When we hear the term "mind" we often think of the brain, but the mind is much more than the brain. The brain is the hardware while the mind is the software it runs. When you are dead, your brain will still be there (for a while), but your mind will not.So just what is the mind? If we are going to get any use out of the mind, we need a definition that is useful. Although the word "mind" leads us to believe the mind is a thing, it is not. The mind is label we have given to an active and dynamic process of thinking, perceiving and experiencing. The term "mind" refers to a never-ending flow of information processing. The mind is never static. It is a constant stream of sensory input, thoughts, ideas and perceptions. It's a continuous dance of information, a ceaseless stream of awareness in which almost anything can be swept up.
What exactly goes on in this stream of awareness? From moment to moment you receive vast amounts of information from the outside world through your senses. Your awareness jumps from point to point in your external experience, sorting for what is important to you as your minds engages in the process of interpreting and evaluating the incoming data. External information is filtered through beliefs, attitudes and memories and associations are activated. Emotions arise and generate responses; speech, actions and behavior.On the screen of your mind you flash images, snapshots and run movies. You hear sounds and voices and often narrate the film with your own voice. The pictures and sounds of your mind occur all in sequence, one after the other, which results in an ever changing flux of experience which changes from moment to moment.
Your right brain works with emotions, pictures, wholes and how all the parts all relate together, putting stuff together (that AH-HA moment), and simultaneous/holistic thinking. This side of the brain doesn't wear a watch like the left side does, and in fact can lose track of time. And like the left side of your brain, the right side governs/runs the left side of your body.
For thousands of years we have believed that the mind was complicated and elusive; a mystery waiting to be unraveled, a cipher waiting to be cracked. We now know that the mind is much simpler than we once thought. When we know the building blocks of human subjective experience, the elements that make up what we call "mind," we can change them.The components of a system can be reorganized. The processes we use to encode information and the sequence data can be optimized to produce desired results. When we know the elements of a system we can change the system so it functions more effectively and efficiently. When we know what is going on behind the scenes of behavior and emotion, we can change it and transform our experience.
For hundreds of years the field of psychology tried to find a way to change emotions and behavior. The methods devised made great theories, but never really resulted in much change. Some of the theories made a lot of sense, but practice didn't seem to yield any results. The advocates of different psychological theories over the past hundred years spent more time arguing over theories than trying to find something that really worked. It took up until the late 1970s before a model that was actually useful and practical was devised.
Those beliefs can be accurate, irrelevant or simply false but they have an almost total hold on the way that we comprehend our reality. It's as if we had been hypnotized to accept those beliefs and forced to see a reality that is in complete concordance with those beliefs.
Emotions and behaviours don't come out of nowhere. They result naturally from our internal programming. For whatever emotions you feel and whatever behaviours you produce, your programming must be perfectly optimized to produce that result. If you are depressed, your mind has been programmed to produce depression. If anxiety is your constant companion, your mind has been programmed to produce anxiety. If you find yourself lacking confidence, or giving into to self-sabotage, it's because your mental software permits it. And if you live a life of joy and success, it's because your internal programming has been optimized to generate that result. Problems are learned, and if they can be learned, they can be unlearned. Change your programming and you change the result.
You now know the brain is divided into two hemispheres and that each specializes in different functions, processes different kinds of information and deals with different problems. Left works with logic and analysis, the right with emotions and imagination.Let's put that into perspective when thinking about customers.
If you open the task manager on a computer you can see all of the applications running. When you look at this list you see precisely the programs that you know are operating. In your mind, these would correspond to the things you are aware of at any given moment. However, click on the list of processes and you get a whole array of programs running behind the scenes. There are far more in this list than in the list of applications running and when you look at this list of processes, you can't even identify what most of them are. They are operating in the background, out of awareness, permitting you to think, feel, act and react to your experience of life.In order to reprogram our minds and upgrade our mental software to produce superior results, we must begin by bringing those hidden programs to the surface. Once we know what is operating in the mind we can run some antivirus software, uninstall outdated programs and upgrade where possible. Most of us race to have the latest cell phone and the newest gadget, but why do we keep running obsolete mental software?Don't worry, when you begin to explore your mind you won't find inner demons waiting to be freed or terrible things wanting to bubble up as Freud would have you believe. You will, however, very likely find some old programs that you may no longer want. Remember, they are just programs and if you installed them, you can uninstall them.
What exactly goes on in this stream of awareness? From moment to moment you receive vast amounts of information from the outside world through your senses. Your awareness jumps from point to point in your external experience, sorting for what is important to you as your minds engages in the process of interpreting and evaluating the incoming data. External information is filtered through beliefs, attitudes and memories and associations are activated. Emotions arise and generate responses; speech, actions and behavior.On the screen of your mind you flash images, snapshots and run movies. You hear sounds and voices and often narrate the film with your own voice. The pictures and sounds of your mind occur all in sequence, one after the other, which results in an ever changing flux of experience which changes from moment to moment.
Your right brain works with emotions, pictures, wholes and how all the parts all relate together, putting stuff together (that AH-HA moment), and simultaneous/holistic thinking. This side of the brain doesn't wear a watch like the left side does, and in fact can lose track of time. And like the left side of your brain, the right side governs/runs the left side of your body.
For thousands of years we have believed that the mind was complicated and elusive; a mystery waiting to be unraveled, a cipher waiting to be cracked. We now know that the mind is much simpler than we once thought. When we know the building blocks of human subjective experience, the elements that make up what we call "mind," we can change them.The components of a system can be reorganized. The processes we use to encode information and the sequence data can be optimized to produce desired results. When we know the elements of a system we can change the system so it functions more effectively and efficiently. When we know what is going on behind the scenes of behavior and emotion, we can change it and transform our experience.
For hundreds of years the field of psychology tried to find a way to change emotions and behavior. The methods devised made great theories, but never really resulted in much change. Some of the theories made a lot of sense, but practice didn't seem to yield any results. The advocates of different psychological theories over the past hundred years spent more time arguing over theories than trying to find something that really worked. It took up until the late 1970s before a model that was actually useful and practical was devised.
Those beliefs can be accurate, irrelevant or simply false but they have an almost total hold on the way that we comprehend our reality. It's as if we had been hypnotized to accept those beliefs and forced to see a reality that is in complete concordance with those beliefs.
Emotions and behaviours don't come out of nowhere. They result naturally from our internal programming. For whatever emotions you feel and whatever behaviours you produce, your programming must be perfectly optimized to produce that result. If you are depressed, your mind has been programmed to produce depression. If anxiety is your constant companion, your mind has been programmed to produce anxiety. If you find yourself lacking confidence, or giving into to self-sabotage, it's because your mental software permits it. And if you live a life of joy and success, it's because your internal programming has been optimized to generate that result. Problems are learned, and if they can be learned, they can be unlearned. Change your programming and you change the result.
You now know the brain is divided into two hemispheres and that each specializes in different functions, processes different kinds of information and deals with different problems. Left works with logic and analysis, the right with emotions and imagination.Let's put that into perspective when thinking about customers.
If you open the task manager on a computer you can see all of the applications running. When you look at this list you see precisely the programs that you know are operating. In your mind, these would correspond to the things you are aware of at any given moment. However, click on the list of processes and you get a whole array of programs running behind the scenes. There are far more in this list than in the list of applications running and when you look at this list of processes, you can't even identify what most of them are. They are operating in the background, out of awareness, permitting you to think, feel, act and react to your experience of life.In order to reprogram our minds and upgrade our mental software to produce superior results, we must begin by bringing those hidden programs to the surface. Once we know what is operating in the mind we can run some antivirus software, uninstall outdated programs and upgrade where possible. Most of us race to have the latest cell phone and the newest gadget, but why do we keep running obsolete mental software?Don't worry, when you begin to explore your mind you won't find inner demons waiting to be freed or terrible things wanting to bubble up as Freud would have you believe. You will, however, very likely find some old programs that you may no longer want. Remember, they are just programs and if you installed them, you can uninstall them.
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