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2 daily practices that will significantly increase your ability to concentrate when you
need it most
How to stay in the present moment and release any of your doubts, fears or anxieties
that may be holding you back from being your best
If youre serious about making a change in your life and unleashing all the potential
that is waiting inside of you at this very moment, then its time to retrain your brain.
Welcome to the world of neuroscience!
Youre about to delve into the latest proven discoveries that will help you overcome
doubts, fear, anxiety, procrastination and any other negative emotion or behavior that
may be holding you back from maximizing your true potential.
It is well-known that you have deep reservoirs of potential and abilities that are currently
untapped. This mini course reveals 7 of the most well-documented methods that ensure
you maximize your brainpower, and live up to your full potential.
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Step 1: Intention
Intention refers to the goal that you want to manifest in your life. Everything we do
has an underlying intention, whether we are conscious of it or not, and we use it to
determine what we really want to focus on: money, financial success, power, peace,
romance, etc. Therefore, the first step in achieving personal and financial success is to
clarify what your intention is, in writing.
Writing helps to organize the language centers in your frontal lobe, which primes your
motor cortex to carry out your goal-directed strategy in the world. Without a clear
intention, your mind is likely to multi-task by trying to solve too many problems too fast.
In addition, intention also suppresses your brains propensity to worry about possible failure.
Let me show you how it works right now. Take a sheet of paper and write down three
potential goals you would like to achieve tomorrow. Make them simple, and make
them achievable, but write them down! This is essential, because youre going to use this
intention throughout the 6 remaining steps.
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Now ask yourself the following question: What is your deepest, innermost value? Write
down a single word that captures the essence of your value. If nothing comes to mind
right away, just trust your intuition. In a minute or two, something will emerge into
your consciousness.
Next, compare your value to the three goals you wrote down. Circle the goal that
comes closest to reflecting some aspect of your inner value. If your intention or goal
violates your personal values, a conflict may be created in your brain. But for the
purpose of this exercise, just be aware of your intention, value, and goal. (This exercise,
by the way, is a required assignment given to corporate executives in the MBA program
at Loyola Marymount University.)
Now you are ready to proceed to the next steps, which will train your brain to stay
focused on your intention and goal.
Step 2: Relaxation
Stress, whether its in the form of a tense body or a preoccupied mind, interrupts the
cognitive processes necessary for accomplishing any task. Relaxation is the easiest way to
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reduce stress. Deep relaxation promotes neurological and cardiovascular health, and it also
improves attentiveness, alertness, memory function, and social awareness. It turns down
the activity in the emotional brain, where anxiety, doubts, and uncertainty are always on
the verge of derailing your intention and goals. Deep relaxation stimulates the precuneus,
which many scientists believe is part of the core circuit that governs human consciousness.
In other words, while stress wears you down, relaxation wakes you up and gives you more
energy to pursue your goals.
Whats the fastest way to relax? Neuroscience shows there are 3 things that will take you
into a conscious state of serenity in less than a minute or two: slow deep breathing through
your nose, slow conscious stretching of your body, and believe it or not yawning. There
are, to date, 43 published studies showing that yawning (which brings more oxygen to your
brain) is the fastest way to temporarily alleviate neurological symptoms like headaches,
exhaustion, anxiety, and anger.
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Research has shown that gentle forms of breathing lower stress and anxiety, improve coping
skills, help people deal with substance abuse, improve ones general sense of well being, and
improve self-esteem. Breathing exercises also help people deal with problems such as panic
disorder, heart disease, and lung disease. Slow, focused breathing also increases dopamine
levels in different parts of the brain, which explains why the experience is pleasurable.
So take a moment right now yawn a few times and breathe in slowly through your nose.
Then, slowly roll your head around, stretching the muscles of your neck. Now, take a deep
breath in and tighten all the muscles in your arms, hands, shoulders, legs, and feet, and hold
them tight for as long as you can. Then, breathe out, relaxing all your muscles. Finally, shake
out our arms and legs, and notice how relaxed you feel.
Youll probably notice that youre no longer thinking about events from the past, or
concerns about the future. This is the perfect state in which to enter the next step
Step 3: Concentration
If you are not fully relaxed, you will not be able to fully concentrate on your intention or your
goal. Once you learn how to consciously relax, you have to train your brain to stay focused
on your goal. This is really an extraordinary process: you begin with a goal-oriented thought,
and the more you focus on it, the more your brain begins to plot out strategies to carry that
thought into the world. Other animals, even primates, can barely do this because they have
far fewer neural connections that run from the frontal lobe to the other parts of the brain.
You can train your brain to focus on virtually anything, but research shows that
certain meditation practices improve your concentration skills. Im going to
guide you through two traditional concentration exercises, each of which have
been documented to enhance your physical, emotional and cognitive skills.
Well begin with the oldest meditation practice in the world: breathing.
1) Sit down in a comfortable chair, in a quiet place where
nothing will disturb you for the next few minutes. Rest your
hands in your lap, and uncross your legs, placing your feet flat
on the floor.
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2) Now, do nothing more than pay attention to your breath. Breathe in slowly
through your nose, and notice the cool temperature of the air. Then slowly exhale
through your nose. Notice the temperature as you breathe out. How warm or cold
does it feel?
3) Continue to slowly breathe in an out through your nose ten times, and notice
how the sensations change. Take slow, deep breaths, in and out, and if your mind
wanders, just bring your attention back to your breath.
4) Now, shift your focus to your chest, and feel how it rises and falls with each breath
you take. Slowly breathe in to the count of five, then slowly breathe out to the
count of five. Do this ten times and then return to your normal breathing. Notice
how your breathing has changed. Are you breathing slower? Or deeper? How far
down into your lungs can you feel the coolness of your breath?
5) Put one hand on your chest, and the other on your belly. Take a deep breath
in and watch how your chest and belly move. Then slowly breathe out. Which
moves first? Your chest, or your belly? Take five more breaths and notice how the
sensations in your body change.
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Finally, I want you to do the same exercise with the simple goal you wanted to achieve
by tomorrow evening. Turn it into a short phrase and repeat it over and over to yourself
as you slowly and deeply breathe in and out.
When you learn to stay intensely focused on your goal, you will literally be driven to
succeed, and when you apply the next step, your brain has no choice but to propel you
into the successful achievement of your goal.
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experience a better recovery! Guided imager y and visualization will even buffer the
effect of stress on the immune system, making you less susceptible to viral infections.
In a recent brain-scan study, guided imagery reduced the symptoms of patients
suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder by lowing activity in the emotional
centers of the brain and raising activity in the areas that allow us to voluntarily control
our feelings and thoughts.
When you visualize financial success, your entire brain orients itself toward achieving
that specific goal. But you must stay in a deep state of relaxation as you concentrate on
your image of success.
Heres a simple exercise you can try right now. Visualize 1 of the 3 goals you wrote
down earlier. Visualize that goal using whatever imagery comes to mind. Now, trust
your intuition as you imagine yourself accomplishing that goal. Try to visualize every
detail: yourself, the actions you take, and the satisfaction you feel when you reach that
goal in your imagination. What sounds do you hear? What smells are present? Who
else is in the area? Its as if you are watching a movie.
The exercise should take about five minutes to do, and as long as you stay relaxed as
you breathe deeply and fully concentrate on your inner movie, youll actually change
the way your brain motivates itself. The clearer the image, the more easily youll
accomplish every step it takes to actualize your desires and goals.
In sports, visualization has been proven to help athletes
reach peak performance. In medicine, visualization
makes the surgeons hands move more precisely. In
fact, just imagining your movements becoming more
flexible will significantly increase the flexibility and
coordination in the part of the body you are focusing on.
Why? Because the motor cortex is highly interconnected
with the imagination-processing centers in the frontal,
occipital and parietal lobes. In other words, our thoughts
and behavior are inseparably intertwined.
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CLICK HERE
Step 5: Mindfulness
Mindfulness is one of the most powerful ways to retrain your brain. When you enter a state
of mindful awareness, you bring your attention into the present moment as you observe
each thought, feeling, and sensation as it flows through your stream of consciousness.
But theres 1 essential rule: You must learn to observe yourself without judgment. This is
the most effective way to interrupt any disturbing feeling or mood. Mindfulness allows
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you to suspend habituated biases. In this unique state of awareness, ineffective beliefs fall
away as new neural circuits are formed. These neural circuits motivate you toward greater
productivity and success.
The enclosed studies demonstrate that mindfulness has been proven effective for enhancing
mood, self-awareness, and overall health. Its also one of the most powerful ways to work
through destructive emotions such as anger, depression and fear. When these emotions are
activated, they will immediately undermine your ability to work, make money, and achieve
financial success.
Try this exercise the next time a disruptive mood occurs: Immediately focus on your
innermost value and goal. Breathe deeply and relax for 60 seconds. Now, sit back in your
chair and allow your anger or anxiety to flow through your mind. Dont react to it. Just watch,
without judgment, how it unfolds and changes. In less than 5 minutes, it will dissipate and lose
its power over you. In that moment of mindfulness, you will discover that your emotions no
longer have power over you. Its one of the most amazing experiences a person can have.
How does mindfulness affect the brain? Its a form of frontal lobe consciousness.
The more strongly you focus on just being aware of the moment-to-moment shifts in feelings,
thoughts, and sensations, activity in the emotional centers of your brain shut down. This has a
profoundly beneficial effect on ever y aspect of neural functioning.
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changes in neural functioning. But if you feel comfortable practicing mindfulness for only 5
or 10 minutes, then trust your intuition. Obviously, the more time invested, the greater the
results you will achieve.
Try to set aside a specific time of day to practice mindfulness. Perhaps first thing in the
morning after you awake, or shortly after work, or the last thing in the evening right before
bed. A regular time trains your brain to get into the habit of being mindfully relaxed, and the
more often you do it, the more quickly youll be able to reach your goals with the least amount
of resistance and stress.
Remember: Mindfulness-based exercises have been widely studied and have been found to
help people with depression, anxiety, high blood pressure, psoriasis, trauma, eating disorders,
substance abuse, and a variety of psychopathological behaviors. Therapists who practice
mindfulness-based exercises have better results with their patients, and patients who use them
no longer need to see their therapists.
Mindfulness also fosters relationship empathy, at home and at work.
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to the thalamus, which relays this information to the motivational centers of the brain.
However, in order to improve neural performance, you must first override old memory
circuits, which are embedded with negative, unproductive, and inefficient beliefs and
habits from the past. Fortunately, the neocortex is extraordinarily flexible, and this
neuroplasticity allows us to use our positive thoughts and imagination to deactivate
ineffective memories and habits. Brain-scan studies can actually show how our
thoughts cause neurons to fire and rewire into different patterns of activity.
For example, you can use the 3-to-1 positivity ratio (which has been proven to be
the best predictor of a successful business venture and a successful life). Its very easy
to use. Just keep a written log of every positive and negative feeling, thought, and
comment you make. If you have less than 3 positive activities to ever y negative one,
your business, financial results and personal relationships are likely to fail. The most
successful people and businesses have a positivity ratio of 5-to-1.
For the next 3 days, try this experiment. Keep a positivity and negativity journal. Youll
discover that as each day goes by, your ratio will improve. And if you want to boost the
power of this exercise, deliberately repeat a series of positive affirmations, using the
concentration exercise given above.
Heres another cognitive priming exercise you can do for a week, thats been proven to
increase your life AND work satisfaction for the next six months:
Each night, write down three things you did well, and briefly explain why.
Youll also get profound improvement in both work and cognitive skills if you keep a
gratitude journal. What makes this work? Writing! If you simply
think about positive goals and feelings of gratitude, measureable
improvements in work satisfaction and personal satisfaction are
much smaller. So write them down.
A new study, soon to be published, shows that if you create and
write out a comprehensive plan to achieve your financial goals,
you increase your success rate by 50%.
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There are dozens of other cognitive priming tools that can help you gain personal
and financial success. These include using daily precision affirmations, visualization
techniques, positive self-talk and a commitment sheet to identify sabotage behaviors
and develop counter-strategies. But the most important step for creating permanent
and lasting change is accountability.
Step 7: Accountability
This, surprisingly, is the most overlooked step in the world. At home, our parents hold us
accountable. When were in school, were held accountable by our teachers. They grade
us, and we either do the work or we fail. And yet, as adults, when we choose to improve
our financial, business or emotional condition, we rarely apply accountability. We cant
use ourselves. Why not? Because the well-documented dynamics of cognitive bias are
unconsciously operating in our minds. We simply do not see ourselves as accurately as we
need to if we want to maximize our potential and succeed at reaching our dreams.
And yet accountability is the easiest thing to arrange. All you need is a mentor or a good
friend, or better yet, a small team of skilled colleagues who agree to hold each other
accountable for achieving daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly goals. Make a promise to
yourself, right now, to find 2 or 3 people who will hold you accountable for achieving your
personal, business and financial goals. And draw up a written contractual agreement.
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In Conclusion
There you have it: 7 steps to guarantee personal and financial
success. You are now on your way to achieving anything you
desire, and all you have to do is expand your awareness and
ability to focus, one day at a time, to include more and more of
the world: your friends, colleagues, and the endless opportunities
that await you. Everything you need is in reach, as long as you
stay relaxed and focused on your deepest values and goals.
You can use these strategies to shine a light on any aspect of your inner and outer life, and
you can change any limiting habit or outdated belief you turn your attention to.
All you have to do is practice these steps, refining them as you apply your own inner
genius and creativity to creating the life you want. When you trust your inner wisdom
and intuition, all remnants of self-doubt will permanently fall away.
Yes, its that easy, and it all begins with your conscious intention to succeed.
Here are some action steps you can take right now to get started.
1) Schedule some time every day to practice mindfulness, breathing, and creating
intentions. Grab your calendar, and plan out exactly when you can sit down and work
on this. Remember, it takes time to develop these new states of awareness and being
so working on them every day is the fastest, most effective way to create change.
2) Begin a gratitude or positivity/negativity journal TODAY. Begin keeping track of
the things for which you are grateful, or of the ratio of your positive experiences to
your negative experiences every day.
3) Relax. Take 3 minutes right now to focus on your breathing. Sometimes when
were preparing to make a change, we feel stressed and anxious about everything
we have to do. Keep in mind, though, that everything weve covered here is based
on your ability to relax so you can better concentrate! So practice that relaxation
right now. And then get to work.
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Bonus:
Youve now learned 7 practices, exercises and steps you can take immediately to begin
retraining your brain for maximum achievement and brainpower. Youve probably
discovered, too, that although they undoubtedly will require some practice, they are
simple to add into your daily routine. Once you begin making them a part of your life,
you will experience massive change.
Now, I want to share something very exciting:
In the past two years, a quiet revolution has taken place in the field of neuroscience and
neuropsychology.
It began many years ago with the invention of biofeedback and neurofeedback
technology. Researchers discovered we can learn how to manipulate brainwave
frequencies in different parts of the brain. We now know that the 7 steps above alter
brainwaves in ways that correlate with increasing attention, alertness, and attention
toward others.
The old brainwave models and technologies are outdated thanks to the advancement of
new neuroimaging technology.
PraxisNow is at the forefront of incorporating this research into sound and visual
entrainment strategies. When these new discoveries and technologies are integrated
with the 7 steps described above, an extraordinary experience takes place. The exercises
come alive, and you will be transported more quickly, and more deeply, into states of
consciousness that will further enhance the neural performance of your brain. Over
5000 of our clients are benefitting from our NeuroTraining programs, which incorporate
the best proven methodologies with the latest in technology to help change neurology.
In essence, we are helping people worldwide change their beliefs and habits around
earning more money and growing their companies and doing it all with less stress and
effort. We have coined and trademarked a new term, Innercise, to express the fact that
we can now, on purpose, change the neural circuits within our brains by doing a simple
daily ritual that focuses on rewiring our brains to higher levels of performance.
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2014 Praxis Now, LLC. All rights reserved. Published by Praxis Now, LLC.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, photocopying,
recording, scanning or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the
Publisher.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty While the contributors have used their best
efforts in preparing this report, they make no representation or warranties with respect
to the accuracy or completeness of the contents and specifically disclaim any implied
warranties. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your
situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. The authors shall
not be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not
limited to special, incidental, consequential or other damages.
Produced in the United States of America.
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