Mind Power World

How to Increase Intelligence by Stimulating Your Mind

There are many people who think that genius and intelligence is the same thing. The two definitions sound somewhat similar and so it is easy to see how they are sometimes thought to be the same. However, you must perform a close inspection of the two meanings to truly see the difference. Genius is described as an exceptional natural capacity of intellect and can describe a character, time period, group of people, or even a language. Genius is predominantly shown in creative and original works in art, science, music, math, and so on. Intelligence is described as a capacity for learning, understanding, and reasoning. These are all just forms of mental activity that can be learned. Intelligence is also being able to grasp concepts, truths, facts, meanings, and relationships. Now that’s not to say that someone who is considered a genius cannot do those things. A genius can most certainly comprehend facts, concepts, and meanings and they use their knowledge, or intelligence, to make genius discoveries or produce genius works of art or music. To understand genius and intelligence, you must understand how your brain works in regards to each one.

Your brain is made up of many different parts that control different functions. The cerebral cortex is the outermost part of your brain which controls your thoughts and reasoning and are considered your brain’s higher functions. Your brain’s lower functions take place in the deeper part of your brain and they control your survival functions such as breathing and sleeping, for example. There are different types of tests that you can take that target different parts of your brain to measure your intelligence. The most well-known test is called the Intelligence Quotient test, or IQ test. This is a standardized test that measures how smart you are by testing your memory, language, mathematical, and spatial abilities. These are all functions that you can learn and train to become better at. Whereas, genius is not something that is learned or practiced in order to become better at. Genius is taking what you know or learned and using that in an innovative way to create advancements in your particular field of interest. Surprisingly, many people who are considered geniuses don’t do well on IQ tests because the test is too generalized. Many scientists feel that intelligence is too broad of a field to be able to measure accurately and should be broken down into categories. Howard Gardner is a psychologist and a professor at Harvard University. He came up with the seven intelligences which include logical-mathematical, linguistic, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and spatial. He believes that these seven intelligences explain the concept of genius much better than the standardized IQ test. The seven intelligences can be used to point out geniuses and their accomplishments all throughout history.

Genius can be associated with great works of art, groundbreaking scientific discoveries, and complex languages just to name a few. Albert Einstein is by far one of the most prolific geniuses of all time. He was a theoretical physicist who is best known for his theory of relativity. He is often referred to as the father of modern physics and has won many awards for his scientific discoveries and theories including a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921.His scientific works helped the U.S. government during World War II when he instructed them to do more research on atomic weapons which led to the Manhattan Project. You may also know musical geniuses such as Mozart, Ludwig Van Beethoven, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Franz Liszt. Their music is taught in classrooms all over the world and enjoyed by many. Some scientists say that listening to Mozart while taking a test will make your score higher because the music arouses specific parts of your brain. Art is also an area where many geniuses have proven their genius status. Artists such as Dante, Caravaggio, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Vincent Van Gogh are just a few who are known for their timeless masterpieces that are enjoyed all over the world today. Many philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Socrates, and Diogenes are celebrated geniuses known for their philosophical insights and theories. Only a handful of these geniuses were known and liked during their time. Macabre writer, Edgar Allen Poe died at the age of forty with pennies in his pockets and was not recognized for his talent as a writer during his lifetime. Many geniuses are praised and recognized long after they are gone. Some feel that their theories, ideas or creativity were too radical or advanced for their generation. It isn’t until well after their death that many of them are celebrated for their genius thinking and creativity.

There are many different exercises you can do to stimulate your brain activity and increase your intelligence. Now, these exercises are by no means meant to make you an instant genius over night! However, these exercises strengthen your brain’s higher functions such as memory, creativity, reaction time, and critical thinking abilities. People who practice certain brain training exercises have been shown to score higher on IQ tests than before their training. You can think of brain exercises like physical exercises. Physical exercise helps tone and shape your body. Brain exercise helps tone and shape your mind. You can play memory games to increase your ability to memorize things. You can do puzzles such as crosswords, word finds, or math puzzles to increase your general knowledge and memory. Chess is a great strategic thinking game that you can play with an opponent. Strategy games like chess are a great way to stimulate your mind and fun to play at the same time! There are other games to help you increase your speed, alertness, focus, attention, spatial reasoning, problem solving, and reaction time. Many can be found at your local shopping centers and even online for free. The best way to increase your intelligence is to stimulate your mind! A great way to do this is to pick a topic that you really enjoy or that interests you and would like to learn more about. Set aside an hour a day and read passages from a book on that topic or subject. Opening up your mind to new things stimulates your mind and essentially, you become more intelligent. Physical exercise and a nutritious diet also help your mind juices flow!

You can lead a very empowered life by learning and growing. Try some brain training techniques to help your creative juices flow better and see what happens! You will be amazed at how much better your memory and cognitive thinking becomes after engaging in a few brain games or even just by reading. You are given a brain that you can mold and grow. You can use your mind for great things in your life. If you put your mind to something that you want bad enough, you can achieve it. To attain greater happiness in life, increase your mind power with a few simple exercises everyday.

This article is written by Ashley Dale for Mind Power World: http://www.MindPowerWorld.com

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3 Things that Enliven Your Spirituality and 3 that kill it

You can’t simply sashay into a church or temple to “get spirituality.” Spirituality is something you have to work at, and the work needs to come from the depths of your soul. Although the spiritual path is different for everyone, and what works for one person may not necessarily work for another, there are a few basics that can help with your spiritual development – and a few things that can destroy it.

Three Spirituality Boosters

Spirituality boosters are life-giving fertilizers that can help your spirituality blossom and grow. Tend to them daily and they can reward you greatly with new blooms and fresh insights on your journey.

Meditation

Mediation can consist of sitting quietly with your eyes closed, but it can also include an easy walk down the beach or even a city street. What makes meditation different from regular activity is your awareness of being in the moment and the supreme connection to something much bigger than yourself. The keys to building a successful mediation practice include consistency, persistence and loads of patience.

The patience kicks into play when it comes time to empty your mind from the incessant thoughts that like to stream through it. A mind tends to rebel when you try to quiet it. It is much too used to the constant parade of cacophony with which the outer world consistently accosts it.

Trying to quash your incessant stream of thoughts can make them rebel scream even louder for your attention. Instead, let them flow through your brain as they wish – just don’t grab a hold to any of them. Let them sift through your mind like flour as you breathe deep and evenly. Concentrate on your breath. Exhale tension and needless thoughts. Inhale the power of the universe. Patience helps ensure the clarity will come.

Pick a time each day and stick with it. Some days will be calmer than others, but each day affords you at least a few moments to better align your soul with a greater entity.

Prayer

Occasionally screaming “God help me!” when you’re in a pinch is not likely to cut it for boosting your spirituality. What can help your spiritual journey is regular communication with God, the universe, or whatever larger-than-life entity you choose. Think of the communication as a discussion with a friend rather than a slew of memorized words being spewed randomly into the distance.

While prayers can include a cry for help, they can also include cries of joy and those of gratitude. Praying does not have to be limited to a specific time and place each day, either. Use it whenever you have a thought you want to share, whether it’s a thought that makes you laugh, cry or even angry. Your good friend, that great entity, will listen.

Journaling

Daily journaling can be as vital as daily meditation for keeping your spiritual path clear of debris. A morning writing session serves a similar purpose to meditation because it clears out your brain, but it also gives you a chance to examine what’s really important to you. It’s a great tool for self-questioning which ultimately leads to a deeper self-awareness and a sharper focus on what really matters.

Journaling can be especially useful for artists and writers as a springboard of ideas that morph into creative works. The journal also serves as a way to ask yourself more burning questions, such as what’s really bothering you when you have hate festering in your gut. Purge it in your journal to find relief. Include a weekly gratitude list as part of your writing.

Three Spirituality Killers

Spirituality killers are worst than weeds when it comes to choking out your spirituality. They are toxins that can eat at the roots of your growth and kill off any life that once thrived.

Greed

A life that focuses wholly and solely on material possessions is not one that has much room for spirituality. If your life’s goals are to have the biggest house, the fastest car and the largest designer shoe collection, your road is already mapped out and it does not run parallel to a spiritual path. The greedy life is instead focused on getting the next great thing, a focus that leaves you scampering like a rat for a freshly dumped mound of garbage.

This is not to say that material possessions don’t have a place in your daily life, but they should not be the aim of it – at least not if you desire a deeper meaning and a sublime connection to the universe. This is also not to say that spiritually minded folks do not necessarily have a fine lineup of material goods. They can be wildly successful and prosperous. The prosperity comes, however, for living a life aligned with the universe not from scrambling for the latest model sports car.

Hate

Hate and resentment clog up your spiritual channels much the same way a wad of greasy hair can clog up a shower pipe. You need to break it down and flush it out if you want your channels to be open to receive any spiritual glory. Getting rid of hate and resentment can be easier said than done, and the longer it lingers the bigger it can grow.

Journaling and meditating on the specifics of what is causing you such hate and resentment can soften the clog immensely. Although the clog may not disintegrate overnight, it can be slowly untangled and eventually washed away. Like meditation, purging your soul of negative emotions can often take consistency, persistence and patience – and little prayer for help with forgiveness can never hurt, either.

Close-Mindedness

An open mind is a requirement for spiritual development while a closed mind can keep you trapped in its narrow box of thought for the rest of your life. Closed minds are those not willing to explore what really is out there guiding our way, or even a belief that anything is. Those who say the world as we see it is all we’re going to get might not even make it to the spiritual path’s entrance.

Close-mindedness can also hinder spiritual growth when it traps you into a daily routine that never explores new friendships, new experiences or new ways of thinking. Constant change is not only part of life, but it is an integral part of spiritual development and growth. You can’t rise very high on the ladder of spiritual ascension if your mind binds you tight beneath the very first rung.

Dare to go higher. Dare to question your set-in-stone beliefs. Dare to open yourself to all experiences that can propel you onward and upward on your personal spiritual path.

This article is written by Ryn Gargulinski for Mind Power World: http://www.MindPowerWorld.com

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What is Mind Power and How is it Used?

Mind power is a very interesting, yet tricky subject. For those of you who do not fully understand the concept and possibilities of mind power, you are in for a real treat!

Many people commonly confuse brain power with mind power. However, these are two separate entities. Brain power is what we use in our daily lives to complete tasks such as breathing, eating, sleeping, working, and so on. The brain is a very real and tangible object. The mind is also very real, but it is intangible making the possibility of its power greater.

The mind has two parts which are the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. The conscious mind is everything that is inside of our awareness. This means that any feelings, emotions, sensations, memories, perceptions or anything that you can think about or talk about take place in your conscious mind. The unconscious mind is everything that is outside of our awareness. This means that any feelings, emotions, memories, thoughts, fantasies, and so on are things that you are unaware of taking place in your unconscious mind, but they still affect your everyday life.

Sigmund Freud believed that whatever was enclosed in your unconscious mind was typically unpleasant or unwanted which is the reason they are not conscious to you. Doctors and scientists have come to believe that humans only use about nine to eleven percent of their brain power. One question that is raised in science and medicine is that if a person was able to increase the percentage of their brain used and raised their Intelligence Quotient – IQ, could they control the direction of their life for better or worse?

Now that you have a basic understanding of what mind power is and how it affects your life past, present, and future, you can begin to learn how to train and strengthen your mind power. With the right tools and skills, you will be able to harness your mind power and increase the positive outcomes in your life! However, if you aren’t quite a believer yet, take a look at what is called the Placebo Effect.

The placebo effect is used by doctors and scientists in many experiments to prove or disprove a theory. A placebo can also be used in medical experiments to see if a certain medication actually helps patients with a disease or illness. You may be wondering how the placebo effect ties into mind power and how it can work. Well, here it is. Doctors take two different groups of people who are sick. One group will get the actual medication that is meant to help the patients get better, while the other group will get the placebo.

The placebo used in experiments is typically a sugar pill that does nothing. However, the patients who are getting the placebo do not know this and think they are actually taking medication for their illness. Studies have been done that show the group who got the placebo actually had higher rates of success than the group that got the actual medication. This leads doctors and scientists to believe that the power of the mind can actually heal a person who is sick.

This is wonderful news for people suffering from all sorts of illnesses. You can train your mind to make yourself physically better! Your mind already has the power to heal you and it lies in your subconscious. If you truly believe that you can get better, than you will! There are many people around the world that practice ways to increase their mind power and use it for many different things.

Psychokinesis is just one way people demonstrate the use of their mind power. Psychokinesis is the process by which objects are moved by the mind without the use of physical means. Felicia Parise is known all over the world for her psychokinetic powers. Felicia is able to move small objects such as match sticks, pen tops, bottles, and other objects with using only her mind. She would wave her hands over an object and it would move a few inches.

Another person who is known for their mind power use is Uri Gellar who is a famous spoon bender. People like these exist all over the world and participate in mind power studies for further conclusive proof that you can use your mind power to heal yourself and better your life.

Dr. Ellen Langer is a professor of psychology at Harvard University. She has done many studies in the mind power field. One of her best-known studies involved nursing home patients who were taught to have more power over their lives by increasing their mind power through training. The studies showed that those patients lived longer than patients who were not part of the study. She also conducted a study where she told maids of a hotel that the work they did burned as many calories as a workout, which actually led them to lose more weight! The power of the mind is an incredible thing.

Many people believe that there are specific places around the world that hold higher levels of positive energy which can help you achieve a higher mind power. Some of these places include India, Tibet and the Himalayas. However, you don’t have to venture to these places to achieve higher mind power. There are many ways you can increase your mind power and take control of your life’s path.

There are a few simple things such as memory games, speed games, focus games, and attention games you can play to increase your mind power. You can also meditate or try self-hypnosis to help you focus and concentrate which also increases your mind power. Gandhi once said, “A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.”

This article is written by Ashley Dale for Mind Power World: http://www.MindPowerWorld.com

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