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.
Brain functions can be broken down even further into what does each side of the brain to task wise. So let's take a look at what the left side does.The left side of your brain deals with tasks like being logical, sequential, analytical, objective, focus and details, and numbers. So if you happen to be bad in math, blame the left side of your brain - or the right for not governing the numbers part of you. The right side of your brain deals with tasks like being intuitive. Trust your hunches. They're usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level. It also deals with colors, rhythm, and the overall picture, pictures and is random.
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?
OK now you have a pretty fair idea of how the mind works. Let's go just one more step further. You already know about the language of the brain being pictures, sounds, feelings, tastes, and smells - in other words input from your senses that is your imagination when it is processed. Your brain can only work with positive information that it receives from your five senses. Your brain can't work with inputs you haven't experienced or otherwise called negative information.Here is a very important point to remember when thinking about your customers. They can't reflect and act at the same time. They need to be focused on one thing or another (reading your website copy, email etc) and thinking about it or taking action and buying something. Trick is to be able to switch them from one to the other quickly and effortlessly. Good thing you know about Neuro Linguistic Programming and how the mind works.
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.
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.
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.
Brain functions can be broken down even further into what does each side of the brain to task wise. So let's take a look at what the left side does.The left side of your brain deals with tasks like being logical, sequential, analytical, objective, focus and details, and numbers. So if you happen to be bad in math, blame the left side of your brain - or the right for not governing the numbers part of you. The right side of your brain deals with tasks like being intuitive. Trust your hunches. They're usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level. It also deals with colors, rhythm, and the overall picture, pictures and is random.
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?
OK now you have a pretty fair idea of how the mind works. Let's go just one more step further. You already know about the language of the brain being pictures, sounds, feelings, tastes, and smells - in other words input from your senses that is your imagination when it is processed. Your brain can only work with positive information that it receives from your five senses. Your brain can't work with inputs you haven't experienced or otherwise called negative information.Here is a very important point to remember when thinking about your customers. They can't reflect and act at the same time. They need to be focused on one thing or another (reading your website copy, email etc) and thinking about it or taking action and buying something. Trick is to be able to switch them from one to the other quickly and effortlessly. Good thing you know about Neuro Linguistic Programming and how the mind works.
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.
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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