The complete mental fitness book tom wujec pdf

TIP Ask yourself: Which of my mental muscles don't get a daily workout' A habit is simply the tendency to do something without having to think about it.

Like it or not, your whole life, from the way you brush your teeth to the way you strive towards long-term goals, depends largely on your personal repertoire of automatic tendencies. It has to. Could you imagine having to relearn how to brush your teeth every day? Your mental life what you notice, how much you pay attention, how well you learn, how you approach and deal with problems, what you remember, what you worry about, what you enjoy, what you think about all day long is also largely guided by tjabits.

The key to mental fitness is to develop a good set of habits that help you get to where you want to go.

Mentally fit people can exert themselves whenever they want to. They are interested in how the world works and why things happen the way they do.

They enjoy a wide range of interests. They also know how to change habits through conscious, deliberate action and can form effective tendencies, such as the habit to daydream less, or to weigh decisions more carefully, or to take more risks. Together, these good habits encourage the mind to become more responsive and ultimately to develop the most important habit of all: the habit to develop good habits.

Sow an act, and you reap a habit. Sow a habit, and you reap a character. Sow a character, and you reap a destiny. How do you get mentally in shape?

Mental exercise, like physical exercise, involves movement. For your body, movement is running, swimming, playing basketball, lifting weights, or stretching any activity that makes your muscles expand and contract. For your mind, movement is progression of thought, a kind of inner travel from premise to conclusion, from problem to solution, from question to answer, from answer to question, from one state of mind to another state of mind.

Whenever you actively apply your mind to some task and intentionally manipulate your mental resources, you -move your mental muscles. In the broad definition of the term, an exercise is an activity performed for the purpose of improving a skill, bettering yourself, or training your faculties. Virtually any task that requires active attention such as figuring out a puzzle, working through a business problem, or sitting quietly and collecting your thoughts can be a mental exercise.

Perhaps more important than what you do is how you do it good technique is essential. A gymnast improves by repeating a move over and over, making slight adjustments, until it's just right.

Through this repetition and feedback, the gymnast's muscles become more responsive. Similarly, to improve your mental muscles, you practice thinking. In your mind, you repeat a task until you get your thinking muscles to do what you want them to do. A good mental exercise is an appointment with yourself, a time to turn your focus inward and challenge your mind.

It's a way to channel your mental energy into constructive thought. Whether you want to work hard to reach peak mental performance, or to stretch out a bit to become more flexible, good old-fashioned mental exertion can enhance your creativity, give you a sense of accomplishment, and improve your state of mind.

Creating Your Own Personal Gymnasium In the following twelve chapters, you'll explore a multitude of ways to work out your brain. Each chapter is an exercise station that presents a variety of mental exercises.

At some stations you'll stretch, relax, and sink into peaceful tranquillity. At other stations you'll work your inner muscles with drills and mental calisthenics until your mind starts to sweat.

While some exercises work your left brain the analytic, logical part of your mind others work your right brain the intuitive, spatial part of your mind. Together, they give you a well-rounded mental workout. Exercise Style Tips Here are some rules of thumb to improve your exercise routine. Leave your problems and concerns outside in the locker room. Adopt the workout attitude by intending to strengthen yourself.

Delight in the difficulties that you choose for yourself. Since the whole point of mental exercise is consciously to manipulate your mental resources, do the exercises. The amount of benefit you receive is directly proportional to how much you are willing to stretch and exert your mental muscles.

Remember, good form is the key to good exercise. Don't rush your workout. It takes a while to enter deeper layers of thinking, so be patient. Give yourself plenty of time to explore your inner world.

A lot of the exercises in this book can be performed many times on many separate occasions. Only with time and practice will your abilities improve. Make up a routine of your favorite mental calisthenics. If you reach a block, an exercise you can't do now, take a break and come back to it later. The more you exercise your mind, the easier it becomes.

The easier it becomes, the more you enjoy it. The more you enjoy it. And the more you exercise your mind, the more fit your mind becomes. Every time you put your mind to something, you engage a portion of this mental energy.

However, whenever you become distracted or preoccupied, some of this energy becomes wasted. Say that you're working at your desk on a project. As you're working, imagine that your body settles into a slightly uncomfortable posture some of your muscles become tense.

When this happens, like it or not, part of your attention is drained away. Though you may not be aware of the physical tension, it has an effect on your mental energy.

You lose, say, twenty-five volts of attention, a quarter of your full supply. Now imagine that, as you continue to work at your desk, you feel a little bored. YOJJ begin to look at your project as a chore, and you feel an inkling of conflict.

Part of you wants to work and part of you doesn't. Another twenty-five volts are siphoned off. Now imagine that your thoughts begin to gently drift away from the project. Your mind wanders to other things: an upcoming vacation, your mortgage, a recent movie, or the unwashed dinner dishes.

As the project in front of you fades into the background, you lose another twenty-five volts. Three quarters gone. And imagine that from of the house, in another the faint rhythm of a faucet.

If this continues, no attention left at all! For much of the time, we travel through life using only a portion of our mental energy. Because we tend to be busy inside our heads planning, anticipating, analyzing, worrying our thinking becomes cluttered. At times, it's as if we have several unrelated pools of activity inside our head. One part of our mind is thinking about the future. Another part is recalling the past. Another part is holding a conversation with still another part of our mind.

Our thinking becomes cluttered with a forward rush of words and images. Like bouncing footballs, our thoughts jump quickly in unpredictable directions. We lose some of our full hundred volts of attention to distractions and preoccupations. As a result, we don't work at peak efficiency.

For this reason, before exerting your mind, it's a good idea to loosen up mentally. Loosening up is an important part of any workout it prepares your system for exertion. To warm up before running a mile, you stretch your arms, legs, shoulders; and back.

This increases circulation to your limbs, making your muscles looser and less likely to become stiff afterwards. Similarly, when you stretch your mental muscles before a mental workout, you also enhance your performance. Not surprisingly, being loose is part of being fit. It's a feeling of well-being. When you're loose, your muscles don't work against each other; they work with each other.

As a result, your movements are smoother, more natural. When you don't fight with yourself, you feel at ease, unrushed, unpressured and uninhibited. How do you loosen up mentally? One approach is to collect your attention and bring the focus of your awareness into the here and now. You can do this by relaxing,' slowing down, and allowing your thoughts, concerns, and tensions to pass right through your mind. You can also do this by fixing your attention on a single specific object or task.

Whichever approach you use, the trick is to let go of the irrelevant thoughts that clutter your thinking. Do this and you will regain more,of your hundred volts. Let's begin with the letting go approach. A natural starting point for loosening up is to relax your body. By releasing the tension in your shoulders, by breathing more deeply and evenly, and by unclenching the tiny muscles around your mouth and eyes, you release the physical expression of tension. Relaxing your body automatically relaxes your mind.

The Grand Tour Close your eyes, settle into a comfortable posture, and spend a few minutes relaxing your body. Begin by letting your body become loose and limp. Allow your weight to sink and your muscles to relax. Spend a while just paying attention to how your body feels. Focus on your physical sensations, in your arms, shoulders, back, head, stomach, and legs, as well as inside your chest, abdomen, and hips.

Then slowly shift your attention to your breath. Focus on the sensation of air passing through your nostrils. Don't try to force your breath, fust allow it to be natural and fluid. Each time a distracting thought passes through your mind, use it as a reminder to return your attention to your body. Gently lead the focus ofyour mind back to your sensations. Allow yourself to let go completely and to sink deeply into the warm feeling of relaxation.

Recirculate your sensations back into your sensations: Become so quiet inside that you can feel your heart beat throughout your body. As your-attention becomes clearer with each breath, turn it to relaxing specific parts of your body.

Begin by mentally picturing your face. Visualize your eyes, mouth, cheeks, and jaw. Form a vivid mental image of each part becoming more relaxed as you gaze on it. As you turn your attention to these parts of your face, you may discover the presence of subtle tensions.

Simply allow the tensions to dissipate through the visualization. Vijien your face is thoroughly relaxed, move on to your ears, neck, shoulders, arms, and fingers. Visualize each part becoming looser and more relaxed. The clearer your picture, the more deeply you relax Continue visualizing the rest of your body: your chest, back, stomach, legs, knees, and toes. Remember, there is no need to rush, just let yourself enjoy the experience of touring your body.

Once you finish picturing your toes, visualize your entire body as a relaxed, sentient statue. Immerse yourself in the sensations of full relaxation.

Put the book down, take ten or fifteen minutes, and loosen up your body, inside and out. Physical Relaxation When you sit still and calm your body, you give yourself the opportunity to relax into the present moment. Your senses become more acute, your thoughts become less urgent and demanding, and your mind becomes fresher and more alert.

You feel at ease and enjoy a frame of mind in which you don't have an urge to do anything else, to go anywhere else, or to have anything else. You are just there, completely mentally present. The key to relaxing your body is to focus on the physical sensation of relaxation. If you follow what's going on in your head, you may tend to be distracted by the momentum of your thoughts.

But if you sink into your sensations, paying close attention to what your body feels like on the surface and deep inside your thinking begins to slow down. A good way to focus on physical sensation is to concentrate on the rhythm of your breathing. There's a subtle link between your breath and your mental state. When you're agitated, your breathing tends to be shallow and uneven, and when you're calm and collected, your breathing tends to be deep and even.

What this means is that when you want to collect your attention say, before a meeting, during a troubling encounter, or before a test you should relax your body and steady your breath.

For a few moments, stay with the sensations of your breathing. Allow it to become slow and rhythmic. Don't force it. Just allow it to be natural. Physician Rolf Alexander has an interesting relaxation technique that can he applied anywhere, any time. He suggests visualizing a double cross through your body. Picture a vertical line extending through your spine, from your tail bone to the top of your head.

Picture a horizontal line passing through your chest, from one shoulder to the other, and another horizontal line through your hips, from one leg socket to the other. Visualize that the cross is made from a strong and flexible metal that twists and flexes as your body moves.

To relax, you simply allow the cross to find its natural position, your spine and head become aligned upright, your shoulders settle to the same height, and your hips become square. If you picture the entire cross suspended from a point above your head, you have a handy way to assume a good, relaxed posture.

Your head extends slightly up and out from your chest, opening up your shoulders. Your arms hang freely. Your hips keep you straight. Loosening Up Inside Though the idea of mentally letting go is simple, the action is not so easy.

If you're like most people, you'll find that after a few minutes, your thoughts become distracting. Your mind starts to plan, to anticipate, or to work out problems. You may become entranced with a stream of words and images. You may begin to observe how well you are relaxing.

You may want to feel a certain way and begin to instruct yourself to reach some mental or emotional state. These urges, though subtle, prevent you from letting go fully. Loosening up your mind does not mean stopping your thoughts.

Trying to stop your thinking completely is about as hard as trying to stop your breathing, and maybe just about as useful. Loosening up your mind involves letting go of the urge to follow each and every thought that passes through your brain. You let them pass freely, one at a time, but you let go of the need to act on them.

How do you free yourself from the magnetic pull of everyday thoughts? One good way is to count. With each out breath, silently sound a number in your mind. Slowly count up from one to ten, then down from ten to one. In between the numbers, allow your regular thoughts to pass, but then return your attention to the numbers.

Like the rhythm of breaking surf, the rhythm of your words has the power to soothe and relax, to keep you afloat above mental tides and currents. Another way to let go is to visualize your mind as a wide open blue sky, and individual thoughts as birds, first emerging from the distance, flying overhead, and then disappearing back into the distance. When a thought appears, you allow it to think itself through at its own rate.

You don't try to rush it; you let it pass overhead. When you watch your thoughts closely in this way, you'll realize that each has its own character.

Some are fast, others are slow. Some refer to the future, some to the past. By learning to stay with your thoughts, without trying to manipulate, analyze or sort through them, you'll learn to experience directly their tones and patterns. Mental Core Dump One way to loosen up your mind is to become aware of all the demands it perceives. No matter how apparently trivial, write down anything that you have to do or need to resolve.

Jot down these items in point form a word or two for each thought will suffice. Continue until you have nothing more to write. Writing down everything that's on your mind has the psychological effect of removing mental clutter.

When you can see, at a glance, all the things that you have to deal with, as well as the things that you have been subconsciously thinking about, you can confront them directly. With the demands out in the open, you counteract the feeling that you have forgotten something or that you are avoiding something.

You can then make decisions, set priorities, and free up your attention to deal with what's at hand now.

If nothing else, you can tell your mind that you will return to the demands later. Loosening Up Style Tips There's a certain kind of magic that happens when we're loose. The mind becomes calmer, attention becomes clearer, and we become more ready to respond to anything that may come our way.

Settle into a comfortable posture, relax any muscles you don't need to use, steady and even out your breathing, and sink into your sensations. Write out a list of demands, needs, wants, pressures, anticipations, anything that's on your mind. Release the hidden concerns by looking at the big picture. Develop a technique to come back to your senses.

Learn the best way for you to collect the full hundred volts of your attention and to focus it where and when you want it. Develop the skill of letting go fully by setting aside some time each day to do nothing. So let the mind some relaxation take To come back to its task with fresher heed. EDRUS, lst-century. The Two-Minute Mind Sit in front of a clock or a watch that has a sweep second hand.

Relax for a few moments, collect your attention, and when you 're ready, place your attention on the motion of the second hand. For two minutes, focus your awareness on the movement of the second hand as if nothing else in the universe existed. If you lose the thread of concentration by thinking about something else, or just by spacing out, stop, collect your attention, and start again.

Try to keep your concentration for two solid minutes. Stop reading, get a watch or clock, and go ahead and do it. Start now. Attention: Your Most Important Muscle "The essential achievement of free will is to attend to a difficult object and hold it fast before the mind.

Concentration, the ability to tune in some things and tune out others, underlies every other skill. It enables you to reason, to think clearly, to drive a car through a busy intersection, to plan your finances, to learn a new dance step, and to solve a differential question. It lets you hear the distant call of a willow warbler above the sounds of rustling leaves and to distinguish the fine flavors in a Bordeaux wine.

How did you do with the Two-Minute Mind? Was it easy to concentrate at first, then progressively more difficult? Did you find yourself thinking about how well or how poorly you were doing? How long a stretch could you hold before something else caught your attention?

No matter how well or how badly you think you did in your first try, you probably noticed that, after awhile, your mind wanted to move on to something else. While passive attention the kind of attention that's involved in noticing movement, listening with half an ear happens automatically, active attention demands deliberate exertion.

The truth of the matter is that your attention constantly shifts. It's dynamic, ever on the move, focusing on one thing one moment and on another the next. It is the nature of attention to wander, recall, and anticipate. This mental movement gives a sense of continuity, context, and perspective to your world. In this way, attention is like eyesight.

Both attention and vision are selective: at any one instant, you see details within the central. What is at the center of your vision like the sentence you are now reading is clear and distinct, and what is at the periphery of your vision like the rest of the room is vague until, of course, you look directly at it. Similarly, what you attend to like what you are now reading is clear in your consciousness, and what you don't attend to say, the weight of your clothes is less clear.

To build up a full picture of what you see, your eyes dart around, settling here for a moment, there for another moment, painting in a complete wide-angle image. Similarly, to get a sense of context, your attention moves around, focusing on one thought at one instant, zooming in on something else the next instant.

It anticipates, shifts, and moves to get a full perspective on what's going on. There are definite limits to our attention. We can concentrate only so long on something before our mind skips on to something else. Another limitation is that we can juggle only so many items at one time. To demonstrate this, try the following exercise. Read each of the following series of numbers to yourself. After each series, close your eyes, and repeat the numbers.

How long a series can you hold in your mind? If you're like most people, you may find that juggling five numbers in your head is manageable.

Seven numbers becomes fairly difficult, and fourteen numbers seems to be next to impossible. Psychologists suggest that most of us can carry, at most, about seven discrete bits of information at once. We can deal fairly easily with a seven-digit telephone number, with seven countries in a continent, with seven new people in a meeting. Any more than that and we need either to write things down or to rearrange the information in a more manageable way. One way to increase attention span is to organize information into meaningful groups.

For example, if you think of the sequence of twelve digits as some important dates with the first seven numbers, 1 2 - 6 - 1 9 4 1 , representing the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and the second six numbers, 7 - 2 1 - 1 9 6 9 , representing the first manned lunar landing, you will probably have less difficulty recalling it.

Because our attention can hold only so much, and because our attention shifts from one thing to another, we must deal with one inevitable consequence: our mind tunes in what we want tuned out, and tunes out what we want tuned in. Our attention wanders. However, we can use this tendency to enhance our concentration. Psychologist William James summed it up this way: There is no such thing as voluntary attention sustained for more than a few seconds at a time.

What is called sustained voluntary attention is a repetition of successive efforts which brings back the topic to the mind. The topic once brought back, if a congenial one, develops: and if its development is interesting it engages the attention passively for a time. When you have a specific task to perform it can le anything, mowing a lawn, writing a memo, painting a door frame, listening to a lecture first decide how long and how well you want and need to concentrate. Then keep your mind focused.

If ; ou discover that your mind is beginning to wander to daydreams or distractions, gently return it to the task at hand. Make it a habit to pay complete attention to what's happening, and what you're doing, first for a short duration, and then for longer, and you'll find it increasingly easy to flex your mental muscles when you really nee; them. The Two-Minute Mind is one of the best exercises to train attention.

Curiously, if you begin practicing the Two-Minute Mind, you may discover that the exercise soon becomes harder. This is because with practice you become more discerning of your own attention. You know exactly when your attention is murky and when it's clear. You become more critical and demand of yourself a higher degree of mental clarity. After a couple of weeks of steady practice say five or ten minutes a day you'll feel a remarkable improvement in your attention.

You will be able to concentrate for longer periods. Your mind will feel clearer, and it will take less time to gather and focus the full hundred volts of mental energy.

To make the basic exercise more interes'ing and more challenging, here are a few variations: Place the clock or a watch directly in front of a television playing a sit-com, the news, or better yet, commercials. Try to focus your attention on the movement of the second hand for two solid minutes. Don't allow the television to steer the focus of your attention. Focus half of your attention on the motion of the second hand and half on your hands.

Split your attention down the middle. Place half of your attention on the motion of the second hand and half on a number series. Mentally recite the numbers 2,4,6,8,10,8,6,4, 2,4,6, and so on, juggling both items in your mind. If you start thinking about something else, or if you lose your place in the series, start again. Strive for two minutes or longer. Concentrate on the' motion of the second hand with a third of your attention.

With the remaining third of your attention, focus on a number series. Physical Postures: One Thing at a Time If you watch a diamond cutter shape a precious stone or a conductor lead a symphony orchestra, you'll realize that a person who concentrates well doesn't waste physical movements. Watch a person who fidgets, scratches, constantly shifts his weight, or holds his muscles needlessly tight, and you'll see that one sigr of scattered attention is scattered movement.

When you need to concentrate, assume a physical posture that makes it easy to focus attention. Relax your muscles, picture the double cross through your shoulders and hips, and avoid restless movements.

If you're working at a desk, plant your feet on the ground, sit squarely, lean slightly forward, and concentrate on what's in front of you. Do this for a few minutes and you become more focused. When you appear relaxed yet attentive, you tend to become more relaxed and attentive. With a physical posture conducive to concentration, mental muscles work more productively and efficiently. When standing, just stand. Above all, don't wobble.

Emotional Postures: Finding Incentives The harder you push your mind, the harder it becomes to concentrate. Concentrating can be like getting a donkey to move. Push or pull and it resists. Push harder and it resists more: you end up only fighting with yourself. The trick to getting the donkey to move is not to use force, but to use encouragement.

Dangle a carrot in front of its nose, and it will follow you anywhere. Interest is the emotional component of attention. You don't have to force your mind to concentrate on a thriller novel or on an action movie. You don't have to compel your mind to focus on anything you've got a stake in. Interest powers your mental muscles. And since it is natural to pay more attention to what's important to you, the way to deepen your attention on something that you don't care a lot about is to get your mind interested.

With interest, there's no problem with concentration. Your attention naturally follows. Cultivating interest is largely a matter of adopting an outlook of curiosity and inquisitiveness. Imagine walking along a pebbly beach. With an inquisitive attitude, you notice the pebbles. You see differences and similarities. Some pebbles are large and rough, some are small and smooth.

You pick up a single stone and see flecks of crystal. You find tiny hidden caverns and gleaming surfaces and discover a previously hidden world of cracks and fissures, of reflections, of broken symmetries. The more you look, the more you see. The more you see, the more you want to keep on looking. Becoming inspired by everyday tasks such as doing the dishes, mowing the lawn, working on afiother financial report involves seeing. You lead your mind to find the interesting aspects of the task.

You look for the unusual. You contrast what you know with what you don't know. And as you allow your mind to make connections, you will shift mental postures and become curious and even intrigued by something you originally found dull. If you want. Next time you feel bored, say in a meeting or in a conversation, slip out of your boredom by looking for the interesting aspects even if your mind doesn't want to. In a meeting, ask yourself how the situation might look if you saw it through the eyes of a fouryear-old, of a person who didn't know the people in the room, or someone who didn't speak the language.

If you find yourself trapped with a less than inspiring companion, try to turn the conversation into a genuinely interesting one. Ask the person what he hates, what he enjoys, or what's important to him, and you're likely to discover that he is not as boring as you thought.

Besides having the ability to create and sustain interest, a fit mind has a full storehouse of personal interests. It provides a fertile environment for ideas to take root, germinate, and flower. William James put it this way: "Attention is easier the richer in acquisition and the fresher and more original the mind.

And intellect unfurnished with material, stagnant, unoriginal, will hardly be likely to consider any subject long. Virtually anything under the sun can be food for thought: ancient history, relativity, bioengineering, Third World economies, cattle judging, archeology, ancient religions, rattlesnake bite cures, the making of balloons, high fashion, aerodynamics, house construction.

As an exercise in fertilizing your imagination, go into a bookstore and pick up a book on a subject about which you know nothing, say gardening or lamination techniques.

Or buy a magazine on graphic design, or computer software, or wilderness camping. Venture beyond your ordinary sphere of interests and feed your mind with new information. Mental Postures: Setting Priorities Good concentration the kind that inspires efficient and productive work is like good time management. Both depend on knowing what needs to be accomplished, on establishing priorities, and on setting goals. When you have a clear idea of what's important, you can economize your resources and prevent them from slippirfg away.

Before work, it's a good idea to pause and allow your thinking to become smooth and unhurried. Mentally stand back, look at your agenda, and rate the importance of each item on your list. Ask yourself whether something is:.

If something is indeed important, then it's worth paying attention to. If something is not so important, then you can take care o f it o n c e you have the important things out o f the way. If something is trivial, leave it for the end o f the day. O n c e you've established your priorities, give yoursetf specific o b jectives.

Plan out what you wish to accomplish by setting definite tasks. Form a mental image o f the c o m p l e t e d objective. With that image, follow the task through, o n e step at a time, until it's finished. Break d o w n large tasks into smaller sub-tasks. With bite-size tasks, your mind w ill tend to wander less. T o k e e p your mind focused on what you've got to get d o n e , d o your best to remove any distractions.

If you can, close your door, h a v e your calls screened, and avoid the urge to get up and talk to s o m e o n e. It's helpful to arrange your time so that all the trivial stuff you have to get done p h o n e calls, cleaning, and so o n is lumped together in o n e block o f time.

Determine your personal rhythm for working. D o you get m o r e creative ideas in the morning, the afternoon, or late at night? D o you work best at organizing little details in the beginning of the day or at the end?

Schedule your time to take advantage of your personal rhythms. TIP T o focus your mental energy better, remember to adopt a conducive physical posture, to generate interest, and to give yourself specific tasks. Armed with these techniques, your mind will b e c o m e sharper. Attention Grabbers Here are some more exercises to help you practice focusing your attention. Try them when you 're feeling up and on the ball, then try them when you 're feeling distracted and out of sorts.

Next time you're washing dishes, economize your attention by dividing the routine into cycles of action. When you take a spoon to be washed, mentally sound the word "start.

When you're done with it, put the spoon in the drying, rack, and mentally sound the word "stop. Mental Coffee Breaks. Place a small object, like a pen, coin, or paper clip on a table top in front of you. For five minutes, narrow your attention onto the object. Each time your mind skips onto something else, gently lead it back to the object. Count the number of times your mind jumps.

Slowly draw a pencil across a blank piece of paper. Concentrate on keeping your attention on the place where the pencil point becomes a line. Each time your mind wanders off, draw a mindbeat: mark the place with a kink in the line. When you reach the edge of the paper, double back. How long can you keep an unbroken line of awareness? Next time you're riding in a bus or subway and have some time to kill, look around you and select an object, like an advertisement, the back of someone's head, some marks in the ceiling.

For five minutes, focus on this object to the exclusion of everything else. Let there be nothing else in the universe. Even though your mind will want to move to other things, concentrate only on the object you've chosen. Only when your time is up, relax and look around. Sasaki's Saying. Photographer Chris Sasaki once said that whenever he caught himself woolgathering immersed in a frame of mind that's accompanied by a vacant stare and a dim awareness of the passing of time he would sound the word "attention" clearly in the middle of his head.

Then he would look around and really notice where he was and what he was doing. He found this exercise a good way to become more alert. Next time you browse through a magazine or newspaper, notice what you notice. Notice what ads, articles, and pages your eye is drawn towards. What does it feel like to have your attention diverted to something?

What part of your mind is controlling your attention? In the Timing. Choose something in your immediate field of view, say a pencil, and in your, most persuasive voice, say to yourself, "Look at that pencil.

The pencil will appear brighter in your awareness. Notice the response time, how long it takes for your mind to respond. Does your mind respond faster with practice? Look around you now and focus your attention on something. If you re reading a difficult text and you're finding that your mind is wandering all over the universe, try this trick. Place a check mark in the margin of the book at the place where you noticed that your mind drifted.

Go back to where you can remember reading, and continue from there. When you reach the bottom of a page, mentally review what you've just read. If you can't recall the main ideas, return to the top of the page and reread it.

If you persist, you'll probably find that your level of comprehension gets higher and the check marks become fewer. If you find yourself daydreaming when you don't want to, intentionally put your body in a posture that you don't ordinarily assume.

Cross your legs the other way. If you happen to be in a room with other people, discreetly mimic another person's posture. When you put your body into an unfamiliar position, it tends to want to fall asleep less.

If you need extra energy, then tighten the muscles in your stomach, in your buttocks, or in your legs. Make it hard for your body to become drowsy, and you make it easy for your mind to become alert.

When you set your attention to look for something, you almost always find it. You just need to know what you're looking for. What you pay attention to determines what your world is like. Focus on problems, and your world is full of obstacles. Focus on nothing in particular, and your world is a clutter of unrelated experiences. Focus on creative ideas, and your world opens to a realm of unlimited possibilities.

People find what they are looking for. What do you pay attention to all day long? If you could somehow record on a video tape what you notice, what would the tape show? What would it miss?

If you played back a tape of what you notice on your daily trip to work or school, would there be a continuous stream of images, or would there be gaps in the movie? Would only a few key landmarks stand out in an ocean of grey?

How much detail would show in people's faces? Would the sound be muffled, or would it be in stereo? To become more aware of what's happening around you, periodically stop what you're doing, look, listen, and ask yourself, "What's happening? Concentration Style Tips Pay attention to your attention it is your most important mental muscle. Encourage it to become stronger and more flexible by periodically concentrating with all of your energy.

Relax your body and avoid wasted movements. Pablo Picasso said, "While I work, I leave my body outside the door, the way Moslems take off their shoes before entering the mosque. Become interested in the task at hand. Gently lead your mind through encouragement, not through force. Look for the interesting aspects of the task and relate them to your other interests. Identify your tasks clearly, and set definite objectives.

Find a mental rhythm that builds a momentum to your work. Pretend that you are absorbed in what you're doing. Ask yourself what position would your body be in if your mind was focused? What would it feel like to be interested? What would you think about if you were economizing your attention? If you continue this, an attitude of concentration will naturally evolve.

The problem, which had been tackled by the best minds in Britain for a number of months, was to find the formulathat described the shape of the curve of a hanging string. Newton received the problem in the morning and sat at his bedside, completely still and blotting out the rest of the universe, until he'd found the answer. By dinner time,. Newton had not only solved the problem, he had also developed and applied differential calculus. Newton had many traits that distinguished him as a mental giant.

He wrote and thought deeply about philosophy, optics, physics, as well as mathematics. It's said that he found it strange that Euclid, the third-century B. But perhaps Newton's greatest gift was his remarkable ability to concentrate for long periods. In his own words, "If I have done the public any service, it is due to patient thought.

All kinds of action require mental conditioning: getting columns of numbers to balance, working through the options in a commodities market, "wrestling down four term papers and six exams in two weeks, any kind of thinking that demands an increased level of activity for a long stretch of time. There's no short cut for conditioning. A conditioned body, with a strong heart and open lungs, reaches that state through aerobic ex-.

A conditioned heart beats easily during normal activity, but responds quickly to increased demand. Fit lungs deliver a greater amount of oxygen to the blood. Fit cells can assimilate food faster. To get your body in this shape, you need to exert it for a sustained period Similarly, a conditioned mind grows fit by regular exertion. You must put yourself in the position where you need to concentrate for a sustained time.

You must persist. You must guide your mind to go where you want it to go. With practice, your mind becomes used to concentrating, and your thinking becomes clearer. Calculation is a tried and tested way to add backbone to your thinking and to condition your mind. Plato understood the value of exercising calculation muscles when he wrote in The Republic, "Those who are by nature good at calculation are, as one might say, naturally sharp in every other study, and those who are slow at it, if they are educated and exercised in this study, nevertheless improve and become sharper than they were.

There are in fact eleven capital letters in the alphabet that contain curved lines:. Orage, author of Mental Exercises and Essays, published in Each of the four kinds of exercises those with numbers, letters, words, and verses demands that you flex your calculation muscles. Many of the exercises are designed so that if you happen to lose the thread of your attention, you lose your place in the calculation.

You should know exactly where your mind left off, so you t an return and try to sustain your concentration for longer. As your calculating muscles become stronger, try the more difficult exercises. These drills are to mental exercise what jogging is to physical exercise. They encourage persistence. You can perform the exercises silently or aloud, fast or slow.

This makes them ideal for long rides on a bus or subway. You may very well be surprised just how few days it takes to progress to exercises vou thought you'd never be able to do. J- , ,, up by. I ,, ,, Mentally picture a number sequence. Instead of reciting the numbers aloud or silently in your mind, try to seethe shapes of the digits as if they were in front of you. To make it tougher, visualize two, three, or even four series simultaneously. Recite one number series while writing down another.

While reciting the ascending series, 3 , 6 , 9 , 1 2 ,. Recite one number series while visualizing another:. Recite the sequence 3 , 6 , 9 , 1 2 ,. Recite a series, but name only the sum of the digits:. Example: 2 , 4. Example: 3, 6. Example: 7 , 1 4 , What is the last number in the sequence?

Visualize a succession of scenes while reciting a series of numbers:. Going to an art gallery Your daily journey to work or school Dinner at an Italian restaurant A baseball game An opera Shoveling a walk free of snow Prestidigitation. There is a popular number puzzle in which you must use all the digits from one to nine and any combination of plus signs and minus signs to add up to The digits must also remain in their original sequence. This solution contains six signs, five plus signs and one minus sign.

Can you find another solution that uses only three signs? Reverse Prestidigitation. In this problem, use the numbers from nine to one to equal Can you find a solution that uses only four signs?

A1 B2 C3 D4 E A1 26Z 25Y 24X 23W Recite the letter-number combinations for the following phrases, sentences, and quotes, by substituting a letter's number for its place in the alphabet For example, the word "Abracadabra" would read Niagara, roar again!

Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. The five boxing wizards jump quickly. It was an exquisite deep blue just then, with filmy white clouds drawn up over it like gauze.

Sarah Grand A born coward, Darius eventually found great happiness in judicially kicking loud-mouthed nepotists openly picking quarrels, rightly saying that unkindness vitiated warring Xerxes' youthful zeal. Tony Augarde How to teach rigor while preserving imagination is an unsolved challenge to education.

Gerard Truth is the shattered mirror strewn in myriad bits: while each believes his little bit the whole to own. Sir Richard Burton. Dealing destruction's devastating doom. Every endeavor engineers essay For fame, for fortune fighting furious fray! Generals 'gainst generals grapple gracious God!

Infuriate indiscriminate in ill, Kinsmen kill kindred, kindred kinsmen kill. Labor low levels longest, loftiest lines Men march 'mid mound, 'mid moles, 'mid murd'rous mines. Now noisy noxious numbers notice naught, Of outward obstacles opposing ought; Poor patriot! Reason returns, religious right redounds, Suvarov stops such sanguinary sounds.

Truce to thee, Turkey, triumph to thy train, Unjust, unwise, unmerciful Ukraine, Vanish vain vict'ry,. Why wish we warfare? Yield, yield, ye youths, ye yeomen yield your yell; Zeno's, Zorpater's, Zoroaster's zeal Attracting all, arms against acts appeal.

I give myself, sometimes, admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it. Mary Wortley Montagu All for one. The Four Musketeers, He who desires, but acts not breeds pestilence. William Blake. Arabic proverb tailor the to elegance leave, truth the describe to out are you If Albert Einstein light own his in him show to is shadow his with person a confront To Carl Jung. Read correctly at sight the following passage in which each " v d is spelled backwards:.

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