

The key to using these brainpower algorithms most effectively isn’t in learning as many as you can. Many of us have learned enough “self improvement” techniques to last a lifetime. It isn’t that knowing more is harmful, but application is the key here, not compiling more unused knowledge. You need to take what you know and use it, and, even more importantly, make it into a habit. A simple and useful principle turned into a good habit is more powerful than a head full of great ideas.

How do you create these brainpower habits? Repetition. How long do you have to repeatedly do something or think something for it to become a habit? The consensus of the experts is about three weeks. Pick the mental “program” you want to install in your brain, and start using it every day for a few weeks. Carry a card with reminders if necessary.

We have mental habits anyhow, but they are not necessarily the best ones, right? Why not consciously train yourself to use the questions, rules, and patterns of behavior that are the most useful for you? This is how you make brain content into brainpower.