The era of ‘work hard and get success’ is past. Now, it is work smart and get success. Some people will disagree with this still maybe because of their misconception about ‘working smart.’ Let me try to clear this: the era of intense physical labour to get things done is now fast fading away. This is the hard work that many people believe in. Now, we are in a period of the great mental involvement to acquire success. This is working smart. There’s however a twist to all this: mental work is really hard work. Get me? Working smart entails putting all your mental faculties to great task. You push them until they give you what you want. This is by no means child’s play, but its better and accomplishes so much more than physical labour.
Someone said that necessity has often being referred to as the mother of invention and if that’s so, creativity is the father. Every one has a level of creativity in them right from birth but you can get much out of your creativity only to the extent that you use your creative tool- box, your mind. All you have to do is find out the right methods to employ to get this creativity out of your mind.
You cannot however get the best of your mental faculties, that’s talking about the mind, brain, conscious and subconscious if they do not get the right atmosphere of absolute quietness; solitude. It is so very unfortunate that most people do not have any quiet time when they have to sit and dig into themselves and activate the immense power of their mind. This I have been practicing and it has been giving me great results.
The most important part in the process of getting in touch with your feelings is to begin to practice solitude on a regular basis. Solitude is the most powerful activity in which you can engage. Men and women who practice it correctly and on a regular basis never fail to be amazed at the difference it makes in their lives. "Men and women begin to become great when they begin to take time quietly by themselves, when they begin to practice solitude", said Catherine Ponder. It is by no means an easy task but it would be everything to you.
Go through the biographies or stories of most if not all of the world’s great and famous achievers and you will discover they had a particular period when they retreat to spend time with themselves. They spend time with their imaginations (dreams) seeing them come to be in the physical. This concept of use of the mind called visualization aids greatly of the desired goals.
Let me explain the power of visualization with this story that has not stopped amazing and inspiring me since the first day I read it: Two basketball teams of equal ability were asked to practice shooting. One team went to the court every day for two weeks to practice while the second group only practiced their shooting by visualizing it; of course in the quiet (emphasis mine). At the end of two weeks, both teams were brought to the court to contest. Guess which team did better; the team that only visualized their shooting.
This is was possible because it is the mind that sends impulses to the brain which in turn controls every other part of the body through the Central Nervous System (CNS). When you visualize, you are in essence training your brain. As you know, during the visualization every thing you do is perfect. And so because this perfect training impulse is sent to the brain, the execution coordinated by the brain is also perfect. Another great example of the potency of visualization is the case of Beethoven who gave the world its best symphony after he had gone completely deaf at the age of thirty- five. He visualized the notes in his mind and I believe he could hear them before playing it out to the world; amazingly without practice. Successful public speakers know and use this concept which accounts so much for their success. They visualize themselves speaking the actual words they would like to say during the real speech over and over again, which is why most of the great speakers that have left a mark never give their speech reading from paper. Ask Dale Carnegie. Am sure you would have noticed the toast of the day, Barack Obama giving great speeches during the election campaign.
The success of your visualization however depends on its frequency. How often you do it? It depends also on it duration. The length of time you can hold that mental picture. Other factors that influence its success are the clarity and intensity. Do you see it as you want it to be? The last factor is the emotion with which you desire it.
If you are going to have to put your brain along with the creativity of your mind to full test, then you MUST start now to create your quiet times. The reason you must do this is that as you run from pillar to post, from east to west, engaged in one activity or the other (which we can not seem to get away from because our universe is so full of them), only the conscious part of your mind, the AWAKE you, is active. The most important and strongest of them, the subconscious is subdued. It is not as if it is not working (as we will be seeing in the next section), only you will not be able to hear it as you battle through the bustles of everyday life.
Culled from my about to be released book The Most Potent Weapon for Success!
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