How to Train Your Brain for High Performance

BY GEOFFREY JAMES

 

Contributing editor, Inc.com@Sales_Source

Everybody sees the world through the lenses of three sets of beliefs. Making all three more effective increases your mental performance.

For the past two decades, my good friend and mentor Gerhard Gschwandtner (if you don't know who he is, you're not in sales) has been investigating the thought patterns of successful people and how to replicate them.

In the process, he's created a fascinating and (it seems to me) quite useful model of how beliefs (or mindsets, as he calls them) ultimately determine our actions. He sees the brain operating like a pyramid with three levels:

Implanted Mindsets

These are beliefs that you've absorbed from your culture and your parents or caretakers. While some of these beliefs may be useful and enlightened, others of them may be harmful and holding you back.

The challenge here, according to Gschwandtner, is to "water the flowers and stop watering the weeds" by making a conscious decision to either embrace or reject these beliefs.

For example, my late father believed that I could accomplish any intellectual task if I put my mind to it. He was also, like many of his generation, quietly racist. I've chosen to accept his positivism and reject his racism.

Imprinted Mindsets

Sitting atop those implanted beliefs are the beliefs that are created when you're impressed by a great teacher, a mentor, or a coach.

Such experiences can literally change your life. I've met many people who can pinpoint the exact moment when they changed their thinking as the result of reading a book, hearing a speech, or just having a conversation.

For example, Tony Robbins taught me, among other things, that formal, written goals are essential to success. Previously, I foolishly never set goals because I wanted to "feel free."

Inspired Mindsets

The highest level of the pyramid is the inspired beliefs that transcend your background and even the lessons you've learned from your mentors.

As Gschwandtner puts it: "We all have deep within us something special that we might call 'inner magic' or a talent that wants to come out, or a dream that invites us to think about exploring a new direction in our lives."

The challenge here is to heed these inspired beliefs in order to make your life more meaningful. These inspired beliefs are what drive successful people to create a "second act" where they are in service to a greater good.

Amp Up Your Performance

A wonderful characteristic of the human brain is that if you ask it a question, it will come up with an answer. (That's why it's important to ask the right questions!)

Using that principle, the following "worksheet" helps focus and channel all three levels of your mind so you can perform at a higher level:

Implanted Mindset

• What belief that I've had since I was a child has proven the most useful?
• What belief that I've had since I was a child has held me back the most?
• What can I do, today, to reinforce and strengthen the useful belief?
• What can I do, today, to expunge and eliminate the dysfunctional belief?

Imprinted Mindset

• What three books have influenced me the most?
• What three experiences have taught me the most?
• What can I do, today, to strengthen the beliefs I acquired?
• Given my current goals, who are the three best mentors (authors, experts, consultants) to help me grow?

Inspired Mindset

• If I could do anything and knew that I could not fail, it would be _______.
• What is holding me back from following that inspiration?
• What parts of my life are leading me toward that inspiration?
• What is my plan to follow that inspiration?

I recently learned that Gschwandtner has a special workshop that uses applied neuroscience to help attendees align their levels and tap into their inspired mindset.

According to my experience with his previous events, the workshop is likely to be both enlightening and entertaining..

I'd go myself, but unfortunately, I had already made commitments for that time before I learned about it.

Find out if you have a great student mentality and what are the blocks for it.

After our awesome conference in Chicago this weekend we here at Raseri, Inc are really focusing on having a great student mentality this week and using everything we have learned not writing it down and never looking at it again!   Check out this great article and figure out what blocks could prevent from utilizing the tools around you. 

http://hubpages.com/health/What-blocks-student-mentality

We always wonder why is there someone always in class who sits right in the front and asks questions. You just want to go up to that person and tell them stop bothering the professor already because it’s our turn. And in some cases, we have a baby who tries to ram a toy wagon into toy fence. Yeah I noticed that from the actions of my nephew, Devinder a couple of years back. He wanted to learn about his surroundings. This is what we call student mentality.

Devinder, my Curious George nephew :)

Student mentality is the willingness to learn. In this learning process, you have to have the curiosity for the future, or the reason as to why you want to listen to information being provided. Everything you do in life has a why. You have to discover it. Without purpose, we would not be excited enough to do anything. Remember listening can help you reap the benefits of implementing knowledge .We all want growth because it brings us happiness.

Where do you stand with student mentality?

Do you have great student mentality?

•  Yes. Awesome !! This relates to you and find out more about it.
•  No. Well stick around !! Normally , almost no one has great student mentality. I know I used to be in the same boat.

See results without voting

Happiness comes from the pool of sources you search.

Let’s all open our ears to people to learn. Learn from your niece, nephew, grandparents, friends, teachers, siblings, pets and even from yourself. Pretty much you can get information from different sources such as somebody of any age, and/ or people from work or school. The exposure of yourself to new activities or thinking can open up new channels of thinking. And the type of learning depends on what you want to learn. If it is something about school, you would ask your teachers or professors. You definitely want to invest time of bugging your professors because a lot of money is spent on education, but the worth is not there. The value comes about when you take the initiative to engage in questions that can unlock the information you need to reach a potential.

Relatives

By learning from your relatives, you can learn what type of relationships you will have with them. Learn from your niece or nephew to realize what kind of uncle you will be. It will release a masked potential. You can learn so many things from your grandparents because they have many compiled decades of memories and experiences. You make use of their past experiences to better yourself. You can reconnect with your family line through an understanding you developed from the information provided by your family. You can get an understanding of your lineage or family tree and how your family connects with each other. Also, siblings can help you find out what you need to improve on in the relationship since you are in the spotlight all the time. Your siblings can share knowledge towards subjects, interests and talents that they are naturally inclined to. Since my brother is naturally inclined to the arts, I ask him questions about photography and architecture of buildings.

My brother's interest

Source: http://thebrandterminus.in/assets/images/Nikon-Cam...

This student mentality can run into a blockade. Some things that cause those blockades are: the loss of attitude, arrogance, fear of the truth, bad habits and deafness.

Arrogance can be a display of you trying to appear bigger than you really are.

Source: http://tx.english-ch.com/teacher/nicole/pufferfish...

Roadblocks

When you lose your attitude, you do not have a positive focus in life; you do not want to do anything. Hence, you do not want to listen.

Arrogance is a complete block because it comes from the mind. In this case of blocks, you are stubborn to not listen. This is a person who thinks he knows everything. A mind that thinks it knows everything does not have a potential to learn anymore. Since this perception is their reality, they operate with this mindset in every aspect of life. The root of arrogance is personal insecurities and why people tend to put a defensive stance in life. They try to appear bigger than they are now like the puffer fish.

Sometimes, we do not listen just for the fact that some truths can be really painful. When the truth hurts, we tend to put up a wall against all types of threaten. We get locked into our own world and mentally close up our ears to any information that afflicts suffering. Of course, this is less severe compared to arrogance. Seeing this roadblock puts arrogance on higher pedestal because arrogance also includes the fear of the truth.

We have a lot of bad habits that do not allow us to attend the place of learning or maximize our time of learning. Some examples of bad habits are sleeping and smoking. Sleeping can be a great for optimal performance, but if sleeping is all you do it's a waste of time. Cigarette smoking can hold up your valuable time when you could have done something else in that time. We understand cigarette smoking can be hard for you guys to quit because of the rewarding signals it sends to your brains, but you know yourself how much time has been diverted away from your families. You could have learned a few things here and there from your little friend, your daughter or son.

Deafness is a physical problem that does not even allow you to get information into our ears. How can we speak to them when they cannot hear us? How can we learn about their world? The humorous part is that the truth cannot even hurt them because they cannot hear others.

Pinpointing your roadblocks

Before we go on any further, what is your roadblock? (This hub is only useful if you truthfully answer this. Just to let you know for your satisfaction , this is only a poll, so it would give me a %.

•  loss of attitude
•  arrogance
•  fear of truth
•  bad habits
•  deafness

See results without voting

The detours to the roadblocks

These are things we need to do to get passed these roadblocks. To resolve the issue of positive attitude, look at my hub on "How can you maintain your attitude?" (Click on the link below)

• How can you maintain your attitude?

A roadblock caused by arrogance can be solved by acknowledging your weaknesses and making yourself stronger by getting rid of those weaknesses. Wherever you lack potential, you make it up by focusing on building a skillset or accepting what weaknesses you have. And the most important, laugh it off. If it doesn’t matter to you, then it will not matter to them. People bother you with what you are bothered by. When it comes to the fear of the truth, we should slowly accept it. It relieves us from the weight of the fear. When we operate this, we develop the biggest smile. This process itself is another level of student mentality because you learn that you are adapting. We all have some bad habit we need to work on. There is plenty of information floating around in internet space that can help us break those bad habits.

Texting is a fun game. (http://theanchornyc.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/people-texting. jpg)

The truth about deafness is that deaf people are stronger and smarter than the normal human beings because they realize they could only accomplish things if they have a line of communication. Thank God to people who understand their condition. That’s why we have tools and a language in place, sign language. We have to embrace their company like anyone else’s. I know I do not know sign language. I am not sign-language literate embarrassingly, but I speak to my friend in text. Also, I write on the notepad of my iphone and pass it back and forth. It’s the best feeling in the world when others do not even know what’s going on. It’s like a game.

Student mentality without goals is impossible.

We can start off with how we can develop great student mentality if we have a goal in mind. We will only want to learn something if there is something to pursue. A medical student will learn the anatomy, functions, and pathology of the body not for the heck of it, but because it will bring her or him state of being where he or shewants to be. In the case of a medical student, it is to become a doctor.

We can compare the medical student to a baby who is learning how to crawl. At some point, they walk for a couple of steps. They learn to walk with a controlled movement of their body. The doctor can be a compared to full-grown adult. Now you can really sharpen student mentality by practicing the habit of asking questions and researching. Research is needed because it opens doors to ask more quality questions. If you follow this thought process and come across a roadblock, then ask questions to yourself and others to find the answer. And find all the hows or ways in which a problem can be resolved.

Researching allows you to ask better-quality questions.

Source: http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/Images/Students/Librar...

Parts of student mentality

1. Absorption - you learn via questioning and trial and error. Every time you absorb information you have personally changed. Whenever you still lack knowledge, you ask more questions until you get the process down. Trial and error is fixed in to the actions you take. Each time you take an action, you learn something new about it. You learn your flaws, and slip-ups. From this, you learn what you must not do, or you ask questions about It. With the vast information laying around in the various search engines such as google, you can find a solution to the flaws and slip ups

Personally, my efforts are spent focusing on how I say things to people you approach, voice tone and body language. If I end up using an approach, which was originally thought to be ok, turns out bad, then avoid using that approach. I will make a small tweak. If you completely switch at one point, then you lose confidence. Voice tone is the toughest for me since I am naturally a monotone person. I implement fluctuations and learn to readjust each time. Body language is the subtlest thing, so I need to understand the different body postures from bad posture to good posture. I need to know the bad one, so that I can avoid using them. It's all about society’s perception. These non-verbal cues can send out threatening signals when you do not intend to.

2. Application is the practice of information you have absorbed. Until you do not put the information into play, you cannot say you have a great student mentality. At this stage, you do not want to hesitate using the ideas. You want to be proactive.

Implementation of student mentality

Do you truthfully just absorb information or do you use both parts of student mentality?

•  I just absorb. Great!! It is always great to take the first step.
•  Both. You have done well grasshopper !! :)))