Mind Power News No. 207: Seven Steps to Greatness

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Issue No. 207 / Saturday, March 15, 2008

Seven Steps to Greatness

By Anthony Norvell
Author of The Million Dollar Secret That Lies Hidden Within Your Mind

Choose Your Gift. Then Act.

Find the field in which you are most interested; study the lives of those who have achieved greatness in your particular field, then choose your gift and act!

With the dream within your mind, you are half-way on the road to achievement, but you must act to materialize your dream.

The Chinese have a saying, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with but a single step." The first step of choosing what you want, letting your desires guide you to the path you wish to take, is probably one of the most important that you can take in applying our Million Dollar Secret to your own life and success.

Step by Step to Greatness

1. Pick the field you wish to specialize in; learn all you can about it, study the lives of the persons who have had outstanding success in that field, then strive to emulate their pattern of thinking.

If you wish to be a doctor, study the lives of great scientists and specialists in medicine; if it is law you are interested in, become acquainted with the lives of the great lawyers of the past, and see how they succeeded. If you want to become a great scientist, an architect, inventor, or industrialist, make it a point to study their lives, see how they accomplished their great things, then emulate them.

2. Each day strive to put into action one or more of the qualities or traits that you have learned from the lives of great people. Imitate these thoughts, if you need be, at first, then you will gradually begin to originate great thoughts and actions of your own.

3. Take specialized training to perfect your gifts and talents. Assemble facts about the work you choose; see the good and bad sides, then, if you are still interested, let no one divert you from your goal.

4. Let what I call Discontent motivate you in your desire to achieve perfection. Never be satisfied with your present accomplishments or progress. When you are satisfied you cease to grow. Everything in nature is in a constant state of flux, from an imperfect to a more perfect state. Constantly desire change and evolvement, for this is the Law of Action that will help you constantly evolve higher and higher in the future.

5. Aim for the stars, even though you may not achieve them. At least such an ambitious mind will assure you of reaching some kind of high goal. The incentive for aiming high must come from within, your desire to achieve greatness. Browning said, "Ah, but a man‘s reach should exceed his grasp, / Or what‘s a heaven for?"

6. Create a vortex of mental activity about yourself. Break the inertia which may be holding you back by doing something, almost anything is preferable to sitting back and refusing to make an effort. There is a law in nature which states, "Action and reaction," "Cause and Effect." When you set some action into motion, it must have an instantaneous reaction. There is no cause without its corresponding effect. If you make up your mind you are going to achieve something like playing the piano or doing touch typing, you can hold this idea in mind forever and yet if you do not take some step by action, you will never acquire facility in that field.

7. Never be satisfied with the limitations that life seems to have placed on you and your expression of your talents. Remember, all great people had to break the mould of negativity and limitation to achieve their dreams. The power is within your mind to rise as high as you aspire. If you lack the education, look about you for the means to improve your mind and acquire knowledge. Our vast libraries are filled with the priceless wisdom of the ages; go there and learn how to use your library to best advantage. These are correspondence courses you may take in the privacy of your own home, from high school to college subjects, that can help improve your mind and prepare you for a better position. There are extension courses for adults in all universities, night classes in high school and college‘ you need never say that you do not have an opportunity to obtain sufficient education to achieve your goal.

The means are all about you; search them out and utilize them. Part of our Million Dollar Secret is the building of mental power, so you may better express your God-given gifts and talents.

By Anthony Norvell. This is an excerpt from
The Million Dollar Secret That Lies Hidden Within Your Mind

77 Brain Hacks to Learn Faster, Deeper, and Better

If someone granted you one wish, what do you imagine you would want out of life that you haven't gotten yet? For many people, it would be self-improvement and knowledge.

New knowledge is the backbone of society's progress. Great thinkers such as Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, and others' quests for knowledge have led society to many of the marvels we enjoy today.

Your quest for knowledge doesn't have to be as Earth-changing as Einstein's, but it can be an important part of your life, leading to a new job, better pay, a new hobby, or simply knowledge for knowledge's sake — whatever is important to you as an end goal.

Life-changing knowledge does typically require advanced learning techniques. In fact, it's been said that the average adult only uses 10% of his/her brain. Imagine what we may be capable of with more advanced learning techniques.

Here are 77 tips related to knowledge and learning to help you on your quest. A few are specifically for students in traditional learning institutions; the rest for self-starters, or those learning on their own. Happy learning.

Read the full list of Brain Hacks here...

Eureka! How the Brain has 'Aha' Moments

By Sharon Begley
Source: Newsweek

Think of one word that can form a compound word with “sauce,” “pine” and “crab.”

I’ll wait . . . .

Time’s up: did you come up with “apple,” to make “applesauce,” “pineapple” and “crabapple”? OK, let’s consider that a warmup. Try the same exercise—finding a word to make a compound word—with “bump,” “step” and “egg.”

Did “goose” pop into your head?

One more: for “back” “clip” and “wall.” . . . .It’s “paper,” for “paperback,” “paperclip” and “wallpaper.”

If you’re like many people, you tried to solve each problem methodically, first finding a word that would go with, say, “sauce” and then trying it out with “pine” and “crab.” But if you’re like most people in a more important way, if you solved these brain-teasers you did so not through this grind-through-the-possibilities approach, but through insight. That is, you thought a little and then, wham, the answer suddenly hit you.

Scientists have approximately no idea how this happens.

Read the full story here...

The Greatest Success Secret of All Time

By Frank Tibolt
Excerpt from A Touch of Greatness

Wise old Andy Carnegie, multi-millionaire philanthropist and builder of men (he created 43 millionaires) became an omnivorous reader as soon as he first learned to read.

He particularly liked stories of biography about successful and rich men. He quickly learned that most successful men made a habit of writing down goals and striving for them. He read this so often he regarded it as the secret of success. He preached it to anyone who'd listen.

He went so far as to think up a little trick for finding out how many of his own employees wrote down goals and aimed at them. This he did as follows:

He thought up a questionnaire of 15 questions so worded to make them think he wanted their opinions and suggestions. Here were some of the questions:

• How long have you been working here?
• What prompted you to come to work for us?
• Are you satisfied with your pay and working conditions?
• Do you have any suggestions for improving conditions, or improving the
company?
• Are you earning enough money for the work you do, in your opinion?
• Do you make enough money to take good care of your family?

Etc. etc. 15 questions in all.

But in between the 15 was one, the only one he was interested in. That one was:

Do you have the habit of writing down goals and working to reach them?

When the questionnaires came in, he had his accountants separate the "yes" sheets from the "no" sheets. There were 226 Yes sheets and 3572 No sheets.
Then he checked the earnings of each employee. The 226 Yes sheets were among the 10% of the highest earners in the company. The No sheets were among the 90% of the lowest earners.

After the test was over he confessed his trick and explained he did it to persuade them to become GOAL SETTERS. And it paid off. The production of the plant increased and hundreds began goal-setting. Many of them became rich. Fortythree of them became millionaires.

For a while he was nicknamed the High Priest of GOAL SETTING.

Since that time dozens of other research agencies, colleges, accountants, employment agencies and others conducted similar tests. And they always came out close to these figures of 6% and 94%.

Read the Greatest Success Secret here...

Snorting a Brain Chemical Could Replace Sleep

By Alexis Madrigal
Source: Wired

In what sounds like a dream for millions of tired coffee drinkers, Darpa-funded scientists might have found a drug that will eliminate sleepiness.

A nasal spray containing a naturally occurring brain hormone called orexin A reversed the effects of sleep deprivation in monkeys, allowing them to perform like well-rested monkeys on cognitive tests. The discovery's first application will probably be in treatment of the severe sleep disorder narcolepsy.

The treatment is "a totally new route for increasing arousal, and the new study shows it to be relatively benign," said Jerome Siegel, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA and a co-author of the paper. "It reduces sleepiness without causing edginess."

Orexin A is a promising candidate to become a "sleep replacement" drug. For decades, stimulants have been used to combat sleepiness, but they can be addictive and often have side effects, including raising blood pressure or causing mood swings.

The military, for example, administers amphetamines to pilots flying long distances, and has funded research into new drugs like the stimulant modafinil (.pdf) and orexin A in an effort to help troops stay awake with the fewest side effects.

The monkeys were deprived of sleep for 30 to 36 hours and then given either orexin A or a saline placebo before taking standard cognitive tests. The monkeys given orexin A in a nasal spray scored about the same as alert monkeys, while the saline-control group was severely impaired.

The study, published in the Dec. 26 edition of The Journal of Neuroscience, found orexin A not only restored monkeys' cognitive abilities but made their brains look "awake" in PET scans.

Read the full story here...

Sell Your Cleverness and Purchase Bewilderment

By Dr. Wayne Dyer
Excerpt from 10 Secrets For Success and Inner Peace

Having a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing sounds easy until you think about how much conditioning has taken place in your life, and how many of your current thoughts were influenced by geography, the religious beliefs of your ancestors, the color of your skin, the shape of your eyes, the political orientation of your parents, your size, your gender, the schools that were selected for you, and the vocation of your great-grandparents, to list only some possibilities.

You showed up here as a tiny infant capable of an infinite number of potentialities. Many of your choices remain unexplored because of a hopefully well-intentioned conditioning program designed to make you fit the culture of your caretakers. You probably had next to no opportunity to disagree with the cultural and societal arrangements made for your life.

There may have been some adults who encouraged you to have an open mind, but if you’re honest with yourself, you know that your philosophy of life, your religious beliefs, your manner of dress, and your language are a function of what your tribe (and its heritage) determined was right for you. If you made any fuss about going against this preordained conditioning, you probably heard even stronger voices insisting that you get back in line and do things the way they have “always been done.” Fitting in superseded having a mind that was open to new ideas.

If your parents were Jewish, it’s unlikely that you were raised to honor and respect the Muslim religion, and vice versa. If both your parents were Republicans, it’s improbable that you heard the virtues of the Democratic Party extolled. Whatever the reasons our ancestors may have had for not having open minds, it’s true that they inhabited a much less populated world than we do. In today’s overpopulated world, we simply cannot continue to live with those old styles of closed-mindedness.

I urge you to open your mind to all possibilities, to resist any efforts to be pigeonholed, and to refuse to allow pessimism into your consciousness. Having a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing seems to me to be one of the most basic principles that you can adopt to contribute to individual and world peace.

Read the full story here...

How to Make the Right Decision

By Adam Khoo
Source: Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires

Life is like a road. There are long and short roads; smooth and rocky roads; crooked and straight paths. In our life many roads would come our way as we journey through life. There are roads that lead to a life of single blessedness, marriage, and religious vocation. There are also roads that lead to fame and fortune on one hand, or isolation and poverty on the other. There are roads to happiness as there are roads to sadness, roads towards victory and jubilation, and roads leading to defeat and disappointment.

Just like any road, there are corners, detours, and crossroads in life. Perhaps the most perplexing road that you would encounter is a crossroad. With four roads to choose from and with limited knowledge on where they would go, which road will you take? What is the guarantee that we would choose the right one along the way? Would you take any road, or just stay where you are: in front of a crossroad?

There are no guarantees.

You do not really know where a road will lead you until you take it. There are no guarantees. This is one of the most important things you need to realize about life. Nobody said that choosing to do the right thing all the time would always lead you to happiness. Loving someone with all your heart does not guarantee that it would be returned. Gaining fame and fortune does not guarantee happiness. Accepting a good word from an influential superior to cut your trip short up the career ladder is not always bad, especially if you are highly qualified and competent. There are too many possible outcomes, which your really cannot control. The only thing you have power over is the decisions that you will make, and how you would act and react to different situations.

Read the full story here...