Know more to be more
You are what you know. The more you know, the more you expand your knowledge to assimilate and retain it, the more you assert your identity and expand your horizons. Learning and growing are two activities that are practically inseparable. As you multiply your chances of succeeding, increasing knowledge also helps you to find new avenues to explore and your chances to take on board. It's a case of brain fitness. Just as you have to work out your body, your brain needs a regular work out too.
Knowing more is not a passive process. If you really want to accumulate useful knowledge that you can put into practice in any situation, then your intake of information needs to be accompanied by a minimum of processing. If you don’t use your knowledge, then you’ll lose it. Processing of the information, and application in a variety of circumstances, is what allows you to build a highly interconnected database in your brain, a super brain, if you will. The better the connections, the higher the performance and the quicker the results.
The more of these connections that you can make, the quicker your brain will retrieve information that you need. These mind-mapping connections are the neural pathways along which the information flows inside your brain cells. People who are very young or people who are inactive, mentally speaking, have relatively few of these pathways. They have little to offer in the way of responses to questions, although very young people compensate for this by a very high level of unfettered creativity.
Just like the information databases on the Internet, which are highly organized and able to zip back an answer to you in a fraction of a second, the same thing can be done with your brain. If however, the connections still need to be built. The building comes from memorizing and digesting useful information. This means comparing the information with data that you have already seen or retained, and also applying it to new situations. While you do this, your brain is making complex interconnections to build communication pathways that can operate at lightning speed.
Make sure that you get enough sleep as well to allow your brain some free time in which to consolidate all those connections. Just like bodybuilders working to sculpt a perfect body must also allow periods of rest if they want them muscles to develop properly, in brain fitness you need to do the same thing. Proper sleep patterns allow the brain to do its “housekeeping” where it sifts through the knowledge that is has taken on board during the day and sorts it out to classify it and store it in a convenient way.
You also need to ensure that your brain food is balanced, just like bodybuilders eating a balanced diet for all the nutrients that go to developing muscles. A balanced and varied brain food diet might include newspaper editorials, business reports, fiction or other creative writing, video games and even a little television. Just like the human body needs a minimum of fat intake together with its protein, vitamins and minerals, the brain can use a little “TV carbohydrates" to put the rest in perspective.
About the Author: Mike Cosentino is a professional development expert, entrepreneur, and a top sales trainer read more of his topics or subscribe to his free newsletter at www.mikecosentino.net
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Print Article | Download PDF | 11 views | Jul 10 2008
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