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Home | Featured Articles | Expand Your Mind
 

Expand Your Mind
By Mark Victor Hansen
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You have amazing talents and unique gifts to give to the world. No one else can make your special offer. These are the things you can do that no one else is capable of doing quite the way you can do them. We all have a purpose, a reason for living, breathing and existing. The most important thing we can do in life is to understand what that purpose is and how we can use it to benefit humanity. We owe it to the Universe, ourselves, our family, others, the future and your legacy. Become significant - think big and serve big.

My friend, Tom Harken was born with both polio and tuberculosis. Tom spent the first six years of his life in an iron lung. Everyone was afraid of tuberculosis - they used to treat it like AIDS, so no one would touch him. After he recovered Tom started to attend school. The first day he went to school the teacher told him to go to the board and spell "cat".  He wrote k-a-t.

The teachers told him - in front of the entire class - Tom would never become successful. Tom dropped out of school, humiliated and chagrined. He decided to prove them wrong. When he became old enough he went out and started selling vacuums. Tom sold 17 a day. He memorized all of the information each customer gave to him - because he never learned to read.

Tom was fortunate enough to find a wonderful woman - Miss Melba, as he affectionately calls her and they got married. He never told anyone he was illiterate until... At age 55, he announced it, with tears in his eyes, to an astonished audience, while being honored at the Horatio Alger Awards. Upon hearing his confession, his sons rushed up to the stage, told him they loved him anyway and would help him. They didn't know either. This was Tom and Miss Melba's secret.

Within one year he learned how to read. Tom crusades with me now to eradicate the slavery called "illiteracy". (For a heartfelt, eye opener, please read Tom's book called, The Millionaire's Secret.) You see, anything is possible. Just like Tom, the only thing standing in the way of your success is you - your beliefs about what's possible, your attitude towards yourself, your desire to achieve what you really want. You are the only barrier that is keeping your dreams at bay.

Expand Your Mind About What's Possible

Our minds determine our success or failure. Your mind is your ultimate strength and weakness. Everything begins and ends with your thinking. I came up with six ways to develop mental muscles. When practiced, they can give you the power to accomplish your goals. Practice takes discipline, but everything worth having does take discipline. And we're talking about your amazing your mind here. The tool that can help you to achieve everything you want to do in life. Your mind is precious. Develop it. Because in the end, folks, if you don't use it you lose it. In the One Minute Millionaire, we teach that with the intangible assets of your mind -desire, ambition, imagination and commitment - you obtain the tangible results called financial freedom.

Six Ways to Develop Your Mental Muscles:

1)  Read, Read, Read

Read something besides magazines and the daily newspaper. They're mostly filled with negative images and information that creep into your brain-mind continuum and fester negatively. Read books that motivate and inspire you. Do a search of motivational/inspirational authors on Amazon.com or in your local bookstore, or read the 100 recommended books listed on my website, and start reading. Read in the morning, before you begin your day, and at night, before you go to sleep. These are the key times to fill your brain with good thoughts and ideas. Only 15 minutes a day adds up to one working month per year invested in self-improvement, which pays the highest ROI Return On Investment.

And read quickly and thoroughly. Train yourself to read at least one book per week. This keeps your brain cells tingling and raring to go at all times. Take notes, underline, highlight, circle and write in the margins you bought - pull out a return on your book investment. I want a payback of thousands to millions for each book I read, and I average over one per day.

2)  Mastermind

Share your mind with someone, or a group, who is moving in the same positive direction as you are. Two or more minds concentrating on the same goal is an extraordinarily powerful force. When one person thinks of an idea, another person can expand that idea. Then the next person can expand that idea. Keep plussing it.

Once a common idea has been established, masterminding is the way to bring it to fruition lightning fast. There isn't a person on this planet who has achieved phenomenal success without masterminding. Please watch my video, Mastermind Your Way To Millions. Call my office at 800-433-2314.

3)  Seek Out A Mentor

Dr. Buckminster Fuller was my first major mentor. I studied how he lived and what he studied, I met who he met and kept it in my Rolodex, and it completely changed my life for the better. I recommend you get mentors in each area of your life for your entire life. Keep having your mentors challenge you.

Decide on a group of people you admire most, whether you know them personally or not? From that list, figure out who you'd most like to emulate. Then study them. Research and buy any kind of information you can find on them. If they offer seminars, attend them. If they've written books, read them. If they've got tapes, listen to them. (Authors want me to help them with their books. I won't until they digest my Mega Book tapes and absorb Chicken Soup for the Writer's Soul.) Here are just a few I would recommend:

            Brian Tracy

            Robert G. Allen

            Dr. Wayne Dyer

            Jack Canfield

            Og Mandino

These are successful people (who were "mentees" under other amazing thinkers) who have taken all of the scientific and spiritual laws of the Universe and created philosophies and skills by which you can also become phenomenally successful.

Be open to learning all you can from those who have already done the work. They are here and their purpose in life is to help you discover what your purpose is.  Don't be embarrassed or allow your ego to take control of your mind. We're all here to learn. Seek out a mentor and submerge yourself in studying.

4)  Listen to CDs and Cassettes

The late Earl Nightingale, one of the most amazing thinkers of our time, had this to say on the subject, "Tape listening is the most important advance in technology since the invention of the printing press." Earl was the Socrates of the last century and co-created the world's largest audio company, The Nightingale Conant Corporation.

This is one of the most important habits you can create for yourself. Continuously listen to motivational audio CDs and cassettes. As a matter of fact, start waking up an hour earlier every morning and devote that time to listening to inspirational CDs and cassettes. Listen to them until you can practically repeat them verbatim. This process will recondition your mind to think only of abundance and positivity. I listen daily as I exercise. It takes the boredom out of repetitious workouts. I learn and earn a healthy body and mind.

5)  Attend Seminars

To reinforce a positive way of life, sign up for and attend motivational seminars. There you will meet inspirational people (and possible mastermind members) and learn new ways of achieving your goals. You can search out seminars via the internet, newspapers , the Learning Annex, or local colleges and universities. Go back to your list of mentors and seek out their websites. Find out their speaking schedule and attend whatever seminars are closest to where you live. Seeing these teachers face-to-face will help you stay focused on your goals and create a permanent positive mindset. My friend, Doug Wead, the world's best storyteller says: "Leaders are born at seminars."

6)  Turn Off the Television

On average, the television set in an American home is on over 7.2 hours a day. Just like any bad habit, it needs to be broken. You may not think anything about leaving the television on while you're doing chores around the house or playing with your kids. But the television is filled with energy that is put out into the room. It becomes its own entity.

     I'm not saying throw the TV in the trash. There's a lot of good programming out there. Unfortunately, quality television is something you have to seek out. I'm just saying that you should try cutting your television viewing back one hour every day at first - missing an hour a day won't hurt you. And you can use that time to read a book, listen to a motivational tape, walk your dog or spend time with your family. If you turn it on, it owns you, because 87% of your mind is visually oriented. Give yourself a no TV hour a day and you'll have 365 hours extra per year or two months of new-found freedom.

     That's it! Just six easy steps. These six steps will help you to re-energize your spiritual batteries and clear the haze out of your mind to help motivate you to decide what you really want to do.

Mark Victor Hansen is the co-author of the wildly successful Chicken Soup for the Soul series and his newt book, The One Minute Millionaire. He is also founder of the fast-growing internet-based "Goal-Mining Challenge", a FREE resource for people to learn how to set goals in every facet of life for immediate, and amazing, improvement. To learn more, visit http://www.markvictorhansen.com/.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     

 

 

 

 

 




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