For anyone interested in their own personal development, you may be interested in recent research that shows that “thinkers’ brains are different”. The suggestion is that how you think depends on the development of certain regions of the brain – but in fact, it’s the other way around: the development of particular regions of your brain is related to how much you use them! Your mind power is dependant upon the choices that you make.

Nobody is born a ‘thinker’ – just like nobody is born a London cabbie or taxi driver, yet an area of their brains is highly developed and, in fact, larger than the normal brain because of the hoops that they have to jump through to learn ‘The Knowledge’ – how to get from A to B using all kinds of circuitous routes. Some years ago, research proved that the use to which these guys and girls put their brain had a measurable effect on the size and shape of their brain.

More recently, neuro-psychological research demonstrates that the human brain exhibits a considerable capability for what is called plasticity – in other words, the shape, characteristics and development of the brain depends on how it is used and the extent to which one area of the brain may have to take control of the functions of another part of the brain that has been damaged.

The important point is that our brains, their functionality and capacity, depends on what we do with them – not the other way around. Many people with whom I’ve worked in my practice thought that they were stupid, slow or incapable of understanding things that ‘clever’ people understood. Their perception of their own intellectual skills did not relate to the physiology of their brains – it was related to the fact that, during their formative years, they had incorrectly learned their own self-image which, as adults, prevented them from employing their brains in an expansive way.

Each of us has limiting perceptions about ourselves – we were each conditioned during our childhood years – now, those self-perceptions hold us back from accessing and benefiting from our natural potential. However, all you have to do to be all that you can be is to drop your preconceived notions. Even the size of your brain will respond to your new found self understanding.

I’ve recently had to pick up the pieces after a self help “guru” advised one of my clients that she should ‘follow her heart’ in pursuing a man that she’d had an on-and-off relationship with for the past few years. Her heart was telling her that this guy was what she wanted – even though there was ample evidence that would suggest the exact opposite to an uninvolved observer. But, she took this “guru’s” counsel and threw herself body and soul into making him love her! Bet that you can guess the outcome.

However, if she really was listening to her heart, how could it have turned out so disastrously? The phrase “listen to your heart” is a loaded one. Firstly, we should give none of our attention to what our heads are telling us. Very many highly successful business people tell us that you should go with your gut (another word for heart) and psychology confirms that the normal mind wanders through a mist of random thought – up to fifty thousand of them each and every day.

But, if the head is in a fog, the heart is shrouded behind a veil of much more destructive useless thought – thoughts that have been lurking in the shadows since our formative years – thoughts that the subconscious mind likes to live in – and the subconscious mind is most likely to cosy up to those thoughts if they happen to be negative. In other words, when most of us listen to our hearts, we’re hearing something that’s been seriously distorted by our own conditioning and programming so that we end up believing that we know what will make us happy – which is often a far cry from what is truly best for us.

So, if you want to be certain that you’re listening to your heart, you must get past this veil of toxic thought and the only way to do that – and it’s blindingly obvious when you think about it – is to clear your mind. We all need to clear our mind completely – it will enable us distinguish the wood from the trees! But, more than that, a clear mind is an inspired mind and it is through inspiration that we’re most suitably guided towards our ideal life.

Life is supposed to be fabulous – you are supposed to be successful and happy – you’re not meant to struggle and, certainly, worry, anxiety and stress should simply not be part of your daily experience at all. And you should never feel inadequate, you should never even consider the notion of self esteem or self confidence – you should be simply immersed in living life to the full.

Does any of this sound familiar? Probably not – because only an idiot would believe that life could be like that. WRONG! If you believe otherwise, you’re the idiot – and I’ve got seventy years psychological research to prove that we’re all idiots, buried in the same pathetic view of life – that life’s a struggle, life’s a hassle, you work for a living, etc. etc.

Sure, I’ve got plenty of work that needs doign – sometimes I think that it’s a drag – but it’s the thought that does that to me, not the work. Sure, I’ve three rebellious teenage children who can get up to all kinds of mischief at times – but which is more effective and easier – for us to work these things out without strangling ourselves in mental knots, or doing what normal people do until they’re so stressed and so worried that they can do nothing remotely resembling effective?

My point is that how you view your life, what you feel about your life and how you experience your life is all down to what’s going on in your head – not what’s going on in your life. And your head’s a mess – everyone’s is, it’s how we’re built. But you can pull yourself together and get in shape – mentally. All that’s needed is a little training and, perhaps, ten minutes commitment every day to make the other twenty three hours and fifty minutes great.

What do you do during these few minutes? You pay attention – not to what you think is happening but what is actually going on. You’ll pay attention to what your five senses tell you – without saying to yourself that that sound is distracting you or that pain in your big toe is annoying you – without moaning that this smell is horrible or that dust on the shelf is doing your head in. You’ll simply sit down and see, feel, hear, smell and taste what is really happening. It’s known as coming to your senses! And, if you come to your senses for five minutes every morning, you’ll be in a far better state of mental readiness for whatever life throws at you for the rest of the day. But, more importantly, you’ll be far more awake to the opportunities that life will throw your way today.

So, time to shape up!