Learning How The Mind Works Can Work For You

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.

Your left brain works with logic, words, parts and specifics, analysis of situations in detail, and sequential thinking. The left brain interestingly enough has a sense of time and a sense of your goals correlated with your position in relation to those goals. Talk about a finely tuned instrument. The left brain also governs/runs the right side of your body.

Directing and guiding this stream of awareness is a system. We can think of the mind as system that directs our information processing. This system is made up of numerous elements, all interacting and influencing one another to generate our experience. The way we experience the world is through the process of representing, sequencing and ordering the information we acquire from the outside world. The system of information processing we call "the mind" can also be called our internal reality.

 We each have an external reality- the environment we live in, the circumstances of our lives - and we each have our own unique internal reality. It is this internal reality that lies behind emotions, behavior and results. Our inner reality is far from a random mess of mental chaos. Human subjective experience has a structure. Knowing the specific elements that make up the structure of our internal reality enables us to alter the structure so that it serves us better.

That personal bank of references is composed of an amalgamate of all the experiences that we've had in the past. It's a composite of the deductions that we unconsciously reached following every new experience that we've had.Some of these deductions may be quite accurate while others might be so fanciful as to make the angels cry. Yet, it is from that bank of reference and all those past conclusions that we view our world and everything in it.

And, as if that was enough, it gets worse. It is also from that bank of references that our fundamental beliefs are created. Beliefs about our identity, about life in general, about religion, relationships, about mankind and about just every subject under the sun.

We talked a little about mental patterns earlier in this book and about Neuro Linguistic Programming. Mental patterns simply refer to memories formed in your brain to record your experiences as you see, hear, feel, smell, sense or taste them. The more often you do this your brain builds a pattern of it - a familiar pattern.When you experience a situation again, or something similar, the memory is activated and you go on autopilot. So you can see if you did an email campaign to blend with your website copy and all the other areas we have outlined where you can use keywords and phrases, the more people see it (the site or email or etc.) the more familiar you become. This goes right straight back to relationship marketing. Nice tie in isn't it?

If there is any doubt about the veracity of that theory, we only have to look at the way that most extremists of the Christian and Muslim worlds see each others to understand that it is sadly so. Fundamental beliefs have the power to so hopelessly distort reality that it becomes unrecognizable.

Although you never go anywhere without your mind, most of what goes on in the mind remains a mystery to you. Why? Because much of what occurs in your mind is out of awareness. Our mental programs operate behind the scenes, out of consciousness, and it is those aspects of our functioning that operate out of awareness that lead to emotions and behaviours. To put on a great show and produce the results we need to navigate in the world, there is a whole crew of things going on backstage. All we see is the final performance.

Thankfully, man is the most adaptable of all creatures. It can compose with what is not so and it can create a reality that is not real. We can live and function in a world of our own creation. We can see light where there is darkness and see truth where falsehood reigns. We are indeed a most amazing breed.Taking a glimpse at the way our mind function will not change anything much. But, it might explain our inconsistencies and the paradoxes that we see all around us. It can also explain why some of our actions and behavior don't always get the expected results. At any rate, knowledge is always superior to crass ignorance.