Learn Brain Science: Develop A Super brain Optimization, Improve Your Memory, Learning Strategies for Exam

Table of contents :
ABOUT THE BOOK
Table of Content
INTRODUCTION
A LITTLE BIT ABOUT MEMORY
HOW TO TAKE SMART BREAKS
MYTHS
SUPER BRAIN VS BASELINE BRAIN
IMPROVE YOUR WORKING MEMORY CALCULATION
LAYING THE FOUNDATION FOR GOOD MEMORY
DRAWING
PAY ATTENTION IN CLASS
TAKE SMART NOTES
BRAIN EXERCISES
USING ACRONYMS
THE LOCI METHOD
MEMORIZATION SHEETS
WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE HUMAN BRAIN?
GIVE YOUR BRAIN A FOCUS ATTENTION.
DO WE lose NEURONS AS WE AGE?
USING ACROSTICS
RHYME KEYS
START LEARNING EARLY
METHOD OF LOCI
REMEMBER THE INFORMATION WHEN YOU NEED IT
HOW GOOD IS YOUR MEMORY
BEST TIMING FOR REVIEWING
WHY DO WE FORGET
LEARNING STRATEGIES QUICK REVIEW
REMEMBERING NAMES AND FACES
IMPROVE YOUR WORKING MEMORY JUGGLING
MIND-MAPPING
IMPROVE YOUR WORKING MEMORY REVIEW
YOU HAVE TO BEOPEN MINDED TO IMPROVE YOURSELF
START EATING LESS BUT HEALTHY FOOD
CHAINING
IMPROVE YOUR WORKING MEMORY SIMPLIFICATION
KEYWORDS
REASONS WHY ITS GOOD TO IMPROVE IT
THE NEUROLOGY
MEMORY INVENTED AND HOW THIS INFORMATION HELPS US
FUNDAMENTAL APPROACH PSYCHOLOGICAL MAINTENANCE
DO THE DAY BEFORE AND THE MORNING OF THE EXAM
MENTAL HEALTH
BEST FOOD, OPTIMAL SLEEP, BEST PHYSICAL EXERCISE
CHALLENGE BUILD YOUR OPTIMAL DAILY ROUTINE
THE POWER OF IMAGES
MONEY AND FAME
PRACTICE MINDFULNESS
NEURO-SUICIDE
CONTROL YOUR EMOTIONS AND GO THROUGH IT EFFICIENTLY
DEALING WITH PROBLEMS RELATED TO ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION
CHANGE THE ENVIRONMENT, IMPROVE YOUR LEARNING
THE TRIANGLE OF ESSENTIAL PHYSIOLOGICAL HABITS
LIMITING AND EMPOWERING BELIEFS
INTRODUCTION
NO ONE IS BORN A GENIUS
HOW TO USE MIND MAPS
UNDERSTANDING YOUR PERSONALITY AND YOUR HABITS
WE ARE WIRED TO ENJOY LEARNING
NEURAL NETWORKING STRUCTURES REWIRING MENTAL EXISTENCE
MUSICAL THERAPEUTICAL METHODS FOR STABILITY
SELF-REGULATION USING AFFIRMATIONS AND REFLECTION
PRACTICE CHANGES YOUR BRAIN
PRACTICE DOES MAKE PERFECT
UNDERSTANDING YOUR PERSONALITY AND YOUR HABITS
ENSURING COMPLEMENTARY NEURAL GROWTH AND WIRING
UNDERSTANDING YOUR MEMORY SYSTEM
NEUROPLASTICITY TO IMPROVE YOUR MEMORY
SOCIAL PLASTICITY NEUROPLASTICITY
PURPOSEFUL PRACTICE
THE IMPORTANCE OF GOOD TEACHERS
COGNITIVE PLASTICITY NEUROPLASTICITY
PEG MEMORY SYSTEMS
THE ROMAN ROOM SYSTEM
MENTAL SNAPSHOT
MOTOR SENSORY INTEGRATION ENHANCING YOUR SENSES
LEARNING STRATEGIES
YOU CAN MASTER ANY SKILL
EXAGGERATION
INFORMATION LONG TERM MEMORY
SYSTEMS TO ENSURE PROPER LEARNING
SPEED READING
SPEED READING LIMITATIONS
NEUROPLASTICITY SPEED READING SYSTEMS
USE SOUNDS TO REMEMBER NUMBERS AND DATES
STOP YOURSELF FROM FORGETTING INFORMATION BY REVIEWING IT
MNEMONICS
USE SENSES AND EMOTIONS TO RECALL INFORMATION
THE LINK SYSTEM
THE END

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LEARN BRAIN SCIENCE Develop A Super brain Optimization, Improve Your Memory, Learning Strategies for Exam

By Sathish kumar

ABOUT THE BOOK Human psychology is very sensitive and emotions, positive emotions, negative emotions and then our reaction to different things. This is very complicated whether it's love or it's hatred, whether it is generosity or stinginess whether it's holding a grudge against somebody or taking revenge or forgiving people It's all about emotions. Emotions play a very pivotal role in our life. And not enough has been discussed in the spiritual circles, about human behaviour, about emotions. However everything is revolving around emotions. emotion is oftentimes a set of reactions to things. Whether you're being grateful to God or you're being thankful to your fellow men whether you're unhappy with yourself or you're unhappy with your Solomon Are you are unhappy with God? It's all reaction. Some people are more a lot more likely to exhibit positive emotions and some others tend to be very economical Woods exercising, exerting or exhibiting positive emotions. negative emotions come from the negative source in you and positive emotions will come from an enlightened heart and As a conscious soul, you will see people with positive and negative reactions. Sometimes you will see people with only negative reactions and negative emotions. And you wonder why such people only exhibit negative emotions and their reaction is oftentimes severe than expectation. This is all human psychology. Read

more in this book definitely it will help for zero to hero in your life.

TABLE OF CONTENT

INTRODUCTION

A LITTLE BIT ABOUT MEMORY

HOW TO TAKE SMART BREAKS

MYTHS

SUPER BRAIN VS BASELINE BRAIN

IMPROVE YOUR WORKING MEMORY CALCULATION

LAYING THE FOUNDATION FOR GOOD MEMORY

DRAWING

PAY ATTENTION IN CLASS

TAKE SMART NOTES

BRAIN EXERCISES

USING ACRONYMS

THE LOCI METHOD

MEMORIZATION SHEETS

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE HUMAN BRAIN?

GIVE YOUR BRAIN A FOCUS ATTENTION.

DO WE lose NEURONS AS WE AGE?

USING ACROSTICS

RHYME KEYS

START LEARNING EARLY

METHOD OF LOCI

REMEMBER THE INFORMATION WHEN YOU NEED IT

LEARNING NIGHT OWL VS. EARLY LARK

HOW GOOD IS YOUR MEMORY

BEST TIMING FOR REVIEWING

WHY DO WE FORGET

LEARNING STRATEGIES QUICK REVIEW

REMEMBERING NAMES AND FACES

IMPROVE YOUR WORKING MEMORY JUGGLING

MIND-MAPPING

IMPROVE YOUR WORKING MEMORY REVIEW

YOU HAVE TO BE OPEN MINDED TO IMPROVE YOURSELF

START EATING LESS BUT HEALTHY FOOD

CHAINING

IMPROVE YOUR WORKING MEMORY SIMPLIFICATION

KEYWORDS

REASONS WHY ITS GOOD TO IMPROVE IT

THE NEUROLOGY

MEMORY INVENTED AND HOW THIS INFORMATION HELPS US

FUNDAMENTAL APPROACH PSYCHOLOGICAL MAINTENANCE

DO THE DAY BEFORE AND THE MORNING OF THE EXAM

MENTAL HEALTH

BEST FOOD, OPTIMAL SLEEP, BEST PHYSICAL EXERCISE

CHALLENGE BUILD YOUR OPTIMAL DAILY ROUTINE

THE POWER OF IMAGES

MONEY AND FAME

PRACTICE MINDFULNESS

CONTROL YOUR EMOTIONS AND GO THROUGH IT EFFICIENTLY

DEALING WITH PROBLEMS RELATED TO ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION

CHANGE THE ENVIRONMENT, IMPROVE YOUR LEARNING

THE TRIANGLE OF ESSENTIAL PHYSIOLOGICAL HABITS

LIMITING AND EMPOWERING BELIEFS

INTRODUCTION

NO ONE IS BORN A GENIUS

HOW TO USE MIND MAPS

UNDERSTANDING YOUR PERSONALITY AND YOUR HABITS

WE ARE WIRED TO ENJOY LEARNING

NEURAL NETWORKING STRUCTURES REWIRING MENTAL EXISTENCE

MUSICAL THERAPEUTICAL METHODS FOR STABILITY

SELF-REGULATION. USING AFFIRMATIONS AND REFLECTION

PRACTICE CHANGES YOUR BRAIN

PRACTICE DOES MAKE PERFECT

UNDERSTANDING YOUR PERSONALITY AND YOUR HABITS

ENSURING COMPLEMENTARY NEURAL GROWTH AND WIRING

UNDERSTANDING YOUR MEMORY SYSTEM

NEUROPLASTICITY TO IMPROVE YOUR MEMORY

SOCIAL PLASTICITY NEUROPLASTICITY

PURPOSEFUL PRACTICE

THE IMPORTANCE OF GOOD TEACHERS

COGNITIVE PLASTICITY NEUROPLASTICITY

PEG MEMORY SYSTEMS

THE ROMAN ROOM SYSTEM

MENTAL SNAPSHOT

MOTOR SENSORY INTEGRATION ENHANCING YOUR SENSES

LEARNING STRATEGIES

YOU CAN MASTER ANY SKILL

EXAGGERATION

INFORMATION LONG TERM MEMORY

SYSTEMS TO ENSURE PROPER LEARNING

SPEED READING

SPEED READING LIMITATIONS

NEUROPLASTICITY SPEED READING SYSTEMS

USE SOUNDS TO REMEMBER NUMBERS AND DATES

STOP YOURSELF FROM FORGETTING INFORMATION BY REVIEWING IT

MNEMONICS

USE SENSES AND EMOTIONS TO RECALL INFORMATION

THE LINK SYSTEM

INTRODUCTION Our brain is the centre point where everything is cooked you don't bake a store is You only cook them some people spend 1618 years in school, college and university and become this kerning learned individuals and the thing they know everything but that is so foolish. There is so much knowledge. You will become a sophisticated mind with a lot of unresolved mysterious stuff. In your brain, I have noticed one thing as a spiritual person and there's in every field of different types of knowledge. If a spirituality is not present, that knowledge is useless. When example psychology, it is the study of human behaviour. But it doesn't tell you what is it that the human behaviour depends on how the human behaviour becomes positive and how it turns into negative and what is the source which will turn it into positive and negative psychology is all about human behaviour. Buy doesn't tell you the source. It doesn't tell you how to manoeuvre. You emotions. Emotions are like you have a tennis ball and he threw, throw that tennis ball at a wall and comes back to you. When I was a little child I used to do that catching practice. I used to grab a tennis ball and hit it against the wall and keep catching the ball. You know? sure our emotions. Sometimes somebody will say something. You don't understand it. And you derive a desired meaning of that word and you get angry. And when you get angry, there will be an outburst of unclassified emotions. That's very funny, isn't it? You're not even throwing the ball against the wall, you're just sitting. So the action is taking place inside your brain. And the reaction is also taking place inside your brain near the whole soul creator that you have cooked in your mind. You understand that? some poor souls on this earth are so desperate. You say one word to them and they will say, Oh, you made my day God You made my day. But then what about these people, these individuals were just sitting alone hmm and oftentimes unrest Hold undisturbed peace which surrounds them. Anyone then there is a reaction. unsolicited reaction, unsolicited reaction. They're just sitting in their divine solitude. They're just sitting by themselves. Sometimes the cry What happened? Nothing. Oh. And sometimes they will smile. What

happened? Nothing. Oh, what is it then we're thinking about something nice and nice thought we'll have a rebound and there will be a reaction You will feel happy. Self-acquired happiness. Don't take the wrong meaning. And then they will think of something really horrible, really bad. They will have all sorts of you know ideas and guesswork. Some people have a habit of thinking too much. Don't do that. You see if you if you wear this jacket every day, it will wear out very soon. Right. If you use your tongue a lot, it will wear out one day And then after that, anything that comes from your mouth will be BS. Because your real tongue is worn out in a similar way when you overload your mind what happens? There is a gateway between conscious mind and subconscious mind that gateway is open and you don't know is coming and going. talks are coming like rain from the subconscious mind. You're not even thinking about something, but the results are coming. Why? maybe a week ago Something happened. And it wasn't of that importance. When things that you experience and those things are of less importance. Then you're set a standard of importance when these things happen, and you think that they are of less importance than what happens. Those things go into your subconscious mind. You only remember things which are in your conscious mind. But then sometimes one is overloading your brain, the gateway between subconscious mind and conscious mind. And those things are now coming. And he's oh my gosh, what is this? When did I see this? I think this is a message from Oh god. No, it's not a message. from God, you were nobody last week. Then this happened, but you forgot it, because you thought he was of less importance. So it was a stored in your subconscious mind. But now because you are overloading, you know, you're trying to just squeeze something out of it. So those thoughts are now coming into your conscious mind and you are not aware of the source. That's why you said this has happened. Nope, I'm genius. I'm jeans. But you saw it and normally if somebody reminds us No, no, no, no, it's not coming from God. It's coming from you. He's jealous of it is coming from God. I've never thought about it. Oh yeah, you You didn't think about it but you saw it happening somewhere. If you study what is IQ level IQ level is all about putting every piece of information in your conscious mind. For example, you're passing by the street. You're your IQ level will be judged when you walk through the passage. What did you see? And did you think about it every piece of information in your conscious when you see things, but you don't pay attention. Right? You can ignore things when your eyes calm. Your eyes are

cameras. If you keep your camera on, it will keep it shorter pictures and images. Yes. Well, you want to see it in a similar way. Your eyes Your ears, the recording raising the record every image every word. And then what happens? It goes into your thoughts things, anything you notice anything you see anything you hear. If it is done with attention, it is stored in your conscious mind and it improves your IQ level. IQ level vorticity IQ level IQ level now this is what I'm telling you. in psychology books you will not find it IQ level when not accompanied by EQ level to see IQ intelligence questions and EQ, emotional Quint Salve. If I see a beautiful woman walking, if I'm sound, my IQ level is equally as good. I must say wow beautiful and this will mean I have a healthy brain. So in order to improve your IQ level you have to work on your EQ level EQ, emotional graph you become really Mentally when your IQ level lacks EQ level show emotions. know if you see something and there is no reaction suppressing their soul versus D. suppressing. It means your emotional sensory system which can detect this bad smell your response on responding and then you will see somebody is really handsome sitting there. I don't give a damn. It means something is wrong. Something is really, really wrong. Your brain, this brain is not functioning well. This is mental disorder. Now, but this is happening because you are a surgeon, you are a physician, you are a scientist and you are an engineer. But you are not aware of intelligence or emotion. This is why you have voted to average if a human being doesn't have emotions, no intelligence there is no in my eyes difference between a human being or at me. What do you think? So IQ level IQ level is all about EQ level, emotional discipline when there is something that should awaken your senses, when there is something that should awaken your senses and still your senses are not awakened. You are emotionally dead when your emotions are dead when your brain is not responding, you cannot obtain Divine Love It is impossible when on tiny matches you know when your senses I don't even replying to tiny things like the room is messy room is stinky. And you say oh, I don't care. No, no, no, no, no, it's not that you don't add your senses are not awake. Something is lying on the floor. And your mind is not telling you pick it up and put it here. You don't do that. You know why? because something is wrong here. I'm sorry, but this is what I have done. What is this is mental illness? Some people think, why should I do it? That is mental illness. Why should you do it? Maybe tomorrow you will say I want to pee, but why should I do it? Somebody else should go and pay for you. Because this

cannot happen. This is why you must do. Some, I mean, nobody will volunteer. If somebody could volunteer in this matter, then nobody would go to the toilet because I hate to go to. I would always ask you to volunteer for this. So what happens is, I mean, you're sitting here. And with a bird's eye view, you have seen everything. You've seen everything. Your eyes have stored all the images. Sometimes we don't hear things. Sometimes we just see things, our eyes record those images. And those images go into the back of our mind. And that is stored in the subconscious mind. And then oftentimes when those images reappear before our eyes, what is it? What is it? No, no. You know, why is it happening? Because your eyes have stored the images but you didn't pay attention. This is why the information is incomplete. This is why you Thoughts are ruffled disturbed when you are somewhere in order for a healthy mind you must see things with attention. Pay attention. Why not because you're going to marry this gloss. But because if I don't pay attention, this image, which is stored in my subconscious mind will not have enough information and then it will trouble me later on. So if you're sitting here and there when I come I do this. I'm safe now. Why? Because my eyes have taken images. And I have paid attention and I know this is a bottle. Oh, that's fair enough. Be there. Don't come here. I know who you are. At home, if somebody knocks on the door, what does it mean? I'm not bothered who comes in who goes, but I need to know. You know why? Because if somebody is knocking on the door, and I don't know who it was. Now this thought that somebody came and knocked on the door will be stored in the back of my mind in the subconscious mind. And it will bother me later on. And when things are incomplete, and they transfer themselves from the subconscious mind into conscious mind, they create doubts. Oh, somebody came the other day, there was a knock on the door. Who was it? Who was it? If you ask me this question, Have you in your face? What are you asking me? Why didn't you pay attention? If you're so concerned Why didn't go out the door and found out? Oh, it was him or it was. So never, ever be careful, your your eyes are like spy cameras. Everything is being stored. And you want to make sure that everything which is being stored by your eyes by your sensory system does not store anything incomplete. So pay attention so that every information is full information. And when it's full information, your mind will be healthy. You will never be hallucinating. You will never be delusional. You will never have any doubts. This is why oftentimes when people are really annoyed and irritated like shy by was a few days ago. I

wanted to know why. It happened. Do you now understand why I asked you Tell me the reason why you were angry? Because I cannot feed my brain with incomplete knowledge. This is important for me. If you say I'm paying, I will not ask you a question. Why are you paying? Because I know why do you pee? I don't need this information up because this is a system right? I'm sitting Okay, that's enough. I'm not goanna ask you why you should, because I know why you should. This is the inquisitiveness of my mind. I have trained my mind not to install anything incomplete. Trust me. I cannot store incomplete things. I need to know the reason. Right? Okay. Whatever the reason was, just say it, whatever the reason was right? All wrong, I don't care. I'm only concerned that when this information is stored in the back of my mind, it is not incomplete so that it doesn't bother me doesn't bug me in future. And this is all intelligence. This is all IQ. What do you think? Well, Steve, you need to know everything. Whether you do anything right or wrong, but for the sake of my mental health, I need to know why you did it. Otherwise the information will be incomplete. Do you think this information is helpful? Yeah. So what's what is to remember? Check your surroundings. If you do this, you will be more intelligent than Sherlock Holmes. Honestly. Then every MFA member will be more intelligent than 007 James Bond provocatively So what is to remember, check your surroundings. And don't forget, everything you see is a stored in form of an image in your brain right. And now, you need to be careful because everything is being stored what you see is being stored. What you need to do now is whatever is being stored, it should have some information like what is it if this information is incomplete, your IQ level will go down, not here in your brain. IQ level is judged by what you have in your conscious mind and how much your conscious mind is affected by your subconscious mind. These are how they measure the IQ level but when you know everything which is being stored. For example, I know this is a glass and this is water. Now this information will never go into the subconscious mind because not useless this will stay here the more information is stored in your conscious mind, the more intelligent You are the ability to identify something is intelligence and to react is emotion. Simple man unbelievable intelligence Lucas models authority array, it arms easy. What is intelligence? The ability to identify and to react is simple as his brother Steve I swear to God, this information is not from here. But you take this information to anybody and he will be his jaws will drop. What is it that Sophie is the IQ level? What is it? I told you about two cues and what is EQ?

Okay, now if I asked you whether or not you were emotionally intelligent, what would you say? What is emotional intelligence? Very simple. Okay, okay, give me the example. Si. Si. No, tell me why did you only remember beautiful women? Why didn't you remember the messy room Okay, now in this kind of scenario where Shaquille white sleeping, the room is messy, stinky. But he's comfortable. What is it needed? Now you understand it. But before this piece of information you didn't have an answer to this nonresponsive. Some mental illness. When you have pain, some people when they have pain, the make a mountain out of a molehill when somebody else has been none of my business Emotionally if I see something beautiful for the sake of my mental welfare, I must comment. I must for examples a nice beautiful BMW car. Wow, what I call I have to say, You know why for the welfare of my mental health? And I know I'm aware of it. That's why I do it. What a beautiful watch. Wow so nice. And then I would ask different people to give their remarks so is a stored with a lot of information. And it doesn't bug me in future. How do you do it? How do you react when you see wrong things and write things and ugly things and you know, beautiful things? Do you often time just ignore it? Or do you think you have made your religion to remark on it or to comment on it? Right, does it benefit you today's thought is the initial, you know, Introduction to the type of psychology I am imposing on you. Is it going to help everybody like I said, when you're sitting somewhere Your eyes are storing all the images and you're not paying attention to it. You completely ignore that their existence. And this is where you become folly. This is where your IQ level goes down, like minus 30 minus 40. And it's not it doesn't, doesn't take too long. You sitting somewhere you can see things just pay little attention and complete information. Every time, you know, what's there. For example, I need a glass and there's a glass. The image of the glass is in my subconscious mind, but the information is incomplete. So what will happen now, so bring the glass Oh, that is there. Oh. And this happens many times when so many people, doesn't it? Why not write your band simply say oh absent mind, but what is action, mind is not absent, the information is absent in the mind. In self awareness level two we will deal with IQ and EQ and then comes a higher awareness. Awareness of God and you now we're talking about awareness of you and you in third level will talk about awareness of God and His presence in you know who is behind the scenes working inside you. If you want to know who is inside you, God or devil outer detected yeah but this self awareness level two will go on

for seven days. And then after seven days I will start level three. And I can guarantee to you that after these seven days you will have a lot more understanding of life. You will have a lot more confidence. I bet I can bet my life on it.

A LITTLE BIT ABOUT MEMORY At its most fundamental level memory is an information store. That's why we talk about computer memory. It's a place that you can store your books films and even your tax returns so that you can access them again later on. Now also your flash drive and the memory in your head do the same general. They want in very different ways. Our memories are not like film or to show you that capture every detail as our senses detect them before memories are stored. They go through a process of encoding the path from information entering our senses to permanent storage in our brains is an interesting one. We have two kinds of memory long term and short term short term memory. It's the first stop for new information in the parts of your brain that control memory determine that you don't need memory in the short term stores anymore. It's let it go. Rather than storing you forget thousands of unimportant things everyday. Actually it's more accurate to say that you never made the memories in the first place. I know for certain that memory is stored in the brain. And we've identified some of the most important parts of the brain responsible for managing memory but we still don't know exactly how memories but just bits and pieces of the puzzle blew past. Scientists have described human memory quite a bit like index cards or computer memory with chalk of filing cabinets information sorting methods. We know from everyday life today we know that that's not really how things work. Memory is something that happens throughout the brain. It isn't neatly filed in one particular spot but different sorts of memories rely mainly on certain parts of the brain. A really cool example comes from research done on land and cabdrivers. Now in order to become a cab driver in London well at least the thought came about. We need to memorize vast amounts of information about landmarks street names and other details. Scientists have shown that the part of the brain most strongly associated with long term memory the hippocampus is causatively huge in the brains of lunging cabbie's compared to the average person this shows us that's how memories of very much a

physical thing. The information that we remember all stored in the form of brain cell connection passions just like a computer writes information to a case all you would write information to paper Beaupre writes Your memories in the form of brain. So passions Maybe one day we'll be able to read that information directly like you can read a CD by cushioning it in a player. For now the specific brain cell language that memories are stored in remains a mystery to us. Still we have learnt a lot from studying memory and I do know that certain things can improve or interfere with the storage and the recall of memories. The exercises in the schools take advantage of this knowledge to help you remember things. Batcha we now know that memory is very sensitive. What does this mean. Well it means that a new piece of information is part of a larger collection of related memories is more likely to stick around in your mind. He is another thing about memory. Have you ever sat in the lounge and thought I want a soft drink got up walks to the kitchen and then stood there with no clue why you went to the kitchen in the first place. This is known as the door of fact. And scientists have shown that when your brain receives a cue that you have entered a separate space memories that formed while in another space may be hard to retrieve. This just shows us another way in which the brain organizes memories and we're discovering more about this process every day. The next lecture will be looking at assessing your current memory abilities to get a better idea of where you stand and where improvements is needed.

HOW TO TAKE SMART BREAKS One of the most beloved strategies is the one that follows now and is called to take a break. It is very good when you learn something to take breaks as many as possible. I know that we've been taught that we should stay there. Stay on the chair for two-three hours till we finish it. It's important to finish it. Of e, it's important to finish it but it's not important to finish it. If you're not paying attention. If you lose concentration if you're there just to be there. Right. We're talking about being efficient here and we're talking about maybe about having a bit of fun when we're learning. So taking a break is very important and why is important. We talked about earlier that 15 to 20 minutes is the attention span. Now also sleep is a very good break if you are very tired take a nap taking a nap during the day. I know it sounds like old people are doing this or little children but it's not about that. It's about the fact that it is very good for the brain and resets the circuits very well. For instance, if you are taking a break and taking a nap it improves of 20 minutes man a nap, not more. If you take a nap which is longer than 20 minutes then you'll be dizzy or be confused you'll wake up like this. Now, twenty-two maximum of 30 minutes is very good. And why is it very good. It improves your memory with 30 per cent. For instance, if you learn something and you're very tired you know you're trying to memorize something and you're dozing off when you wake up you know 30 per cent more than information than if you didn't take a nap. It's a fact. Some studies are researching this. And why is this important? It is important because let's go back to that principle your subconscious mind is working for you whenever you take a break.

MYTHS So the first thing we are going to talk about is memory. But before we get into how you can improve your memory, let's take a look at some popular myths about human memory. Understanding and bust busting these moves are important as it will save you valuable time when working on your brain training. It is especially important if you're someone who holds one or more of these myths, you may stop trying quickly if you think that you're forever stuck with a bad memory. But nuts that are not the case. Your memory can be improved. myths are only going to harm you and your determination. So let's take common wants before we start. And if you will hold on one of these do not be surprised. There is a secret good memory. So many people out there think that there is a secret to improving one's memory and they want to know those secrets. But here's the deal. There are no secrets. There is no single way to improve your memory. There are a lot of things methods and tools that you can use to improve your memory. Each one works differently and improves a different part of your memory. But you cannot possibly imagine improving your memory but by using just one to build a house, you need a hammer and saw a screwdriver and a whole lot of other talks don't you? It's the same when it comes to memory improvements. You have to realize that there is no quick fix or easy way to do this. It requires practice and patience. The memory screws skills are not even secrets. Most of the methods have been around for more than 300 years. For example, phenomics has been around for 2000 years. No one has the right to say they invented a particular memory skill, or that the method is a secret. Memory is the think. Nope, it's not. There is no physical part of your brain that's called memory. Memory is far from a thing, it's a process. remembering things is an activity and you should not think of it in terms of a bad or good memory. remembering something requires you to think about a lot of things. And it's maybe a total of different memories. You may have to think about the smell the sounds and the local footer trying to remember at once, even if two memories are virtually the same, they may be

remembered differently. Many times it's not even a question of complexity. You may remember a whole conversation in detail, but not a simple melody, just because they're stored differently in your memory. said no memory is another thing. Some people will always have a bad memory. As we have already established, your memory is not a thing. Memory is not even about ability. So trust me when I tell you that nobody's for a sign with a bad memory unless they have a health issue. Some people naturally have a great memory, while others tend to struggle. But that in no way implies that they have to continue to do so for the rest of their lives. The memory skills that one picks up are much more important than any natural difference in memory. Say you have two boxes, one large and one small, and you put index cards into them. The difference is that in the small box, you put cards in the needs and sabbatical order. Whereas in a large box, you just throw them in haphazardly. If you're asked to find a particular box in both the boxes, in which case Do you think you will find a set card faster? The smaller one obviously, it's the same with memory one person who may have a bigger box but if the information is not organized and good memory skills are not used, they will not necessarily have an easier time remembering things. So Dino, so Do not even for a second, believe that you're forever stuck with a bad memory. It will only stop you from trying, which is the worst thing you can do. You can always improve your memory. There are easy ways to memorize. This is another myth believed by people who think there is a secret to memorization. There is no trick as some people believe and goods memory requires mental effort on your parts. It's a learned skill more often than not, and there is no easy way to do it. There are memory methods and techniques that you can learn which make the process easier for you, but you still have to put in the efforts. Improving your memory is like learning any other thing like playing the guitar or driving you will not expect to learn it in a day or two. So why are such high expectations when improving your memory, you have to learn the right techniques and know where to use which ones that is the only way you will have a great memory? You're too old to improve your memory. Some people often complain that they're too old to improve their memory. They think that just because they're getting old, they cannot learn some memory skills to stay sharp. It's just a move that needs to

beings. Your memory can be improved at any age. Yes, some level of brain functions in impediment is to be expected at really old ages. But that does not mean you cannot use memory skills. Even the 70-year-old person who makes good use of memory skills can outperform a 20-year-old who doesn't. Myth, we never forget. Some excellent rated learning programs claim that we never forget what we'll learn. Now let's simply get misplaced. And the key to a good memory is to figure out how to dig it adds facts. All knowledge is subject to gradual decay. Even your name is vulnerable. is only a matter of probability. Strong memories are very unlikely to be forgotten. Their probability of forgetting what's name is like the probability of getting hits by an estuary it's possible but not considered daily. long sleep is good for memory. association of sleep and learning meet many believe that the longer we sleep, the healthier we are. Also, long sleep improves memory consolidation. All we need factors all we need for effective learning is well-structured sleep at the right time, and after optimum length. Many individuals sleep less than five hours and wake up refreshed. Many geniuses sleep little and practice kidnaps long sleep may correlate with disease. This is why mortality studies show that those who sleep seven hours live longer than nine hours sleepers, the best formula for good sleep, listen to your body, go to sleep when you're sleeping and sleep as long as you need. When you catch a good rhythm, we've had an alarm clock, your sleep may ultimately last less, but produce far better results in learning. It is the natural healthy structure of sleep cycles that makes for good learning. It is not true that if you're sleeping shorts, so is your memory.

SUPER BRAIN VS BASELINE BRAIN Superbrain versus based on brain In this lesson, how should the whole difference between the baseline brain and what we're calling super brain, the difference is immense. Superbrain means using your brain to maximum advantage. Now let's look at it. Based on brain says, I have numerous habits. I'm a creature of habits. And the super brain says I pay attention not to fall into bad habits. And if I have one, I can break it easily. I do not stimulate my mind with new things very often. I like to improvise. I love familiarity. It's the most comfortable way to live. I abhor boredom, which to me means repetition. If I'm being honest, there is boring repetition at home, work and in my relationships. I gravitate to new things in many areas of my life. I cannot say that I'm growing as much as when I was younger. I will keep evolving until the end of my life. If I learn a new skill, I take it only so far. If I learn a new skill, I take it as far as I can. I am resistant to change and sometimes feel threatened by it. I adapt quickly to change. I do not reach beyond what I'm already good at. If I'm not good at something, when I first try it That's okay. I would add to my beliefs and opinions. I've recently changed a long-held belief or opinion. I leave it to others to be the experts. There's at least one thing I'm an expert on. I watch educational television or attend public lectures. I gravitate toward educational outlets on television or in local colleges. It's been a while since I've felt inspired. I'm inspired by my life on a day to day basis. I have felt out of control recently in at least one area of my life. I feel comfortable in control. My stress level is too high, but I put up with it. I actively avoid stressful situations by walking away and letting go. I worry about depression or am depressed. My mood is coming consistently good. My life can go in a direction I do not want it to. Despite unexpected events, my life is headed in the direction I wanted to go. My thoughts can be obsessive, scary or anxious. I like the way my mind thinks.

Even though your brain doesn't come with an owner's manual, you can use it to follow a path of growth, achievement, personal satisfaction, and new skills. without realizing it. You're capable of making a quantum leap in how you use your brain.

IMPROVE YOUR WORKING MEMORY CALCULATION Another way to train your mind is to work with the mind as much as you can and one on one thing that we have that we can improve is called the working memory. What's the working memory. Working memory is an ability that the lives somewhere here in the frontal cortex are an ability to deal with them with the information is if you will if is that part of the brain that thinks about a solution and reviews the information that we have in the memory things about new possibilities. Holds that information in mind whatever we need to solve. Yes holds the problem in mind and looks for solutions. So that ability to hold one idea and look for others and to combine them in the mind is called the working memory. This is the name we are considering. We generally tend to generalize and to call it thinking but it's not quite thinking but some people are faster in doing this is looking for solutions and finding solutions in line taking one thing from one piece of one part of the mind and another information and combine them and other people who are slower in that I would say that this is something that we can work and improve. So you can become foster in thinking and you can have by having a better working memory. How do we work? The working memory. There are many ways. Some are. Most of them actually are fun. We'll start with one which for instance to me was a bit of a challenge because and I think for you is also a bit of a challenge. Some of you at least because we have so many computers we have so many calculators to make calculus right. So we don't do that kind of thinking of doing complex mathematical operations in the mind. But if we do that you will see that your mind keeps improving. For example, if we were to exercise multiplication let's say we have 34 multiply by six. It sounds a bit complicated but not that complicated. So if we want to do this you see if you start to do that without writing it down the first you know.

LAYING THE FOUNDATION FOR GOOD MEMORY If you want to be good at something there's more to it than simply starting to practice and going through the motions of training. You'll also need to make sure that your mind and body are in good shape. Same is true if you want to improve a mental faculty such as memory recall. You have to give yourself a general head start. The mind lies within the brain and the brain is a living organ just like any other in your body where your brain takes up relatively little of your total mass. It is one of the most hungry organs in the body and keeping the operating well is very important if you want to think clearly and remember things well in general whatever is good for your body is good for your mind as well. Estival It is very important that you get the right amount of sleep a healthy adult should get seven to nine hours every night not preaching this quota can be bashful he certainly only having 4 hours of sleep the day before an exam. A practical test will do nothing but hurt your memory and your thinking performance don't make the mistake of thinking you can make up for the lack of sleep by taking something to make you feel more alert. Although a stimulant like coffee may make you feel awake it doesn't make your mind work as well as the it. Well rest stage no matter what you need to make time for a good night's rest these days. You can even use smartphone apps and wearable devices to track history so that you know if you're getting as much rest you named. This will not only help improve your memory but make you healthier and happier in general. We don't actually quite know what sleep does or why we need it. Just that not getting enough of it messes with our brains about as badly as a night of partying with your friends. The brain also needs to have the right energy sources and building blocks in order to operate. Preferably a good balance giant is therefore essential to a healthy brain and to buying certain foods and supplements has been linked to improved memory or at least preventing your memory from

getting worse as you age. A diet rich in fish and nuts for example has been linked to reduced trait of developing memory and cognitive issues later on in life. And if you're carrying some extra pounds may also want to work towards a healthier weight. Since New studies have found that excess body fat may be directly linked to memory loss and impairment getting enough exercise is also pretty important for overall physical health and plays an important role in the next very important factor. The last thing you can do in order to improve your memory performance is to learn stress and anxiety management. Being anxious and stressed out is definitely not the best for good memory recall sleeping enough eating right and getting enough exercise helps you deal with your stress levels in a special way.

DRAWING This lecture we're going to be looking at using drawing methods as a way to boost your memory. If there's one thing we've all done as children it's to draw pictures. It's one of those strange things we all enjoy drawing. But as we get older most people seem to lose their taste for it. Possibly because the quality of our drawing is criticized more as we get older. And unless you are a serious artist drawing may be seen as a chore pastime and not necessarily something for adults to enjoy. That's a real pity because the latest research has shown that drawing things that you want to remember is super effective at helping you remember them compared to when you're simply writing them down many decades. Psychologists have known that your encoding method worked well tip based memory. Basically this just meant that you also drew what you have written. And in this way you encoded the same information using two different pathways visual and language. Some people have disputed that the drawing itself had anything to do with it but that the fact it takes longer to draw something than to write it simply meant we spent more time encoding the memory. Recent research has begun to show that it is in fact that the visual aspect that is most responsible for the improvement in our memory although of e it is also true that the more time you spend paying attention to something the more likely you are to remember it. And what really matters is that this method works. When you write things down you should also take the time to do them get into the habit of doodling in the margins of your study notes draw the facts and ideas in order to form the associations between the facts or items you want to memorize. And the image that you're creating really is a difference between looking at a picture to memorize and drawing it yourself by doing this. You combine several pathways in the brain language visual and also Mosha don't worry about how well you draw what it looks like or what people will think this is for you and you don't even have to use paper. There are many smart phones and tablets house available that are designed to let you take notes by hand and then

doodle right next to them. Paper by software developer Destry is a relevant example. However you decide to commit to your Judo's it should be JoCo to make a habit of it. You can also combine the drawing and doing method with other memory methods such as mind mapping or any sort of image association method. All you need to do is to draw the image instead of just imagining it or finding it someplace else. And to top it all off memory doodling also improves your focus and problem solving skills. So as you can see it really is a win win win situation. You may find that you enjoy doodling or drawing and the more you do the better you'll get.

PAY ATTENTION IN CLASS The second important rule. Okay, let's say I convinced you or you convinced yourself. Let's say you don't need a conviction and you've been to classes all the classes now. Very important. Pay attention when you are there. Pay attention to what is been said that has been said. Pay attention to all the lesson. Why is that important? Because if you don't pay attention it's you've been there for nothing. You know. Have you ever had a moment when for instance you are the party or I don't know and someone came to introduce himself or herself and someone at that moment just attracted your attention? So you say your name. That person says the name is. Someone was calling you and then you are in there and then you realize you don't know the name. You haven't even heard it because you didn't pay attention to. So whenever you're in class and doing something else and you're not paying attention to the teacher to what has been said is wasted time and what's wasted time again double time learning within your free spare time which is so sad. So pay attention in class because it's important than that information that you've heard before will be so much easier to review. There's a saying that's half of the lesson is you can have it in class. You can learn it in class and it is still true. Pay attention in class and then half the efforts in reviewing it.

TAKE SMART NOTES OK. Rule Number Three taking smart notes is very important to take very smart notes. What does it mean? It means that when you're taking notes for instance if you are in a non-technical class it's quite good for you to highlight the important ideas the question that the teacher was raising. The arguments that it gives and the conclusions because this will be very helpful whenever you are reviewing the information. So you already are like you make her pre reviewing our arrangement let's say. And it is gonna be very good if you have time. And the the the subject allows you maybe a mind map is going to be a very good and efficient way to structure the information because you will remember it so well and you will organize it already. Then if it's a technical of e let's say Write down all the steps of the demonstrations for instance of the problem if it's a math problem. Don't skip the all the instances all the exercises that the teacher is using to make a point because whenever you are reviewing maybe you don't understand from one exercise but you will understand from another if your institution whenever you are learning is allowing it and you have one you can take your laptop. I don't know about the laptop. This is is definitely it helps you if it's a non-technical e it helps you take you to take more notes because you faster you type faster than you write. But then again that's the noise that is been made and you can draw anything while in good time and I don't know. There are some pluses and some inconveniences that's for you to decide. But definitely, we type faster in general than we write so you can take more notes by the way. We are talking about notes taking notes. Don't write everything down whenever you want to write everything that the teacher is saying especially if the teacher is talking a lot and especially if it talks fast is going to be a very very painful effort because you can't write everything. You'll miss the whole point. You'll forget your skip lines and maybe names important information and then you won't

understand you.

BRAIN EXERCISES we'll be discussing very sexercise is to help your brain's memory stain tip top condition. Just like the rest of the body your memory goes down the train if it is never use you can't lay out on the couch all day and expect to be asked Retic and muscle. So why would she think that your memory would be in top shape if you never exercise it. Earlier in the e we talked about the foundation for a good memory. Those chips will surely give you the best chance at developing a great memory.

But these exercises will Boki top it may seem like a strange thing to some of us but in order to improve your memory you need to deliberately work at remembering things and then deliberately try to recall them. You also need to keep track of how well you're doing so that you know whether you've improved or not. One simple exercise is to make a list of something perhaps your groceries Well people you'd like to invite to a party. In fact anything to write them down on a piece of paper and then wait about an hour say then see

how many of the items on the list you could remember and to Noach the school you do this the better you'll Yogeshhatchings longer the less you'll be able to remember and the fewer mistakes or omissions you make. It's also very helpful to take up hobbies or start activities that rely on memory to one extent or another. Becoming proficient at chess for example requires that you learn many different majors and openings and are able to recognize and during play. This is particularly good for long term memory and recall while you're playing. You also need to plan several moves ahead and remember that you plan a game like chess or any of the stress G.K. is there for an excellent and fun way to improve and maintain memory BRAILEY advance players can memorize the positions of all 64 PCs on the board and play a game without any pieces. Actual something refer to as blind folks chess today. There are even people who can play multiple games blindfolded with only the memory of their PC's positions to work with. When you have to do arithmetic such as adding up groceries in your Baskins don't reach for a calculator or piece of paper. Try to do them in your head visualize the numbers in the same way you would have written them down. Learning a foreign language or playing an instrument are both excellent ways to stay sharp. These activities stimulate your brain with new knowledge over an extended period of time. If you make a habit of always learning something it will improve your memory performance. In general Another fun challenge is to look at some math or other drawing and try to recreate it from memory without looking then at the end of your drawing. Take out the original and comparing. You can try these over and over until you can recreate every detail in the original image. Of e you should remember that we are not suggesting that you should do all or any of these you should find mentally stimulating activities that fit with your taste and sense of fun. What matters is that the activity can be done better with better memory and that you can enjoy it.

USING ACRONYMS In this lecture we're going to be looking at how acronyms can help you remember information more easily. It's all in counting acronyms. FBI NASA The Man From UNCLE. You probably hear heaps of acronyms every single day in one form or another. An acronym is simply a way to turn a long description or phrase into a single word by taking the first letter of each word in the phrase. So s be-I would be short for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Notice that's the word of it's not featured in the acronym. This is common practice but sometimes if the acronym needs the actual letter to make sense. Or worse like of May be included. Sometimes an organization would choose a word first and then try to come up with a word that matches it. A so called Kernen when it comes to memory. Acronyms are a frontline defense against forgetting a set of related concepts. If you had mathematics in school and most of us have You'llremember that there is a certain order in which you must do arithmetic calculations. It's likely that you were taught boatman's all of their recent event but this sounds like a funny word. But actually it stands for bracket's orders divisions multiplication and addition and subtraction. If all use a member is partners you can always figure out the correct order of calculation. Even if you don't know math in years Luckily there are already many pre-made acronyms for common sets of things that people have trouble remembering next. Now have a look at some useful examples news which stands for north east west and south and these are the points of the compass in order pen which is proton electron and neutron. These are the parts of the action Stabb which is Pranay tenor alter and base the full voices of a Korsh hat. As you can see acronyms can really help you to remember a fairly complex set of facts in a fairly easy way. Part is part of working with an acronym is not memorizing them but creating memorable warnings in the first place. That's why it's a good idea to first see if someone has come up with a good acronym for what you're trying to learn. For example in fields like engineering or medicine there are heaps of preexisting

acronyms for all of the toughest memory challenges in those areas. The internet is your friend and your first stop should be a search engine to make sure that you're not reinventing the wheel. If you cannot find a premade acronym for your needs then sit down and try to come up with a good one. Who knows perhaps you will come up with the next buttons used in schools colleges and the welldone.

THE LOCI METHOD OK let's so let's make a short exercise. Let's say you have 10 things to remember 10 things on a shopping list. For instance, let's say you have to remember shampoo in this order. Right. Shampoo hummus toothbrushes notebooks bread sour cream toilet paper to make meat pork meats and seeds. Let's say you have this. Just press stop now and try to write down in this in the order that I said these items OK. Let's say you you paused a bit and you wrote them down. How many you have in order. Well, you see them on the screen now and you can check the order probably between four and seven plus minus two.

Right. This is probably the first and the last. This is a rule like the primacy

and recency effect of memory. We remember the beginnings and the endings. So maybe this is the like the average four to seven. OK. How can we remember all of them in the order? How can we remember a list of names in the order by association and by association with some something extraordinary? How this memory works. Well, I'll tell you what if we could make a story out of the things we need to remember we will definitely remember better. Why. Because the mind likes stories because the mind is that is a machine to make sense a sense-making machine it makes sense out of anything. If someone gives us an idea that hasn't anything to do with anything else we will put it in a context to give it some sense because we cannot conceive universe avoid universe a universe without sense our mind is looking for sense for meaning.

MEMORIZATION SHEETS It is very very important when you have lots of things to memorize to remember to have them very very concentrated on some memorizing sheets memorizing lists. Why is that important because the more we the closer we get to the exam date. It's important to have things that we can review fast so that the important stuff sticks with us. Why. Because when you are at the exam maybe not knowing some details won't matter that much you know as being marked right. But you must know the basics at least the basics so write down all the important like definitions or names for each lesson for each subject that you have to focus on and write them down so that you can review those when you have little time to review like half an hour at some point. You just go through your memorizing sheets and it's important because if you have all those books all those es. It's a deep motivation factor right. You look at them and say it's too much. I don't feel like learning but you have if you have this quick memorizing sheets you can. You can go through them more easily and it's more fun and you can. You can do for instance in the form of some of them in the form of mind maps or I've shown earlier how to make like a mind map but there are many of them you can look over the Internet and it's full. You can the full picture get the full picture of how the main mind map can look like as a tree-like whatever with lots of drawings and everything. So it could be fun it could be very memorable. Easy to remember. So you do this but work with these sheets because it's much easier to remember and to start reviewing if you have this and not the whole bulk of information.

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE HUMAN BRAIN? The human brain is one of nature's most complex biological creations. People tap the power of their brains daily to perform menial tasks to math equations to access memory of past experiences, and process feelings about current events. Your brain contains roughly 1 billion 100 billion nerve cells forming anywhere from a trillion to perhaps even a quadrillion connections, called synapses. These connections are in a constant dynamic state of remodelling in response to the world around you. As a marvel of nature, this one is minus kill, and yet stupendous. Your brain not only interprets the world, but it also creates sense. Everything you see, hear, touch, taste, and smell, would have known of those qualities we've had to brain. Imagine if we could truly unlock the full capacity of those billions of neurons, and move beyond the brain's baseline activity. This course shows you that there is a way by increasing self-awareness and focusing the brain on tasks of self-improvement, you can push your brain beyond what you think is possible.

GIVE YOUR BRAIN A FOCUS ATTENTION. The mind and the body are not separate. The human brain is deeply connected to every cell in the human body, Tibetan monks practice a harmonious balance between mind and body. through intense focus, monks can control which messages the brain sends to the body. When the temperature dips below freezing, a monk can meditate and encourage his brain to satisfy three messages that will raise his body temperature to a comfortable level. This kind of mind control has also been tapped to fight diseases, once considered chronic and incurable. When a person has a stroke, the trauma can seven neural pathways used to send messages from the brain to parts of the body, which can result in partial paralysis. While medical professionals were thought such paralysis was incurable. Now therapists can help stroke victims train the brain by sending repetitive messages to affected areas of the body. As part of the therapy, a patient focuses on simple tasks, such as lifting a cup, or writing down a verse, And over time, the neural pathways repair themselves, and regular movement can be restored. This example shows us how resilient and powerful the brain can be when we give it focused attention.

DO WE LOSE NEURONS AS WE AGE? Do we lose neurons as we age, people can generate brain neurons to intellectual challenges and physical exercise. Sometimes people talk about activities in terms of how many brain cells a challenging task with costs as if humans have a limited supply of brain cells. The human brain indeed contains a lot of neurons. What's more, the brain can even generate more neurons if needed. The human brain data lose the use of some 85,000 neurons on average, but really, this total is a drop in the ocean. There are 40 billion available neurons in the cerebral cortex alone. If you factor in the neurons we lose daily. At these rates, a human could live for hundreds of years, and still have plenty of neurons left to live a life as a brilliant, talented mathematician. Amazing that the human brain is creating new brain cells all the time. At the University of Rochester biologist Paul Coleman, with the fascinating discovery, it found that the brain of a 20-year-old person and the brain of a 70-year-old person has the same amount of neurons. This is because of our body's ability to regenerate cells. The human brain is always growing and evolving. It does this when it is given a mental challenge, such as learning a new language or working out a math problem. Interestingly, the same effect has been observed in birds when researchers It is a prefetch defended about spring groove remarkably during mating season, as the bursar learning new songs to attract mates. In the next lesson, we will take a closer look at things you can do to increase your brain's power.

USING ACROSTICS Next we'll be discussing the Castaic as a method to remember a text or even a poem earlier in the e a chaise you an acrostic to help you remember the planets. Can you still remember it. Before we go on try to recall the sentence the sentence was my very educated mother just served us Hugo did you remember it. If so then that's great. It just goes to show how effective acoustics can be. And if he doesn't remember it this time it's likely you won't forget his skin soon. Now that we've rapaciousness again as you may recall the sentence helps us remember the names and order of the planets each words first letter. It's also the first letter of the planet's name. As soon as he knew what the planets are named and that Mercury is always there for Mars. You can easily record the information whenever you like. This is not the only form an actress can take cower from letters can also form a word and each letter can be the first notes only of one word but an entire sentence. Let's have a look at this classic poem by Edgar Allan Poe Elizabeth. It is in vain you say love not say it in so sweet a way. In vain. Those words from the Lao Xantippe talents had enforced so well ah. If that's the language from thy harsh arise breathe breathing less gently forth and veil thine eyes and Jimmy and recollect when Luna tried to cure his love was cured of all beside his folly pride and passion for he died. She's actually taught old and at Kirchick. But if you look at the first letter of every line you'll realize that it spells the name Elizabeth. The medical profession loves using acrostics since doctors are expected to memorize and recall a massive amount of information about the human body. Here are some great examples. Bloch's functions oxygen carbon dioxide food heat waste Holding's disease clotting. This is turned into the act acrostic. Charlie Fausta hate swimming. Having dhal claves clearly the single most important aspect of an act is that it should be memorable. So when you create your own X-Tex try to make use a word or sentence that's memorable. In the case of a sentence the stranger. Or more interesting it is the more likely you are to recall it even years later.

RHYME KEYS In this show we'll be looking at using a special memory technique known as Rhyne keys to remembrance of things both ordered and unordered. Have you ever noticed that it's easy Shurmur things that rhyme. Whether it's a poem or one of those awful words songs that get stuck in your head for ages. Rhyming is a powerful mnemonic device. One of the reasons this might be the case is because it taps into the musical or auditory aspects of our brain. It's not just the meaning of the word but that the actual sound of it as well that triggers our memories. The problem is that obviously there is no guarantee that the words that you want to memorize will rhyme with each other. That's where Brian keys coming to play. They are a method of leveraging the memory powers of rhyme with words that I don't find naturally. So how can we do this. And how exactly does it work. The first step to making use of Brime keys is to memorize a series of words that rhyme with numbers. One is born to his shoe and so on. Now let us come up with a series of words that she would like to remember. Let's take the example of tetch pants and she's now we create our rhyme case. That detective has a hat and gun. That's one usherette is Brian Chu there's cance in that tree Shary the bull full Wes shoes like other memory methods that we discuss in this e the rhyme key method relies on image Association. So you want to come up with rhyming sentences that also make some memorable images. Of e you need to be quite good at coming up with rhyme key words itself. You also need to decide what the common listening must be. Only seven items it can become much more difficult to remember all your rhyme. Cade's this method works best in practice if you keep the list at seven or fewer options.

START LEARNING EARLY The most important strategy of them all. The mother of all strategies if you will is to start learning early. Why would that be important even if nobody almost does it? But why is this important to be very relaxed and to be more efficient in an exam? Well, I thought about three at least three reasons why that is very good to do that to start to learn early while the first reason has to do with postponing is like having an alarm in your brain. Let's say that your brain knows that you have to do something. And if you are postponing beginning it starting you know the task that you are having. It sets an alarm with many noses if you will. So it is given. Let me give you an example when I was very young while young enough to have my first to go to my first college. I was so stressed about the final exam you know that I never went to it. Well for 12 years I was having dreams let's say but I think there were proper nightmares that I didn't have exams. I didn't pass any exam in my life. So the brain was so serious about giving me this news and this warning that I wasn't beginning to learn for that final exam that I was dreaming that I didn't pass any exam in my life. You see it was deadly serious. So any kind of postponing gives your brain the right to give you managed noses and many alarms. And that's really annoying. The second reason why I think it's good for you to start early is because of the psychotic effect. I know songs like a very sophisticated and very complicated but actually it's all about. It was thought and discovered actually by two researchers. They were somewhere I think in Vietnam and were having a coffee. They were in a restaurant and they noticed something very interesting which is all the waiters for instance that were having ongoing orders. They knew exactly what each of the person orders but the moment they cashed it the cash the money they didn't remember anything they didn't know if that person had tea. That person had coffee something which they remembered five minutes ago.

And this was very puzzling like why would that happened why five minutes ago they knew all about it and then it was erased its iconic effect means that the moment that you are beginning something like whatever like an order a project I don't know some book to read the mind your brain opens up like a new file and what's most interesting is that it works on the file even while you are asleep even one when you're not very much keen on learning on that is just it does your work. How is this possible. You know already probably you've heard about the conscious and subconscious our conscious mind processes 120 beats per second means the conversation between two people. If two people are speaking at the same time maybe we can understand what they're talking. This is 120 beats per second. Our subconscious mind the one that is taking care of us to survive that is attentive to everything that goes around is processing. Are you paying attention? Forty million beats per second and this means one thing if we give an order to the brain that we started something we started a project. Those 40 million bits are working for us because the brain is designed to help us do stuff especially learning right. So just start to learn and then you see that aha moments on solutions and on everything if you will like now discover it's not innovations but things that you will need for your learning will start to pop up will start to come. And this is your subconscious helping you to do your stuff. And the third reason why this is a very good idea is to have a very good vibe during the year during the month before the exam to avoid that moment when your teacher says test time. Like surprise test or whatever and just because you started to learn early you don't have that stress that maybe tomorrow is a test and you didn't prepare that maybe after a week. Well, let's say you will have like some some moments when you will be caught on the wrong foot right. So this gives you a very relaxed pace to learn. If you start early and proceed with your learning just a little work for you I hope it's also fun just to make sure that your frontal lobe is doing the best it can at the moment. Please write down take a piece of paper and a pen and write down a least one incident when you had a solution when you had a-ha moment when you were in the shower or running or after you had a good night's sleep or in a moment when you didn't expect it. Because I want you to make sure I want you to think for yourself for a moment of a moment when your subconscious mind was working for you so that you know for sure that this is working. How to avoid being overwhelmed OK. Let's hope. We started we are decided

to start learning how do we learn how do we take all the big thing that we have to study like big books and large I don't know es and everything classes and how do we do it step by step. The first important idea is to split to take all the bulk and to split it to divide it into little bits. Why is that important? For many reasons but the main reason is that our brain is made to focus like maximum 15 to 20 minutes. That's it. And it's not about the technology and the new age and everything. Well, that also helps in shortening our focus span. But this is how the brain is made after 15 20 minutes after intense concentration. It gets tired and we'll speak later a bit about why is it important to have breaks like once in a while. And it's important to enhance learning. Actually, it's not very effective to learn a lot in the same session. So we have to divide everything we have to do into bits and then we start from simple to complex information. Why is that important? Many of us have started for instance to learn. They consider that it's important to start with what's most difficult. What's more so I don't know the impossible task and that's not good because it's not good for the motivation. If there's one thing good when you're learning is to have high motivation. This is what one of the researchers that I've studied and that I trust on which is a Stanford professor B.J. Fogg. He has drawn chart let's say which looks like this. It's quite easy to work on. This is the ability axe and this is the motivation Marty evasion. OK, this is like starting from hard to do and this is easy to do. OK, this is low motivation yet low motivation. This is a high motivation. Has it ever occurred to you while being at the exam or to the test time to try to remember something and that something doesn't come up as you knew exactly where it was on the page? You knew that you knew it because you read it 10 times but it's just not there. It happened to me lots of times and this is a very known that it can happen out of two reasons. The first reason is that you can go through an emotional blockage. It means you're frozen. Yes. It's because of the stress because of the pressure of the exam or of the test you're blocked. And that information doesn't come back. But the second reason why this could happen is that you didn't review the test material right. What does it mean to review it right? It means that for instance when you are reading it's you are thinking that you are reviewing. So you are taking all the material the books and reread them again and read them again and read them again and then the exam time. You don't know anything. Why does that happen? Because when you are reading something you have it in your face your brain knows that the information is there on the page so it doesn't have to know it. Okay. You look through it but

it doesn't have to be in your memory. Your brain knows that and it doesn't want to overcharge your brain is very effective. It's very it's a machine that it's hugely efficient. It wants to help you but it doesn't want information that charges it like unnecessarily. Therefore it says okay. Information is there. So we don't need it. Right. So at the test time, you don't remember it because it's not there. So what this is called the fluency ILLUSION. YOU THINK YOU KNOW BUT YOU DON'T KNOW IT.

METHOD OF LOCI In this lecture we're going to discuss the methods of Isai a special method used to remember information that has to do with visualizing physical spaces the words lowside in the phrase methods of my psi is Latin for places and not as you may have thought the most skilled of mischief. It goes by many names such as the journey method memory palaces and memory Janni. This is probably the oldest memory method and records go back as far as the sixth century BCE. Although some people suspect this it may be older than even that Roman though we mentioned earlier that the brain seems to time memories to the places where they were formed. That might explain why this method has proven so effective over the years. So how do you use this method. First you have to create an imaginary journey through a familiar place. Most people start by using the House take a number of stops on a tour of your home. You are going to place a number of items in each of these locations using only your imagination. Let's say that you're going to make the following five stops. The fast one and the back of your battery the second on your bedroom side table the third in the whole way the fourth in the umbrella stand by the front door and the fifth stop on the kitchen counter. Now we need one option for each. The license can just tiny be what they are. Such things as your shopping list. But they can also be symbolic. For example if you have to remember the word victory the object could be a trophy or a model ship named Victorin. It's completely up to you. But for my example I'll just be using a shoe shopping case has an X cheese tomatoes and onions. Right now we're going to start our memory Janni best. You need to stand in front of your bed in your bedroom and your bed is a giant glistening ham really work killer imagination and taking every ridiculous detail of this impossibly huge hand. Imagine the bedsprings creaking under its weight. Now completes the rest of the memory journey by taking each item in turn and placing them in each memory location. Make their appearance memorable in some way. If you do this correctly you can record the

information stored in your memory close by any anytime you want.

REMEMBER THE INFORMATION WHEN YOU NEED IT WHY. BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T QUITE memorize it how to memorize it. You have to auto test which means you have to close the book. You have to close all the material that you have and to try to say it the information to a friend or to yourself in the mirror or I don't know to a family member but say to someone or say it out loud. Why is that? Or write it down. But to say it out loud it's even better. Why is it good. Because like this Your brain is working on looking for the material is looking inside to see how much have I memorized. How much have I understood? And then you would know for sure how much you know and how much you have understood out of what you read. So you can make it fun for instance you can. You can write subjects on a piece of paper and you can put it in. I don't know you know in a hat and pull out a subject and it's much safer like this. Also, it's much effective. But why would that be? I know it sounds like a lot of effort like haha making. Now I'm making I have to write notes I have to write it on a piece of paper is such a drag. If you read it over and over again is more effort than if you review it like this and then you would know what you remember. You would know what you know and when you discover that you don't know something then you read that again and then you out or test it again because this is more like this out of all the material you have less that you don't know. And then you have less and then you have covered it all. If you started the whole bulk over and over again it's tiring time-consuming and it's not efficient therefore out or test or the test is the best thing ever that I can give you.

LEARNING NIGHT OWL VS. EARLY LARK Lots of us are ignoring one of the most important factors in learning and that is timing. It is very important when we are learning and why is that important because there is one thing to learn where it where you're tired or when you want to go to sleep. And another thing when you're ready. You're there and you're in the mood. But when are you ready. When are you in the mood. Well, that also depends on your personal traits and your personal data. But some general facts may help you so there is a science called chronobiology Colonel biology studies the best timing for each person to do stuff for instance and there is something like this when it comes to sleeping for instance. Most of the population like 65 per cent is called other birds. It's not very interesting for this science but it represents though 65 per cent. Here we have like 14 per cent and 21 per cent 14 per cent are larks. Large means people who wake up very early like I am and they function very well in the morning function in the sense of analytical jobs analytical things like we can do planes programming math physics we can do early in the morning right here are people called Owls. You can guess people who function very well could do analytical stuff and think mathematically if you will very late in the evening there their thinking starts like proper thinking analytical thinking starts somewhere around 8:00 in the evening and they function very well in the night. But is this Thomas Edison was an owl and he was inventing stuff most of the time that's 1:00 2:00 in the a.m... So it was very he was very comfortable during the late hours. Why is this important? Because even if there is this variation in the population the little ones that children all the children are mostly larks and then and then they all become towards 3 13 14. With some exceptions but in general owls. This is a variation in the stable population if you will in the adults but teenagers and young

HOW GOOD IS YOUR MEMORY Let's start this lecture by trying to answer the following questions. Name all the parameters in order starting with the first planet from the sun. Could you do it from memory. So that's pretty amazing though most of us know all the planets names from school. If you don't actively work to keep that information fresh and relevant you could find it difficult to record it. You may have remembered some or had them in the wrong order. Now I do like q to memorize the following sentence before we move on with the e. Now Pay particular attention because you're going to have to answer a question about it at the end of the e. So this is the sentence that I'd like to memorize. It goes as follows by very educated mother just served us new go. OK I'm now going to ask you a few questions about how memory from a set of questions created by Jane royalle and Nadine Lincoln put each of these questions you have to ask yourself how often something happens to you. No she shouts. She keeps school keep each question a scale of 1 to 5 to indicate how often each happens. Here is what each number represents. Number one wants or less than once in the last month. To more than once a month but less than once a week numbers say about once a week number full bore them once a week but not every day. And number five on Sunday or more. Now don't worry too much. If you didn't write that down as there will be a written copy supplied as part of the e resources so he come the questions. Remember to write down the frequency school for each of them separately. Just ask question to check whether you have done something that she should have done. Second question. Forgetting when it was that something happened for example was yesterday or last week. Question. Forgetting that you were told something yesterday or a few days ago and maybe having to be reminded about it first question starting to read something a book or an article newspaper without realizing you have already read it before. The question find that a word is on the tip of your tongue you know what it is but can't quite find it. The sick question completely forgetting to do things you said you would do and things

you can't do. Second question to getting important details of what she did or what happened to you the day before. The eighth question when talking to someone the getting what you have just said maybe saying what was that office hooking about. And the ninth question when reading a newspaper or magazine being unable to follow the Sarette of a story or losing track of where she she is about the tense question for getting to tell somebody something portions perhaps forgetting to pass on a message or remind someone of something. Elevons question getting the details of what someone told you mixed up and confuse the twelfth question forgetting where things are normally kept on looking for them in the wrong place. And you asked the question number 13 repeating to someone what you have just told them or asking someone the same question twice OK. Now look at all the schools for the different questions are they mostly ones mostly twos you have poor schools in general the lady is not to give you a number as a school but to think about how often and in what ways your memory fails you on a daily basis. Why do this. You may be asking well so that you could have a clear idea of where your memory needs improving. And also a good overall idea of your memory performance in general. Oh yes. Do you still remember that sentence I gave you a few moments OK. If you do. That's great. He is his Again my very educated mother just served us Muga. It should have been a pretty easy sentence to remember. But look at the first letter of every word each day stand for the names of the eight planets Mercury Venus Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus and Neptune. This is known as an acoustic and we'll be looking at them in more depth a bit. Sean Babb just by remembering one funny little sentence. You can do something you remember. All the planets and their order in the next lecture will be looking at why we forget things and how we can avoid some of the more common reasons.

BEST TIMING FOR REVIEWING How Often Should we revise so that is not often? And it gives us some free time you know. But we also make sure that we know what we need to know for the exam. I'm on your side. I just want you not to work too much but I want you to work as necessary as much as necessary and as well as necessary so that you know what you have to know without putting too much effort. So it's all about learning efficiently not learning a lot because learning a lot we know how it's made and it's not effective is not efficient right. All right. So there was a 2008 study that can help you a lot. I didn't have that study at the time. Then my big exams were there. But you have this help. We have this. I don't know the scheme. This exact measurement. When do we have to have the review? The big review for the exam. For instance, if you have been taught something today and you have the exam within a week then you have to rehearse like you have to review the material first. You look through it the day it was taught to fix the information to make sure you know what it was taught. The day of the teaching then two days after it's the first review and if you have time before the exam if not it should be enough. So that's you remember things. If you have an exam within six months for instance and the lesson was taught today the review of the information. So you have to read it first anyway and the date was taught so that you fix it for the first time and then three weeks after it was taught is the moment when it's cemented. Let's say.

WHY DO WE FORGET In this lecture we'll be looking at why we forget things is that getting a good or a bad thing. And why does it happen as a whole. Everyone forgets. Some people naturally are less prone to forgetting than others. But there are no people who are immune to forgetting the most important thing to realize when we talk about memory is that forgetting is an important and necessary process that lets us get on with life without getting bogged down with irrelevant information. Usually the vast majority of information that gets lost are things that do not affect your life negatively. What we think of as forgetting is usually when you're unable to recall something you need which makes you aware of the fact that the information is missing. So the guessing itself is not a bad thing but if it interferes with the normal e of your life it could be something that you need to work on. Often when we think that we've gotten something. What actually happens is that we didn't save the information in the first place for a memory to stick while it needs to have been attention grabbing relevant or interesting to us. Our memory also relies a lot on Association. So if you can associate new memories with ones that are already well seated in your mind. Those milk Pam memories lend their strengths to your new ones. They form a sort of family of memories that support one another. Time and tissues are also important factors in whether you will forget something if you haven't used a particular memory in a very long time it will fade. And in some cases become lost as the brain doesn't think it's important. So simply revising is a good way to refresh your memories. Brutalising is much less intense than learning something in the first place. You're simply telling your brain that something you have already learned is in fact important and that it should strengthen it. We actually forget most of what we learn within about a week if we do not realize and repeat his This Is Why You Should NEVER cram for an exam. Too close to its days even though you may feel like you know the material you start getting it pretty soon after. And if you don't revise and be patient for quite awhile it

won't sit in your long term memory long until that's when you encounter the dreaded memory blank when you're sitting for your exam. You know you studied the material but you just can't remember the content. The bottom line is that this forgetting is good. Just make sure you make an effort to remember the things that you know are important and just to make sure that your brain knows it's important to.

LEARNING STRATEGIES QUICK REVIEW OK, so these are the basic strategies that can help you go from the beginning to the exam safe sound and maybe a little bit happier. At least you will have more confidence. You must have a state of mind and an emotional state that can help you also you have to trust some things you're doing most of the things you're doing for learning. And it is very important what you are saying how you communicate to yourself. The exam if you start to complain Oh I have this exam and I said it's such a drag I don't feel like here then you are saying to yourself that it is your programming yourself for something very difficult and very hard. And believe me, is gonna be more difficult than it could be if you were very positive about this and say I can do this. I have some strategies I have some something to work with. And you know something I'll do it. Lots of people have done it and I can do it or whatever just the way you're talking to yourself and your convincing yourself you motivate yourself helps a lot throughout the way. So don't forget the let's review the strategies the first strategy ever the best one the first to start with is beginning. Begin to study begin to learn early. Have you heard about the expression? It's a frog. You know if you have to eat a frog if you have one frog during the day to eat then it's better to eat it first in the morning. Why is that? Because otherwise, you'll think all day long that you have a frog to eat and all day the whole day is going to be so difficult and you'll be so stressed. If you eat a frog what other nasty things nastier things can happen to you. Other than that very likely that no other bad thing will happen. So is a frog as early as you can start studying as early as you can. This is the first strategy. The second strategy is you have to take all the bulk all the information and split it in little bits.

REMEMBERING NAMES AND FACES Books we'll be looking at improving one of the most tragic memory failures and that's forgetting someone's name. Most people have experience yet you introduce someone new you shake their hand and they introduce themselves and almost as soon as you let go and name slips away into the shadows. It's certainly one of the most embarrassing social situations you can get into but it's even worse when you meet someone after a long time and can recall their face with no problem but just not in they if you that's it being on the receiving end of someone forgetting your name or worse getting it wrong you know that it really feels as if someone doesn't value or respect you when that have. This is why it's so important to make the effort to remember the names of the people you meet. One of the reasons we find it easy to remember faces is that facial recognition predates language by a lot social animals. We evolved a highly sensitive brain circuitry for remembering faces long before language. This is why people see the face of Jesus in slices of toast. This is a very cool psychological phenomenon known as pareidolia. So how can we keep names in our memory. One of the best known methods is called image name association as you can probably guess. This involves creating visual links between the face of a person and then they capsulizes on your brain's advance face memory and she uses it to make up for the rather unreliable named memory. So how does it work. OK. When we first meet someone take special care to examine their faces does not mean you should be creepy about it or make them feel uncomfortable. Just pay special attention to the face and look for any unusual features they may have. Things like there is forehead US-Iran For example someone may have slightly pointy ears that remind you of Mr Spock from Star Trek. You couldn't associate this phrase with an image of Mr Spock and then. Another method is to take a face and a name and creates an image that reminds you of the name outby could become a b b image B

could be associated with distinguishing facial feature. You've chosen another effective way to remember someone's name is to immediately ask them to repeat it. While you have your first conversation with them. You should use their name as frequently as you can without ever telling each of e. Also mentally repeat the image name association after the person has left a few times to help score it in your long term memory.

IMPROVE YOUR WORKING MEMORY JUGGLING

Another great way to improve our working memory is by holding one thing in the air while juggling with the other which means juggling, in general, makes you think better. Why. Because while you are juggling for instance while you are throwing one thing in the air so keeping one thing then you start with the second. You have to concentrate on two things and then you have three things which means that your mind gets the habit which is a transferable habit. Gets the habit of holding up to three things at the same time in the mind which means a very good working memory. So if you practice this I know there are people like me who have never been juggling before like weeks ago. Even so, I found that this is a very good idea. And

then I started I think I'm juggling for like 10 minutes every other day and still, you will see that for 10 minutes every other day is not so bad. So first you start with one. I'll show you a quick step. First, you start with one you set a point here and you don't look. You don't follow the ball because you follow the ball you follow just one ball and then all the others will be so difficult to follow. But you make the ball. It's important how you throw. You make the ball come where you are watching. So your mind is fixed and you make the ball to come here and then you will have two balls and you make them cross whenever you are crossing. Is another tip whenever things are crossing in your view. Both hemispheres are working together with the left and the right. And this is also good for the mind. So see. So I throw them and I make them come in that at that height so that I can control them.

MIND-MAPPING In this lecture we're going to be discussing the mind mapping memory technique and how that can help you remember the complex bits of information. You can also combine mind mapping with other techniques such as chaining to truly recall a massive amount of information with very little effort bind maps combined combine some of the most important aspects of memory association. Imagine activity and creativity it actually improves these aspects of your mind as well making use of mind mouse when also improves your ability with other memory techniques and improve your memory abilities in general. A mind map is actually a drawing representing a set of related concepts. At the most basic level you take the information that you wish to remember and you turn it into a drawing that's visually represent different topics and components of the whole. Then you memorize the picture. And you use it to trigger recall of the various facts and concepts. There are a few important things to keep in mind about mind mapping the first and most important aspect of mind perhaps is that they only contain key words no notes or anything longer than a single word or term. Secondly mind maps are all about associations. They encourage you to create links between different tidings so that you don't just build separate memories. Pusch networks of strongly associated memories partly build mind maps are highly visual. They use colors and images to help you remember and to reinforce what she's learned or wish to learn. You should not be afraid to unleash the art of creative side of yourself if you want to draw a slightly wacky things or paste images that you won't forget. Next two key words that she won't remember and do so as long as you create a lasting and memorable match. The knowledge the easiest way to start dropping is to use a textbooks. Table of content because this has already been organized into a logical structure that indicates the relationship between concepts. Take a piece of paper or make use of the many mind mapping apps and software available. Then take the book's title and right here at the center of your mind. Pushit in its own bubble

and then draw a line from it to another bubble. For every chapter or which ever chapter is irrelevant to the now radiates lines for each subsection of the chapter in each of those bubbles put key words and images that can remind you of the content you can use some of the other images satiation techniques in these coals to create those associations. Once your mind is done you need to memorize it as a visual memory. First look at it as a whole Try to remember how many bubbles and branches that raw. It's helpful to get all the branches different colors and shapes as well. Spend time looking at the map and then closing your eyes to recall what it looks like at a high level do this until your visual memory matches the actual document. Now move to each subbranch in 10 repeating the same visual memorization process. And you get contents such as lists of keywords you can switch to techniques such as changing to memorize those if you systematically memorize each section independently and then link it to your memory of the overall map. You'll be able to navigate the map mentally and look up the information you need at will by creating a mind map. You are truly creating your own filing system inside your brain that serves your individual memory needs as huge fonts. It will be up to you to create the logical structures that she found inside existing text such as text books. Once you're comfortable doing that you can do wonders with mind maps and apply them to just about anything that true quiet memory.

IMPROVE YOUR WORKING MEMORY REVIEW So, in short, these are the ways through which you can practice your mind and organize it a bit so that is easier for you to learn to concentrate. So let's resume a bit. Let's see them through. First, you can do things like multiply in your head numbers. Even more complicated numbers. You can do juggling you can do simplifying you can simplify things and task and whatever you have to do and then you can like keep a diary. This is good it's also for the introspection but it makes things more clear for you. And this is also good for the mind-reading which is good for the working memory because you have to keep track. Keep in mind the characters the action whatever happened who said what. And stuff like this. You can play games with complicated instructions so that you have to keep in mind which are all the rules. And then you can for instance cook you can cook. You look on a recipe and then you close the cooking book and then you try to remember which was the order. This is also very good to practice good training for your working memory. Good luck with that. And believe me in the long term if not even for not only for the exams but for your whole life this kind of training is very good. don't skip classes Oh. This is a very touchy one because there is a subject that no one really wants to talk about and this is taking notes. Nobody teaches you at least nobody taught me how to take notes in school and why it is important to take good notes. Well, it is important because this is your first encounter with the matter with the subjects that you are about to study. And this is very important because the way you see our attention is a very very very good tool. If we use our attention we use well our energy our mind energy and this is very important. And maybe you will not agree with some of the things I'm going to say but if you listen to them a bit just a bit they can be very useful for you. So rule number one the most important rule. I cannot even stress it enough. I know maybe you will sound like preaching but it's not

about that. It's not about that I'm not monitoring your life. I'm just I just want to improve it to improve your learning right. So the first rule is to go to school. Don't skip classes. Why is that important for the efficiency of learning? Well, it is important because whenever you skip school you will work double time. You'll make double time in your free time in your spare time. Why is that? First of all the notes that you will be taking will take some effort to get them effort well and you have to give something back at some point. So it's creating debt then it's an effort to read them because it's not your writing your handwriting or whatever and it's difficult to read them. But let's say someone had them taken on a computer. So and 3 whenever whoever took those notes is not you has a different perspective and maybe didn't found import didn't find important to note. I don't know to write down some names because I didn't find them important so you are missing some maybe.

YOU HAVE TO BEOPEN MINDED TO IMPROVE YOURSELF You have to be open-minded to improve yourself to grow and improve your brain's power. Be open to new experiences and the world around you. Who doesn't want a super-brain or to become the next Steve Jobs? If you're interested in growing your brain, however, you should look at different role models. Babies, babies are experts at learning and developing their brains. They can teach us a lot about increasing our brainpower. The first step to growing your brain is to be open to the world and the possibilities it offers for learning and growing. Most people go about their day closed off from the outside world. They keep their heads down and interested in them. reading from the safety of a daily routine. Shutting down your powers of observation and curiosity keeps your brain from growing and to stimulate your super brain. stay open to new science and observe nature or the environment very you live. Talk to new people, and pay attention to new sounds and smells. to not be afraid to deviate from what's normal. Try new dishes taste new things. Reading is also important, as many people are put off by newspapers since they're often filled with stories that are set or overwhelming. This attitude shuts out new information. And with no new information, your brain starves. So do not be afraid to absorb all the news you can. such information is a valuable resource in finding out more about your world when it's happening out there and how people in other countries live while you're exploring the world to me. It's always important to remain open-minded when experiencing the opinions of other people. And developing brains should not be prejudiced or hold preconceived notions about what is right or wrong. Do not dismiss someone's opinion if that opinion doesn't align with your thoughts on politics, religion or otherwise, instead, use discussions as an opportunity to become more informed about all sides of an issue.

START EATING LESS BUT HEALTHY FOOD Tap your brains feedback loop and your emotions to find ways to eat less and live healthier. There is no end to the benefits of a super brain. When you focus on developing your brain. It will not only improve your intellect but also curb any damaging behaviours such as overeating. We all know how hard it is to stick to diets. And there is even scientific research that supporters dieters experiences of the difficulties in shutting down Wanted parents, scientists in Australia have discovered a hunger hormone called ghrelin. This hormone kicks into overdrive when you lose weight, making you feel disparately hungry. So if you're lucky enough to get rid of your love handles, ghrelin puts your body on the red alerts. And before you know it, you have put the weight back on. In this particular instance, your body's mechanisms are working against you. More often than not, so we overeat for emotional reasons, such as when we are overtired, stressed, lonely or anxious. Consuming sweet foods or other high-calorie snacks can help us to move on unwanted feelings. The first step to dieting successfully is to recognize the difference between emotional eating and real hunger. Once you're conscious of why you want it, you can provide your brain with the appropriate feedback by giving your brain conscious feedback that acknowledges your eating for emotional reasons, your brain will eventually understand the real issue and stop pushing us to seek more food. Instead of sending you to the kitchen, your brain will treat your craving as an emotional issue and trigger that desire to see a friend or a counsellor to talk through the issue and find the resolution.

CHAINING

Next going to be looking at something called the changing memory method. This is also sometimes known as the linking method. It's a very effective way to remember long lists of options. It doesn't matter what the list is. You can remember anything in order by creating a chain of associations start with the first word in the list and to link it to the next with an association then take the next word and linkage to the next. Keep doing this until you reach the end of the chain. In practice you only need to remember the very first item on the list. The spool triggers the association to the next WIJ which will trigger the next association and so on and say for the chain consists of a series of mental pictures each mental picture contains two objects. The one that you need to recall is the one which acts as a link to the next picture. There is a list of random words by way of demonstration fish call table. Brett Blen he's gone.

Wheel and rock. You'll notice that all of these are items in the list are examples of concrete objects while the chain method will work with abstract ideas such as love is much easier with non abstract objects if you do need to include abstract stuff. Perhaps you make it concrete by imagining something like love for example as two people holding hands. This is what the chain of images would look like. Fish and call call and tribal way but Branch bridge lends lends gone gun can which Butch will be rocking the idea is to turn this chain into a short if somewhat crazy story that you can easily memorize. You'veprobably noticed that each item on the list apart from the first and the last appear twice as we said earlier. You need me to remember the first darsham by yourself. If the order in which you remember your actions does not matter. You can also rearrange the order to make the creation of mental images easier. It's very important that the images you create are either strange or special in some way so that to make them more memorable. So now let us change this chain for story. You stand on the side of the road. A fish comes past driving a car. The car suddenly swerves to avoid a robot crossing the road. The robot drops the bag of bread he's carrying and falls on his face cracking the lens of his eye. Seeing the commotion a policeman carrying a gun runs over he tightly holds on to his cap so that he doesn't blow away. As he comes closer you notice that one of his legs is made of wood. The wooden leg has a little wheel attached to the end of it as he reaches the fall and. A huge red rocket crushes on top of them all. Now that's a pretty strange story. I think you'll agree. But wouldn't she finds that story easy to remember. I'm just a plain old list of words. Now it's your turn. Try the activity in the next chair and see how you get on.

IMPROVE YOUR WORKING MEMORY SIMPLIFICATION Maybe the most efficient and the best way to think more clearly and faster is to simplify things. We live in a very complex very confusing world when we have all kinds of information coming in the same second it's thinking about it. You today have more information got to you received by you in one day than I don't know a person a hundred years ago received within a lifetime. So it's too much to deal with. And of e, your mind at some point gets cramped and it can not see even the simplest things the simpler solution. So to function well to have your mind as fully operable operational as possible you have to simplify things for you and you have to do this like you can do this within your environment. It's useful for you to have a clean and a very ordered well not very ordered but quite ordered environment if possible so that you don't have many detractors in your room or in your environment in your learning environment and you can do this by having very simplified environment within yourself which means if you have lots of things to do within one day just set goals just set. Ask yourself is all this necessary to do today and do like a top-five of whatever is necessary and start with the most urgent the most important the most necessary one and then do the other ones because sometimes we risk doing only the small things and the things that don't really matter for ourselves and to leave the important ones for the other day. And this is causing frustration this is causing the alarm in our head and the snooze. And this is this brings about all the stress. So try to simplify your environment and try to simplify your tasks and whatever you have to do. Think about it is this really important. Is this really necessary? Is this can be only done by me. Because if you can't delegate if you can pass it to another. This is a way to I don't know. On crime decorum your mind.

KEYWORDS Bill we'll be discussing the key word method of memory improvement. This is a highly effective and first trial memory strategy that's especially useful for learning new vocabulary. This includes new vocabulary in a foreign language that you may be currently learning. So it really can improve your language learning success. It's important to note that while this is a great way to remember the meaning of new words it won't help you remember the word in the first place. In language learning this is usually not an issue when trying to understand someone though since they will offer the word which should trigger the key word method. Apart from helping you remember what newly learned words mean it's also great for remembering cool facts about something. So how does it work well step one is to take the new a foreign word and identify a word in your own language that you already know. That sounds like the word all like some part of it. One good example is the word radius which is the length between the center and edge of a circle and radish is of e a type of vegetable. You could then imagine an image of a radish hanging from a string pinned to the center of a circle. So when you hear the word radius it will remind you of radish which will remind you of that memorable image. In this way you can remember the meaning of the word easily for foreign language words. You can do the same. For example the Spanish word for Hach is sombrero which sounds like the English word samba. So what you could do is imagine a sad person standing in the rain wearing a hat. In this way you form a unique and memorable connection to the meaning of the word that you are likely to forget. Make good use of your imagination when creating these key words connections. The stranger of funny is the key word you come up with is the least likely you are to forget it. If you had a hard time coming up with these by yourself it may be useful to come up with key words along with a friend or fellow student. Since these are not always easy to come up with it's better to invest keyword creation time only for those words that you really have difficulty remembering the

meaning of. The image that you associates with the new word and related key keywords can actually be more than an image if needed instead of a single image such as a somber man wearing a hat. You could make a short and memorable story instead. Example the hat shop was very somber. When John went today since the onus favorite catch had died by making little stories like this. You can really show that you remember the meaning of the new.

REASONS WHY ITS GOOD TO IMPROVE IT For many many many years to memorize so have a good memory was considered to be very important. Why was that? Because simply there wasn't any writing. There weren't any ways to record the spoken or the written well the word in general. So it was very important to memorize. But lately with our technology and with our information. Moore's Law says that we double our information every year and a half. So it's impossible to use memory to memorize everything important. And we have the technology where we can record. So why is still important to have a good memory. Well, I give you at least two reasons why it's very good to practice our memory or just to keep a good memory. In general, the first reason is that to create anything. The rule of creativity is to combine two newly combine old things like all things old information old ways of doing things old meaning something that already exists like innovation like something new out of nothing is very very rare in general. Creativity comes from seeing things new doing something differently and stuff like this. But to do something differently or to combine things we have to know about them and to be aware at least to have them somewhere in our mind to know that they exist. So memory is important to know what to look for to know what we need to create. So we need some very strong base of information. It's important to have a good memory. That's why to be creative right. The second reason is that our education educational systems all over the world are still old no matter how new they are. So they are basing their marks and they're all there all the way to assess our I don't know whatever we work and wherever we know our knowledge by through things that we know through tests. We have to prove through tests what we know what we have already memorized what we have already in our head. So there are two reasons at least two reasons why to have a good memory to practice on memory counts.

THE NEUROLOGY I'm here to help you In this lecture we're going to be introducing the concept of neuroplasticity. Imagine being able to rewire your entire mental existence when we talk about neuroplasticity. We're talking about the concept of a plastic flexible brain which in short means that you can actually change your mind physically and chemically. Now there is a phenomena where your brain's neural synapses and pathways are altered as an effect of environmental behaviour or neural changes. And we're going to talk way more about this later on but I want to assure you that this concept of neuroplasticity that you heard about is actually true. Researchers look at this concept in different ways. Some of them look at it as the ability of the brain to change its actual structure and function in response to certain experience. Other researchers look at it as the capacity of the nervous system for adaptation and regeneration after trauma which is directly linked to Charles Darwin theory of evolution and of e some researchers look at it as the ability of our central nervous system to undergo this entire structural and functional change in response to a new experience which has guided the combination of both ideas that we said before now I personally read several books related to neuroplasticity when I first discovered this concept. A couple years back I was absolutely fascinated. It is one of the most phenomenal human experiences that I've ever seen or read about before and throughout the e you'll discover that this misconception that the brain only changes at a young age is absolutely wrong even when you're an adult. Even elderly people can alter their brain and work on their brains plasticity. So now generally speaking we are going to define the concept of neuroplasticity. So what is neural plasticity neuroplasticity. Also known as brain plasticity is a concept that is strictly connected to the brain's ability to change adapt and adjust both physically functionally and chemically by stimulation from your environment. Behaviour thinking emotions habits and other physical elements. And I believe that this definition is pretty straight forward. In a

nutshell what this definition is saying is that your brain has the ability to change not just change but adapt which is a Darwinian concept. It comes from the concept of evolution.

MEMORY INVENTED AND HOW THIS INFORMATION HELPS US All right. What was the purpose of memory why was it sort of invented more than two hundred thousand years ago along with a modern brain. Why is it useful. What was the purpose that evolution created this wonderful device? Well, memory a parent apparently was made for us to better think about ways of surviving right. You memorized where the cave was where the Big Bear lived. You memorized where you remembered right where the river was so that in the future when you wanted water you would know where to get it. So memory was made as a good device to have a good brilliant future. Sounds very very weird but this is one theory why would nature give us this wonderful tool but how was it implemented. Let's think about it. How was two hundred thousand years ago? Memory exercised and what. How was it used? Well, memory was better developed a spatial memory. We didn't have memory for numbers because we didn't have numbers. We didn't have memory for names because most likely we didn't have names right. We didn't have memory for I don't know all kinds of tools because there weren't so many tools. So the memory was mainly used for making maps to remember our path to remember our way home to remember our expedition where did we go to get the best food. Where. Which is the tree with the best apples right. So this is our strongest memory device. If you want so a good idea to improve our memory or not even that to remember things like even numbers is to use the spatial memory and one of the best methods ever used which is like to hundreds not two thousand five hundred years old is the lunch method. And I'll tell you what it is all about.

FUNDAMENTAL APPROACH PSYCHOLOGICAL MAINTENANCE As we've been talking about neuroplasticity a lot of you might get this thought that it's actually not that complicated. In fact neuroplasticity is complicated and it's been a subject of research for years now. And as I said before there's still a lot about neuroplasticity that we don't know. That's exactly why we decided to talk about some basics and fundamentals of neuroplasticity that you might not be aware of or that other people might just dismiss. We want to dive deeply into neuroplasticity and the plastic mind to ensure that you understand every single aspect of it before you start applying the principles that you're learning. And first off we're going to talk about environments. Now we did talk about the environment before but now we want to expand more into this concept socio cultural factors. The air we breathe and air pollution. We have water quality food quality industrial chemicals and alcohol lifestyle. And of e a genetics interaction with the environment. And these are all some of the most important factors that affect the health of people in the early stages of life from conception through adolescence adverse environmental elements can have negative consequences on brain development of young people. And even further more when you're an adult having certain environmental issues can also cause a lot of brain problems. Unfortunately air pollution water quality and food industrial chemicals are some things that we just can't control. Some people live in countries where there's high levels of pollution. And this will affect them in a negative way. Some people live in countries or cities where pollution levels are low and there will of e have better functioning when it comes to brain energy and overall health. I'm not going to go into into depth into what pollution is doing to the world and especially to us as human beings. But if you're interested about the subject go check it out on Google and just look at

how much pollution is affecting us especially affecting our bodies and our brains. It is crazy and adding to that genetics being born with a certain formula that nothing can change unless there is a genetic mutation which is a really rare case that we're not going to talk about right now. We already talked about Charles Darwin for a bit. I think it's enough now. The socio cultural factors are things that in fact we can't control. But most of us don't want to or to an extent we can't. The idea here is to understand that environments is one of the most essential contributors when it comes to neuroplasticity socio cultural factors can creates an environment of pressure stress and anxiety depression inequality injustice unethical behaviours and of e consistency makes out of different factors habits lifestyles and they become wired in the brain. So most people look at socio cultural factors as something that is external when in fact it is highly highly internal. Everything that's happening is in your social cultural circle can reflect in your own brain and in your own behaviour. I have a friend who lived in China for 18 19 years and he was eating Asian food and he's used to the Asian cuisine and then he came to Canada and he just couldn't stand the food. He would feel disgusted when he eats certain foods that we have in Canada. And then he would actually he would get upset because he couldn't get any Asian food. He would get upset because his reward system and having this comfort of eating and feeling like you're done eating is not there because his mind is so wired with with a certain cuisine that he finds it hard to adapt to a new diet or new food. And I have another friend from Lebanon in the Middle East who had absolutely no sense of awareness towards mental health issues. Now what happened here is that he met a lot of people who talked about their problems about depression about and excited about social anxiety or chronic stress. And he didn't deal with the situation from an empathy standpoint trying to help the other people. In fact he took a stand point where he said you can control the situation you're doing this to yourself. STOP BEING A the B word. I'm not sure if we can use it on you do me or not. But you guys know what I'm talking about. And of e people got offended and people talked shit about him like he has absolutely no empathy has no heart. When in fact he wasn't even aware that what he's doing was wrong because of the social cultural influence on him. So unless you understand that when you say neuroplasticity you say society and you say environment you're missing out on one of the most important chunk pieces of information when it comes to neuroplasticity. Now moving on something that we mentioned in previous lectures which is experiences

now social and cultural situations usually involves experiences and a lot of them. But we need to talk more in depth about experiences because the brain gets wired through experiences first. So before talking about consistency and talking about all the different techniques that would strengthen this connection and link between neurons we should understand how the link is formed in the first place and the way the link is established is through experience and experience can mean a lot of different things. We're talking about being experienced and we're talking about having new experiences when you have an experience at something. It means that there is a neural structure forming and you're working on the right path but new experiences when you try something that you've never tried before there's going to be a reaction in your mind that never happened before a very quick example that I'm pretty sure I'm not sure if you can relate to it or not but recently there is this huge trend on slime everybody kids all around the world they want to buy slime. They want to make slime. All the youtube videos out there with millions and millions of views just people holding slime doing shapes squeezing it and making funny noise out of it and everybody saying how satisfying it is and how they can just play with it for hours and they would just feel the stress going away. Now why didn't they do this five years ago while the reason why is because five years ago people didn't try tried that much. There wasn't a big enough number of experiences for it to trend but those people who actually tried it. If you had ever tried slime before go grab one by one and when you touch it for the first time when you squeeze it for the first time you're going to feel something different. You're going to feel something that you've never ever felt before. And this is where the new experience is. Now here's how you would wire your brain into making it a habit. If every single time you feel anxious you would get this line and just squish it and play with it as much as you want until you feel that you don't feel anxious anymore you don't feel an excited anymore Your mind will start linking these two together they will start linking the neural networks responsible for stress with the neural networks that deals with stress relief and all the neurons that were triggered when you touched the slime. And then as for repetition you felt relief and now you have people spending hundreds of dollars over slime. I saw a slime kit that is worth one hundred and forty five dollars. This is where you know that it's not just a trend anymore it's becoming an actual experience. It's becoming something that is embedded in the human mind and the children's mind after realizing these concepts I was

majoring in marketing and at the University of Ottawa. And then I decided to take a minor in psychology to understand how I can link experiences to marketing if I can use my marketing to make people feel new experiences that has a positive outcome. And then they want to repeat it. They would be stuck in a loop through the concept of e of neuroplasticity. It becomes wired in their brain and then cells would boom up. But of e it's not that simple of a process it takes years of learning to be able to understand just the basics and fundamentals of the relationship between marketing and psychology let alone neuroplasticity. Now we need to add one more thing experience these are not always equal sum experiences would affect you way more than other experiences. If you get a group of children and you give them pencils that are worth one dollars the cheapest pencils that you can find and they write with them throughout a few months and then you take all these cheap pencils and you give them really nice expensive pencils. Most probably they have the tendency to write with better handwriting than you pencil for them is a new experience knowing that they need to fix their handwriting. Now they have the chance. So when they start writing with this new pencil and they start writing well when they get positive responses from their family friends and peers they will keep doing this behaviour and they will keep repeating these before this behaviour. And if they do it long enough even when they switch to the old pencil their handwriting is still nice but if they don't lose it do it long enough. Getting back the old pencil they will not have the same handwriting as they had when they were using the more expensive pencils and this huge change have very little emotional experience involved in it. Now let's take another example you had this pencil that you've been writing with for a long time but there is a pencil at the bookstore that you've seen. That's a little bit expensive but you really really want it. You love this pencil and you would do anything in the world to have it. And then your dad notices that you have really bad handwriting. He goes in by the pencil for you. And he says look this is your gift but you're going to promise me that you're going to have better handwriting that you're going to write better and practice your handwriting in both examples that I previously mentioned. You got a you expensive pencil and in both cases your handwriting got better. But in the second example the emotional experience is much better. There are a lot more emotions involved because first you really wanted this pencil and then you got it and then it was a gift from your father and then your father wants what's good for you. And then you accept it and you feel like you're taking

responsibility. And this these are all emotional factors that would enhance the emotional experience. And of e eventually it will strengthen and it will make it way faster for neurons to create connections between each other. And this moves us to peak emotional experiences sometimes an experience can have such a huge emotional impact that only one experience would rewire your brain. I'll take a very simple example. Your first love when people fall in love for the first time it always ends. It's very rarely does it happen that I mean it does happen but rarely are two people fall in love with each other and there was the first time they ever fall in love and they end up spending the rest of their lives together. Most first time lovers will end up breaking up after a while. Now the breakup always has emotional impact on partners in some instances both of them decide that it's not working out and they need to try some different things and they just agree that it needs to end and they stay friends. Then the emotional experience that they had was a really positive one. They fell in love and it was nice and then they broke up. They agreed that it's time for them to move on and try new things and that's where it ended and for them it's going to be wired in their brain that love is something not that hard to handle it doesn't destroy you emotionally and make you go through depressive phases and whatever but you have another couple who when they broke up the guy that you want to break up and the girl broke up with him because maybe she wanted to date another guy who has more money. And this is an example that is very relative to our world today. Now to make the example bit more interactive let's give them names. We'll say we have Michelle and Michael who are dating and then Michelle wants to break up with Michael because Jason wants to date her and he has more money. But Michael doesn't want to break up with Michelle and he tries as much as he can as hard as he can to convince her to stay with him. He cried. He started mentioning all the experiences and memories to try to get these feelings of sympathy he got mad and he punched the wall and he drove recklessly. Nothing worked. And he just couldn't accept the fact that he lost her to another guy. To Jason. And then he thinks about committing suicide. He gets depressed and eventually hopefully he gets over it. But this was a peak emotional experience. This experience had a lot of emotions charged and it hit him in the face. Now for him love is not just a pleasant thing. But every time he thinks about love

he will also think about the breakup that he went through all the experiences that he went through just because of one single experience one single relationship. His brain became wired and had a a certain translation when it comes to the idea of relationships and love and more over. He will also compare himself to Jason and he will think that if only I had money and then his brain becomes wired that in order for me to get love I need to give money I had a high school teacher who was a teacher a professor and a lawyer at the same time and he was once telling us his story in class when we were first meeting him. And apparently there was a girl who he fell in love with and she fell in love with him as well. He went to her father because he wanted to marry her but his her father refused and said You don't have enough money to take care of my daughter. He tried talking to the potential wife and she said she can't do anything if her father refuses. She doesn't want to let her father down. And what did he do. He worked. He stopped everything. This had such a huge emotional impact on him that he blocked everything and his mind became wired towards one thing and one thing only working and making money even after he made money and he got married and he got over the experience. He doesn't think about this every single night and cry anymore. But he became wired in his mind. He can't stop working. He can't stop thinking about making more money because one big emotional experience had this impact on him. Moving on we're going to talk about first time experiences. I'm pretty sure you heard this question before or you asked this question before. How was your first kiss. See most people don't remember their second kiss or their third guess or their fourth kiss. They always remember their first kiss. They always remember their first time experiences and the example that we gave before it was not just a peak emotional experience but it was a first time experience as well. Some people might dates a few times and have feelings towards someone and then after three or four people they would date someone and then trouble would happen and they would have the peak emotional experience but it wasn't their first time experience. In this scenario the peak emotional experience would overcome the effects of the first time experience. It would neglect it and it would act and inhibit of way where the first time experience is not even relevant anymore. What's relevant is the experience and the wiring that you got through this peak emotional experience. But there is a certain power to first time experiences and it's the perception that we have. If you're trying to smoke for the first time and you like it you're going to smoke again. But if

you smoke for the first time and you don't like the taste and it makes you cough and you felt like you want to vomit you're not going to smoke again. I remember when a couple of my Arab friends wanted me to try the shisha and we went to the restaurant and I tried it and I kept hitting it for like half an hour and then I ended up vomiting I vomited three four times and I never tried it again. I never came close to it even though I had a lot of different instances where people invited me to come and take shisha with them and I said absolutely not. Never again. Now a lot of people they want to try new things because you know they have this concept of you only live once and they want to try different things in life. Even though there are some things that might hurt them and they know that these things are not good for them but they want to try it for the sake of experience and just try and get and seeing how it feels. That's how most people get a victim to drugs. That's how most people get addicted to smoking cigarettes. That's how most people get addicted to using drugs. And of e it doesn't just stop there. Researchers found that first time experiences also when you first have sex the position that you start with. That gave you a lot of pleasure. Usually this will be one of your favorite positions throughout your life. Because that was your first time experience and it has such a huge emotional experience on you. That was all this doping in Russian. All these feelings that you had in your body all the sexual feelings and the aroused and now mixing the two previous concepts together when you have a first time experience that is a peak emotional experience that's an experience that's definitely going to leave a long lasting effect. And that did a certain rewiring in your brain. If you go for the first time to visit a zoo and while you're there you're walking through cages. Let's say hypothetically there is a snake that bit you and then you're rushed to the hospital and then there was huge medical procedures to get the venom out and all that and you risk dying. See at this point of e you will have a fear of snakes and that's for sure but not just stop. You will also feel discomfort and anxious every time you get close to any kind of zoo even though the peak emotional experience was caused by the snake. And now you have fear against the snakes. It was your first time experience in a zoo and it were all it was all interconnected. And now you hate snakes and you hate zoos as well because of the first time high peak emotional experience. Now moving on to something that we call the new old experiences sometimes you try something as a kid or at a certain age and you don't like it and you

experience it again at a later age and you actually like it. I'm gonna give you a really silly example about myself when when I first tried the burger from McDonald's I was a kid I did not like it at all I thought it was disgusting and I only eat nuggets. But then as I grew up four five years later my brother suggests that I should try a burger. And I said you know what. It's been a long time I grew up. Why not. And I tried it and I absolutely loved it different experiences can have different impacts in different times. So if at a certain point in your life this experience have a specific impact maybe in another point in your life the same experience can have an absolutely different impact. Finally repetitive experiences even if they're not emotionally charged tend to eventually become a habit and a lifestyle and becomes wired in your brain. And all of these experiences all the different examples and types that we talked about are related to these four main factors habits memory learning and behaviour habits is when the behaviour becomes automatic the behaviour starts with the learning process you learn how the behaviour happens and then you apply it. It becomes a behaviour a certain set of learnings that you did created this behaviour and then through repetition this behaviour became a habit. Now this habit brings you a certain pleasure it gives you a reward that we're going to look at and the habit loop later on. And this habit loop if the reward gives you a dopamine rush it will be stuck in your memory that this behaviour that I learned would give me the certain reward. And then what will happen is it will be wired in your brain and it will become a habit and a lifestyle. And it all began with one experience or a set of experiences that taught you something that resulted in certain behaviour the behaviour became a habit because of the memories involvement and the reward center. Now moving on we're going to talk about a concept called randomized controlled trial basically becoming aware of biased experiences and interpretations. When you grow up in a society that has always taught you that smoking is good it makes you feel good. It makes you look manly when you try a cigarette. You are going to have a biased opinion and you're going to like it. Even if you don't like it when somebody tries a dish and they tell a you need to try it. It's the best thing I've ever tried in my life. And then you try it and you're like oh it's not that good actually. And the question is why. Well because each one of you has a different opinion. So according to his biased experience this was the best thing he's ever tried. Between all the different food that he tried in his life. But in your own

experience all the foods that you tried in your life this was not one of the best. In most cases all the experiences that we have in our lives whether they're new or they're not. We already have a certain mental interpretations when it comes to these experiences and sometimes these biased opinions can actually make you avoid getting into experiences that in the long run are beneficial for you. People who grow up in families where the parents and the siblings never went to school and the father always says that schooling is not important and the school system is corrupt and it will only get you into student debts and it will never teach you anything you will not even consider going to school because you think that it's a complete waste of time so you don't even get to the experience because of your biased opinion. So if you stop looking at things and experiences in terms of what other people told you and what you interpreted based on that and you just try the experience to see how you are honestly and genuinely get a feel about it there's going to be a huge difference in your life. Lastly we're going to talk about five last concepts. First is mental stimulation. Keeping yourself in a constant mental simulation and brain stimulation pattern is always good to ensure neuroplasticity. The more mental stimulation you experience the more links will happen between neurons and the more neural chains and networks you will have and one of the things that kill the mental stimulation is watching television watching TV which of e includes watching Netflix and watching YouTube. Absolutely blocks your mental stimulation every single time you're watching a show you're watching TV you're watching YouTubeyour mind is not being stimulated your mind just stops and you're just watching without thinking about anything. Moreover the methods Iranian diet was found to help a lot with neuroplasticity social network and social networking platforms. As we talked about them before they are absolutely detrimental. And lastly different brains adapt differently every brain has different experiences have different structures have different opinions and interpretations and each and every brand brain will adapt to situations in a different way. Now as we come to the end of this lecture I just want you guys to know that all of these principles basics and fundamentals that that we talked about right now are crucial to know when you know these things you will have way better understanding of how your brain works and how things gets wired. And of e then you're going to learn how neuroplasticity actually works. Now after going through the scientific approach of neuroplasticity and learning what neuroplasticity is and now going into fundamentals to understand how things get wired in your

brain how society environment and all the different types of experiences can affect neuroplasticity and can affect the brain's stimulation and how other factors. As we said such as your experience your bias your biased opinion and interpretation the level of mental stimulation that you're in all the things that you're doing that are blocking this mental stimulation. There is a certain diet and we're going to talk about it more later that contains brain foods food that can actually help you increase your brain capacity and energy and increase the brain cells in general social networking platforms that are a big obstacle in front of you when it comes to neuroplasticity and eventually understanding that it doesn't all work under one general rule. Different brains adapt differently to different situations and different experiences and through introspection you'll be able to know how your brain is adapting to the different situations and different experiences. And this is the only way to learn and grow above where you are right now.

DO THE DAY BEFORE AND THE MORNING OF THE EXAM

And so we have the last step to take the day before the exam. You know it is very important when you have like a professional sportsman or sportswoman. It's very important to prepare and to be fit right before the important moment. Right. The day before the exam it's very important because it prepares you. It sets you physically mentally and emotionally for the exam and it's very it must be more important than the day of the exam may be. So what to do before the exam or the day before. So make sure that everything is going well. First thing first. Do not exaggerate with learning the day before the exam you don't have to be tired like doing all this 16 hours marathon or before the exam. It's not a good idea because you will get all agitated and

worked out and tired right at the moment when you shouldn't be which is the exam. So the day before the exam four to five hours of reviewing everything it would be ideal is that you go only through the memorizing sheets. Right. So that it's not too much in quantity but all the information is very focused and very concentrated. But if not just look through the subjects that you're not very sure of and test yourself make like sheets with subjects possible subjects and go through them review them. And this is it. It's going to be very useful if you do this try to simulate the exam in your head. It's like rehearsing so close your eyes and see yourself going to the exam and then you go out of the exam and you're smiling. All went well. Why is that important for two reasons first? Your mind will register this as something that you're already you do. So when you were at the exam you will be more relaxed because it's something that you've already done before somehow. And secondly, because it calms you down because it's like going through the experience and all went well.

MENTAL HEALTH In this lecture we're going to be talking about neuroplasticity and mental health. The big question that we're trying to answer is is it possible to use your brain's plasticity to work on mental health illnesses and problems. And long story short the answer is yes of e there are exceptions. Some things that are not very general that you cannot always apply if a certain mental health illness is related to genetics. Then unfortunately there's not a lot you can do. However you can still use neuroplasticity to your advantage to get a lot of help. Mental health illnesses usually are all related to a change in the brain's chemistry. And since neuroplasticity or your brain's plasticity gives you the ability to change your brain's physical and chemical structure we are not looking at an impossible question. We're actually looking at a really common scenario that just by controlling your brain's chemistry through neuroplasticity. This will have an effect and an impact on mental health illnesses that are affecting your minds chemistry and physical state as well. But now the first question is how much did or can neuroplasticity affect our mental health. Schizophrenia bipolar disorder depression obsessive compulsive and phobic behaviours epilepsy and more occurred because of neuro plastic changes in the brain just as we said before these mental illnesses are doing a certain chemical change. And as a result we can see that mental illnesses themselves are part of neuroplasticity. Because of these behaviours your brain is changing its chemistry. And the more this behaviour is repeated the more it's going to become wired in your brain and the more it will be hard for you to get over it. Most of the times if there is a certain behaviour related to mental health illnesses that is not treated properly or that was not met by an equivalent that can actually reduce its impact it will become stronger and stronger and stronger every single day. And eventually it becomes unbearable that you need to see someone and use medication or use some therapeutic sessions. Now what we want to achieve is to build something else in your brain to use your brain's plasticity to build another system that can work on lowering the impact of a certain mental health illness that you have. It can

even get to a point where you have full control over it just by having some triggers or some cues that you use you can get yourself out of this mental health state at any time. And furthermore the question is Is it possible to overcome a mental health condition through neuroplasticity itself. You need to be able to differentiate between building in a system that can help reduce the impact of a mental health illness or overcoming a mental health Annelise itself entirely. And the former is way easier than the latter. As we said before some mental health illnesses are genetically based and you can not really ever completely overcome them. You can just build systems that can reduce the impact or even make the impact disappear when you have full control over this condition. And Michael Merton which in his book Soft wired how new signs of brain plasticity can change your life. He explains and he says imagine a person is born with a brain that has an inherited a weakness that affects her ability to develop strong and reliable associations between the information about the real world and the ability to record things in our brain. And this weakness in working memory and memory association degrades her ability to predict the next expected events. Now compared to a normal individual. A very large number of events will be unexpected surprises for our brain and surprises gets a special treatment. We release Nora adrenaline when we have an unexpected experience that occurs and it alerts our brain in ways that are sure we pay attention to it to determine whether or not that surprise represents a danger or a potential reward for us if the surprise is interpreted as neither or the brain also shoots out a pulse of dopamine dopamine releases contributes to that little splash of curiosity or pleasure that is frequent companion of the unexpected. He continues to say while a measured amount of these brain chemicals have unnecessary and positive effects in most people's brain an imbalance and modularity neurotransmitters like dopamine nor adrenalin can have severe consequences power to artificially inject enough known adrenaline into your veins. You would become intense paranoid and anxious he says. If I were to fuse enough dopamine into your brain you would begin to hallucinate become delusional express your thoughts in a disordered way if that dopamine poisoning was elevated enough to reach a high constant level in your bloodstream it would have another inside this effect. You would amplify the difficulty that your brain has in controlling its memory associations and predictions with its associated and predictive powers now fatally wounded your brain would become a surprise machine. It would now be almost continuously dozing you

with abnormally high levels of no adrenaline and don't mean we call this particular failure mode of self organizing plastic brain schizophrenia. The author in two pages explained how schizophrenia is related to neuroplasticity and how it's actually formed with us without us even realizing it and more over. Korb in his book The upward spiral using neuroscience to reverse the e of the depression. One small change at a time he says in depression. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the brain. It's simply that the particular tuning of neural circuits creates the tendency toward a pattern of depression. It has to do with the way the brain deals with stress planning habits decision making and a dozen other things. The dynamic interaction of all of those circuits and once a pattern starts to form it causes dozens of tiny changes throughout the brain. That creates a downward spiral. So whether we want to use neuroplasticity to help ourselves get out of this mental health illness and be able to build a system that would reduce its impact we need to be aware that at any given point neuroplasticity is contributing whether in a positive or negative way towards your mental health illnesses or other people's illnesses. So if you don't adopt a positive neuroplasticity system that can actually help you you'll be forced to accept the effect neuroplasticity on your mental health conditions or other people's conditions in a negative way. Whatever you choose neuroplasticity is going to take place. We did talk in previous lectures about how phobias can be formed throughout memory emotions and experiences and other mental health illnesses like an exciting social and anxiety or general and anxiety is directly linked to neuroplasticity linked to experiences memories and emotions any past experience that was linked with even small dosages of an exciting would with time if not treated or healed. It will affect the person even more. There will be higher levels of an anxiety every single time he faces these experiences so long after the triggering incidents are passed the echoes of those which can still be found inside the brain where they were wired and eventually it just doesn't become an exciting you're just uncomfortable. You don't want to do something because you're uncomfortable not knowing that this discomfort is actually coming from this urge in your brain to move away from an anxiety and one of the biggest problems when it comes to an anxiety is that it produces stress hormones it produces more stress from hormones than actual necessary and when we have stress hormones related to certain experience or topic this will not let us be able to focus on other things when we are stressed about something we can think clearly because all what we think about is this thing our entire system is

alert and because threats are given higher priority and brain changes any activities that can take place in these times. And it can have major impact on their plastic change. These include our coping mechanisms or avoiding behaviours that we have when it comes to these anxious situations. And at the end of the day we want to ask ourselves is there a solid solution. Now the solution is a is a three step solution actually. By following the three steps you'll be able to build systems and try to overcome mental health illnesses that you have or help other people if they're trying to overcome them. The first step is to often refer to introspection become aware of the problems how they occur their effect on you and on your surrounding. You need to know these mental health illnesses. How are they showing up. What times a day following what events. Is there a certain pattern that happens before these mental health illnesses surfacing. Is it just random or is it actually something that is fixed at certain periods or at certain experiences. And even if you couldn't really figure out what's causing the problem like the root of the problem when it's happening or how it's occurring it's fine because you need to find exercises and whether you found something you found a link and you build exercises on weakening this link that you found even if you didn't find anything. You can still use exercises because you're very well aware what the thoughts are. If you're having negative thoughts to words let's say if you're having anxious thoughts or you're just having some negative thoughts about life then you know what the exercise should be. There are tons of exercises that you can find online or in books that would actually teach you how to step by step. It's hard to overcome these mental health illnesses and by repeating these exercises you are doing what we call neuroplasticity. You are contributing in the process of neuroplasticity by changing whatever structure was in there and changing it into a completely different structure through these exercises. And of e through the third step which is repetition neuroplasticity is all about repetition. So if through introspection you found the source of problem then you can direct the exercises and the repetition to words this problem. And even if you didn't you can just start using some general methods that are linked to your thoughts and your ideas and your condition build some exercises around them that can help you overcome them and especially make sure that they are hard wired in your brain through repetition. Once you do all of these different steps together and you actually build a link and a bridge between them you'll be able to control whatever mental health condition you or other people have through systems that you

can eventually build a good example would be in case you found the source of a problem let's say you feel anxious when you are out you have social anxiety and you found that the source of the problem is for example your body you're not really satisfied with your physical appearance and every time you're outside you start doubting yourself and asking a lot of questions about yourself when it comes to your body image your physical appearance. So the solution would be to work on a body image that you're more satisfied with a body image that would make you feel comfortable. But let's say you didn't find the source of the problem and you just say yeah whenever I'm out whenever I go out I feel social anxiety I don't feel comfortable in social situations. And the solution would be to start addressing these problems maybe start using affirmations every single day when you're walking outside instead of thinking about something that some things you would start using affirmations saying repeating things like I am comfortable in social situations or I am comforted these affirmation that can actually help you with the process of neuroplasticity to control these problems that you have even if you don't know what's causing the problem. You can still control them and when there's a lot of repetition you'll get to a point where you can ensure a lot of control over then whatever the situation is you'll have a lot of control that can help you even more.

BEST FOOD, OPTIMAL SLEEP, BEST PHYSICAL EXERCISE OK. Now that we know what strategies can help us and please enjoy them because there weren't available until like recent years when there's a lot of research on our own education and on learning so take advantage of that. It's all for you. But apart from that, it's very good that we take care of the machine itself. If we will of the brain the way the brain can be improved can be worked out and can be fed and can be optimized if you will and the mind that goes with it obviously. So the next two chapters will be about how to improve the work workings of the brain and of e of the minds. How can we train the brain and the mind? So first thing first is thinking about like you are a professional sports player. If you were a professional sports player what would be important for you to train. Of e, the sports which are in your case the learning. We had those strategies and we'll talk about some other things later. But what else a sports player is also careful about what he's eating the food and some other aspects. So we have three things that are important for the mind for learning which is also important for all the professional. If you want a level that we want to reach if you want to be a good learner if you want to have a good mind you have to think about training your mind as you would train your sports abilities. Right. And feed your mind as you would feed your sports abilities. So what's important. Food. We have three aspects of food movement and sleep. If you ignore any of these no matter how much you know and how trained you are you would do badly or worse then worse than otherwise. OK. Let's see what kind of food really helps and feeds our particular incredible machine called Brain and Mind the foods that are best for the brain.

CHALLENGE BUILD YOUR OPTIMAL DAILY ROUTINE OK, my challenge for you is to make a daily routine think about a daily routine that can help you practice this healthy habits, for instance, make a daily routine of sleeping hours to have more or less the same sleeping hours daily. Make sure that you have in the fridge or in the kitchen some of the good stuff to eat whenever you feel like it. So the good stuff for the brain I mean for the mind. And think about the days try to program to organize some days when you have time to for running or to do some other sports that can now put you in motion and can put your mind in motion. If you organize or planning in advance ahead maybe is. I think it's a better chance for you to stick to the routine if you plan it a bit in advance if you buy those foods. If you are quite know decided upon the hours the sleeping hours tried to make a healthier routine and you'll see that your mind will be a bit more clear and rested and more able to learn whatever. Try that.

THE POWER OF IMAGES intuition is a powerful trait that may be able to help it predict events before they happen. Chances are you have experienced a strong sense of intuition at some points. Perhaps you felt you needed to stay away from someone at a large gathering because that person seems somehow dangerous. human intuition can be more accurate than you might think. Recent studies suggest that a person's snap judgments can sometimes be more beneficial than taking the time to rationally think things overstudy. Also have shown that people are better at recognizing faces when they're relying on intuition rather than being analytical. In one study, participants were asked to watch images of faces, and identify if a particular face came up. In the first experiments, they were just shown a split second of the images, and then in a second, they were given more time to look at them. Unbelievably, people were better at recognizing the particular face when they were only given a brief glimpse of its while human intuition provides a great service when recognizing a friendly face. It's also a trait that guides us in many decisions, from choosing a job to selecting a mate or place to live. Intuition can be strong in facts, that it can even predict events before they happen. One experiment involves participants being shown random photographs, many of which depicted violent images Researchers monitored the reactions of participants as they view the photographs by measuring heart rate, blood pressure, and sweet produce. Each time a participant saw a violent image, as was expected, that person is reduced to this stressful response with elevated heart rate and blood pressure. After some time, however, things in the study took a curious term. Even though the photographs are displayed at random, participants stress levels begin to spike microseconds before violent images are shown. Somehow the participant's intuition began to predict the exact moment when a violent image was about to appear. If you ignore your intuition, you will lose the ability to feel out of situations which leads to blind positions.

MONEY AND FAME People think money and fame or whatever create happiness. But those typical goals or misguidance. If you take just a moment to examine the faces of people riding a bus or subway train, you will quickly see that happiness for everyone is still an elusive goal. There is a simple reason for this, people have the wrong idea about what will make them happy. Most people equate happiness with money, fame, finding a mate or having children. These people that come to find that achieving these goals does not automatically come with a feeling of happiness. having children, for example, comes with a lot of stress, it does not automatically lead to a happier life. The same is true for professional success. When the top tennis players in the worlds were asked what motivated them. They said it wasn't the joy of playing or happiness when winning a match. They trade hard because they were afraid of losing not exactly positive feeling So if you want to live a happy life, it's important to set the right goals. This means replacing unfulfilling goals with ones that align with personal values that continue to provide long term results. So instead of working for financial success, find a job that you love and that provides you with the opportunity to improve the lives of others.

PRACTICE MINDFULNESS Mindfulness is the practice of being profoundly aware of what you're thinking and doing. When you play the violin, for example, you're not just throwing a bow across substrings to play mindfully, you see yourself playing, breathing deeply and are in touch with your thoughts and feelings as the music comes from not just the instruments, but also deep inside here. in everything you do regularly, ask yourself how do I feel to stay connected with your inner consciousness?

NEURO-SUICIDE

In this lecture we're going to be talking about neuro suicide. In a nutshell it's the reverse neural plasticity. Previously we talked about two different phenomenons. First we talked about how experience behaviour and repetition and consistency can create structures and connections between neurons. And then when they fire together they do wire together eventually forming a neural structure or a neural network. And on the other hand we also talked about how certain habits certain behaviour certain experiences or dropping behaviours and dropping habits can have a reverse effect on the neural network breaking the chain and the connections and link between different neurons and eventually disrupting the neural network that was previously formed throughout all the neurons that were linked and connected. Now of e when you want to change a habit or change of behaviour it's a good idea to stop the behaviour and then you will start eliminating the links between the neurons and eventually breaking the neural network that is causing this bad habit. But there are some things that we do on a regular basis and something that we do in our lives that actually affect neuroplasticity in a negative way.

And you might end up losing neural structures and networks and neural links and connections that you actually need and that you actually want to use the different concepts and the different ideas and behaviours that we're going to talk about can result in what we call neural suicide breaking the connection between all the different neurons and breaking neural structures and networks thinking that we can't do anything about it when in fact we can do something about it and we can change the way things are working later on we're going to talk about techniques and way to increase brain cells and neural networks and connections and neural growth. But in the same time we need to learn what are the factors that have a negative impact on neural growth structure networks and links and the number one thing we want to talk about is creativity. From the age of 0 till the age of 3 the word no is said more than one hundred and fifty thousand times compared to the word yes that is said five thousand times. And in fact psychology today stated that the word no is one of the most dangerous words in the world. And the article is actually fascinating. They say if I were to put you in an f our ice counter a huge doughnut shaped magnet that can take a video of the neural changes happening in your brain and flash the word no for less than one second you'd see sudden release of dozens of stress producing hormones and neurotransmitters these chemicals immediately interrupt the normal functioning of your brain impairing logic reason language processing and communication. And that's me following the exact wording of Psychology Today. Therefore you can see that the word no can have a huge impact on your brain and are fortunately facing the word no throughout your life. All this time we'll have it wired in your brain when it comes to your own personal suspect. So every time you would get a new idea you would say no. Every time you want to do something you want to say no. Every time you have a new experience that you want to try you would say no every time you want to try a new dish that you're not sure if you're you're you're really going to like it or not you will say no. And this will limit your mind and limit your thoughts. And most importantly it will limit your creativity when it limits your creativity. This flow of ideas that can just keep you in constant brain stimulation will start to decrease a lot. And with less brain stimulation your brain is not going to developed as much as it would if there was consistent brain stimulation. And when the person stops being creative he creates a consistent lifestyle. You see that people when they get to a certain point they have a certain routine that is wired in their lifestyle. They wake up at a certain

time they take their coffee they go to the gym they work. They come back home they make dinner they watch something and they sleep. It becomes a routine that is hard wired in their life. Because they're not getting creative anymore they're not being open to new experiences. They are keeping this consistency in their lifestyle without opening up to any new experiences and always saying no. And every time you get a new idea instead of sitting down and thinking about it trying to collect creative arts and connect them altogether to make sense out of the thoughts that you're having you would just drop it and say no to this creative aspect of yourself and creativity was found to be linked to long term memory concept construction and information structuring and the activation of the neural networks that are used when the brain processes information using the highest forms of cognition. And then we have generations over generations of people born with the word no repeated more than any other word. And guess what that would do. It would crush your creativity. It would crush your infinite intelligence and imagination. What most people disregard is that creativity which is linked to imagination. Together they form an infinite intelligence form. You can tap into ideas and thoughts that nobody ever thought about. You can find solutions to problems that nobody would ever think about. And that's exactly why we call it infinite intelligence because there is nothing that you can't achieve through creativity and imagination. And the biggest proof is all the success stories out there. They all started with imagination. People imagined themselves going to the moon and they did it. People imagined operating on a heart and they did it. But if nobody ever imagined going to the moon nobody would have ever went there and imagining going there is one thing but getting creative enough to know how to get there is an entirely different story. And adding to all of this technology technology can in fact be used to increase brainpower. It can help with the process of neuroplasticity but unfortunately people are not using it for these purposes. Just a quick example would be there are a lot of apps on on your smartphone that can help boost your brainpower. A lot of apps that help with memory and recalling and logic and most people don't use these apps. They want to use apps that are related to games and social media and social networking technology made it possible to have a tablet where you can draw and become creative. You can have apps where you can create three dimensional figures you get access to countless amount of information that can help you on a daily basis. You can learn anything you want through our technology nowadays but most people they

drop everything and just use their smartphones for social media. But here's the thing about social media. Every single time you get a notification or you get a message there is a release of dopamine inside your brain. And this is what researchers found that every single time you get something on your phone there is a small release of dopamine in your brain. And Simon Sinek talked about this when he said sometimes when people feel down they would send them messages to then different people saying hi hi hi hi. And then when people reply it makes you feel good. There is still I mean rush inside of you that makes you feel good. And unfortunately just like drugs and alcohol cell phones and social media can become an addiction nowadays when people at the age of two use tablets more than they talk to their parents they will learn most of the things from the tablets and not from their parents. When people at the age of eight nine and ten are exposed to Instagram and Facebook they will base their dreams and aspirations based on what they're seeing on these social media platforms. And in fact using cell phones and social media platforms in specific showed a correlation between it and depression and anxiety sleep deprivation envy communication issues and self image judgment. And furthermore we have something in our brain called mirror neurons. People tend to replicate behaviour that they see around them. There are certain pranks that have been done over the times where a group of of it Jules would agree to do a certain behaviour that goes against normal behaviour. And there is one person that don't know what's going on. As an example there was a prank in a grocery store where there is a guy who whistles. And as soon as he does everybody would switch their carts or their baskets together. And then there is one customer in the middle that just don't know what they need to do. And then somebody would come towards them give them their card and then they would give them their or their own card to them. Just because everybody's doing it. So this is how mirror neurons work. Now conversely when we come to social media everybody is imitating people on social media and most of the times it's not a really good role model. That role model that they're following on their social media platforms and not just that because of the mirroring neurons they get very limited and they stop also being creative because all what they're doing is imitating people. What is making people famous what is making people money. We want to imitate that because that's what every single person wants. He wants to have this exceptional existence on social media platforms so he can show off in front of his friends. So whenever there is a behaviour that would move

him towards this goal he would adopt it immediately. And on top of all of this you want to add the sense of patience in a world where if you want something you can go on Amazon and order it immediately. In an age where if you miss someone you can face on them if you want to talk to someone you can send them a message if you want to meet someone new if you want to meet a girl or meet a guy who can just swipe right or left on Tinder and then you find them if you want to listen to a new song you can just go on Spotify or on YouTubeand look for it. You don't have to go and buy the C.D. patients dropped. People went from having dreams that they work on for a long time in their lives to dream that they work on for two three weeks and then say well it's somebody else's mistake. There is another reason other than me. That's why I can't do it. They never blame themselves and they don't have any kind of patients. And the only way for neuroplasticity to be effective as we said before is through consistency. And if you don't have the patience to keep up the consistency. Guess what. Most probably you will not be able to achieve efficient and effective brain plasticity when your mind gets wired or rewired. It'll be out of your control. You will not even be aware of it and you will have absolutely no control over it because you have no patients. Now moving on I want to talk about some bad habits some habits are not just bad for your body but they can also affect your neural chains and networks and your brain health overall. So habits like smoking eating too much sugar getting too little sleep. Loneliness and consumption of alcohol and a lot more. But these are the main ones. These are all habits that would affect your brain health in a negative way. And whether you want to admit that smoking sugar sleep loneliness and alcohol can have effects on your brain or not. I meet a lot of people who say yeah I've been smoking for years. It just doesn't do anything to my brain. In fact it's not coming from me. It's coming from years and years of studies and research. When we say habits like smoking too much sugar too little sleep loneliness and alcohol can affect your mind can affect your brain can affect your neural chains and networks and overall your neuroplasticity. We are talking based on scientific concepts and not just ideas that we collect from thin air and in fact one study found that smoking a.k.a. nicotine not just kills brain cells and neurons it would actually stop your brain from producing more brain cells. It would block the process of cellular creation but of e we're not strictly talking about smoking tobacco smoking any kind of herbs drugs or tobacco can have similar side effects on the brain. Further more too much sugar was found to cause impairs and memory and

learning skills. Now of e there are two kind of sugars out there. There is healthy sugar and there's bad sugar bad trigger that comes in candy and chocolate bar. If it's consumed a lot it can cause impairs memory and learning skills. But fruits for example have a completely different role that is actually healthy for you and not detrimental sugar was also found to cause depression and it was linked to dementia and Alzheimer's diseases. I will include an article that talks about all these bad habits so you can become aware of them and see which one of these habits do you most usually do and start looking into applying the e into changing this habit. And of e too little sleep. Loneliness and alcohol also have similar side effects on the brain and the neurons and overall neuroplasticity. We're not going to go in details because there's going to be a lot of information provided in the article that I'm going to include moving on we're going to talk about a concept that we're already familiar with but we need to reinforce this concept consistency where people are not patient enough they can't keep up proper consistency and therefore they fail in the process of neuroplasticity. We went through the science of how consistency actually creates these neural networks how when there is a certain action that is happening on a repetitive basis and then there are two neurons that are linking then when they fire together they will link together and the only way for them to link is through consistency. Once the consistency stops the link will weaken. The more consistent your the stronger the link between the two neurons. And of e eventually the better and the stronger the link in the neural network itself. Moving on we're going to talk about the lack of exercise. I'd not want to include this as one of the bad habits because lack of exercise is not by itself a habit but exercise spurs the development of new nerve cells and increases the connection between brain cells specifically sign ups. And this results in brains that are more efficient plastic and adaptive. Now what would lack of exercise do. Well it will not have any direct side effects like the ones we mentioned when it comes to smoking and alcohol. But we did talk before about how exercise is a keystone habit. So lack of exercise can lead to a lack. In other areas in your life. And the reason why lack of exercise can be considered as one of the Neuro suicide factors is because the concept of exercise for most people is going to the gym for an hour and a half six days a week and eating proper diet when in fact this is not true. It is not that complicated. You can take it to whatever level you want to take. But training for 30 minutes a day for three days a week has a lot of good positive effects. And when exercising can be so simple can be as

simple as 30 minutes a day three times a week. When you avoid that this is neuro suicide because these one hour and a half in your week can have can have incredible results when it comes to brain cells neural networks and connections and overall neuroplasticity. I'm not going to go more in details about the other keystone habits related to exercise but by now you know that lack of exercise by itself without any other factors without any of the other keystone habits that are related to exercise is itself neuro suicide. 30 minutes a day three times a week is not hard. Even if it means watching half an hour or less of Netflix even if it means sleeping for 50 minutes less and going to bed 15 minutes later getting this half hour of exercise is crucial and avoiding it is terrible. And lastly we're going to talk about three general yet specific concepts when it comes to neuroplasticity. First recklessness. We talked before about how if there is a certain injury or trauma on the brain this can cause the entire cortical map to change. It will it will create a cortical remapping but of e this consumes a lot of energy. And this can block a lot of other neural networks that were formed one very tiny tissue in the brain that gets damaged might be connected to a lot of different neural networks. And once this is gone most of the chains will be broken. And then you have people going on bikes without helmet. You have people doing reckless activities with without keeping in their mind that in case something happens and there is a certain injury to their brain it can be detrimental. It can have a lot of side effects not just on them as well as their physical bodies but on every single aspect of their behaviour of their personality mental health related issues they can have a lot of them and all of this could be avoided if the person is not a reckless of e a lot of times. Some things are just inevitable and you can't avoid them. But driving your car at one hundred and fifty kilometres an hour as I said riding a motorcycle without putting a helmet on. These are all considered as acts of recklessness and even though this is not strictly related to their plasticity in general it is good to keep your head safe thus your brain safe to ensure proper neuroplasticity when you're working on other factors. Otherwise you will block the process and you will be at a point where you're not even sure what's connected to what and what's going on in your mind. And this can result in strokes. This can result in people forgetting everything that happened in their lives. This can result in people forgetting how to speak people and not being able to walk different things all related to recklessness. So always try to keep it safe because your brain your head and your brain as much as they're powerful and they can change your life. They

can be really fragile. And second thing is mental health in a lot of different countries. Mental health is not looked at as an issue. There are lot of societies where talking about mental health is like talking about people who are crazy in certain societies. It is not okay to show any weakness or say that you're sad or you're depressed. All of this would create a mental toll that can mess with your neuroplasticity. Even people living in societies where mental health where there's lot of mental health awareness and everybody knows a lot about it and doctors are there to help and everything in the system is with you. A lot of people just refuse to get any help. They think that they can solve the problem themselves and they don't need any help. And and I encourage that. I highly encourage that. If you really think that you have a mental health issue and that you can overcome it yourself without seeing anyone without taking any kind of medication and you're positive then go for it. This is this is the best way out of it but if you've been having a chronic problem for several years and you've been trying to solve the problem by yourself and it's been years and it's not working you might want to consider seeing someone because this can affect the plasticity of your brain. Stress and anxiety and depression will stop brain cell regeneration and will also block neural growth. I had a marketing professor who once told us in class if you are feeling depressed if you are feeling anxious. If you're feeling sad don't do marketing and the reason why he said that is because when people are sad or depressed their creativity gets limited their mental functioning gets limited. You never see someone who is depressed making creating a masterpiece you don't ever see somebody who is depressed who is at the studying all day long and getting A's because depression has an effect on the mind and on the body. And unless you're willing to solve these problems you're going to be in a state where you can't even help yourself out of your current mental situation let alone being able to have the certain amount of plasticity in your brain. And finally social and environmental development. There is a saying birds of a feather flock together when you have 10 friends and none of them smoke. You will most probably either try it or also built the habit and become a smoker. If you have 10 friends and nine of them watches Netflix every single day you're either gonna start watching Netflix every single day or you're going to start watching Netflix more than you used to watch before as a as a personal experience. My first year in college I had roommates who always watched a TV show called How I Met Your Mother. No I wasn't really interested in TV shows in general. I wanted to always focus on work and on

my studying but every single time I come back home every single time I sit in the living room. People are watching this show. Eventually I started watching it as well and then when my friends moved out and I stayed by myself I was watching this show on a consistent basis and the next year when I moved in with new people I the person watching the show first and telling people that they need to watch it and that it's so good. But little that I know back then about neuroplasticity and social and environmental development and affect on different factors in life. So if you're trying to stop smoking and you're spending your time with nine people who smoke out of 10 most probably it's not going to work unless each and every one of them is ready to support you and not ever say hey do you want to have a smoke unless they do that most probably you're going to find it really hard to rewire your brain out of the habit of smoking. Now think about this. Is anybody born arrogant no of e not. Nobody's born Eragon but it's the social and environmental development that makes him Eragon. Most of the times when one person is Eragon it means that they are mirroring a person that is an essential part of their social circle. When somebody is sexist and doesn't believe in women's rights to do different things it's most probably because they grew up in an environment and they experienced an environmental development that is in sync with those ideas. So most people focus on neuroplasticity and changing their mind when they are stuck in the same social and environmental situations and simply you can not dry up if you're still sitting in water. In fact society and environments can saying the most experiences in every single person's life. And that's why these are two of the most important factors when it comes to neuroplasticity. And that's why there is an entire set of exercises an entire set of social exercises that is there to help you cope with all the different issues that you're having all the different social and environmental issues that you're having and how to of e overcome them simply put if you move from the social and environmental development of process or circle that is causing a certain behaviour to be wired in your mind into a different social environmental circle that goes against this behaviour and habit you are most likely to be able to have more control. In the example that we gave before when you have a lot of friends that smoke nine out of 10 friends smoke and you spend most of your times with them and you're trying to stop smoking. Most probably it will not work. But if you start hanging out with people who exercise on a regular basis and don't smoke and eat healthy then by the mere social and environmental influence you will start overcoming the habit of

smoking. Bit by bit. So as this lecture is coming to an end. I'm gonna go quickly through the concepts because you need to keep them in mind and review them before you start working on your neuroplasticity journey. And we're going to talk about how to solve all these problems. In further lectures but for now just becoming aware of them is good. First problem is the big obstacle in front of your creativity and imagination that limits your thoughts keeps that consistency in the lifestyle that is detrimental. It kills all the new experiences that might actually teach you new things and expand your brain. And of e technology that can absolutely destroy your creativity let alone your brain functioning and structure. Bad habits that are having a lot of mental toll that are making you lose it a lot of mental energy and functions just because you're doing these habits and they're not doing you any good. Consistency where most people are not patient enough. You need to learn how to be patient. Lack of exercise and giving excuses where you can't even find half an hour for three days a week to do some intermediate or average intensity workout. And lastly recklessness not taking care of your mental health and having a social and environmental circle that is detrimental for your goals and your aspirations and your daily lifestyle habits and eventually life reflection. So I'll leave you with one last thought for you to be able to grasp the importance of social and environmental development. If you look around you you're going to notice that most people who grew in a certain society turned up to have the same mentality thoughts norms lifestyle and habits that are existing in this specific society and environment. And of e I'm not generalizing. I'm saying to you close your eyes and think about people you know or think about yourself and see how much of the things that you do on a daily basis. How much of the things that that are habits some of the lifestyles that you have that are actually very similar or identical to your social and environmental circle.

CONTROL YOUR EMOTIONS AND GO THROUGH IT EFFICIENTLY

OK, so we are there. You arrived. It's the day of the exam. All you could have done. You've done it all you could have known. You know it already. And if you don't it's too late anyway because it's the exam day. But let's hope you did all the things that you should have done. And you know the basics at least good. First thing first the most important thing at the exam is not to panic not to lose control. It's very important to keep control all the time. And there are some ways through which you can do this. Is there some methods. The first thing first when you sit on the chair and waiting for the subject. The first thing to do is to repeat to yourself like a mantra. I did everything I could. I learned as much as I could. I'm here. I'll do my best no matter what you've done what you will do. You are here and you will do your best. This is the

most important. And it feels that you have the control right. Second thing puts on the desk your favourite writing materials tools and everything so that you feel that you control your environment. Put your favourite pen put it in the way that you know I don't know you used to like not like this but like this doesn't matter. Make yourself for a comfortable routine right. This is the second thing. The third thing. Breathe.

DEALING WITH PROBLEMS RELATED TO ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION In this lecture we're gonna be talking about emotional intelligence how to control and manage your emotions. A lot of you are familiar with the term IQ. What if I tell you that nowadays. There's also something called IQ your emotional IQ. In a nutshell this concept of emotional intelligence that back in the day wasn't that important is becoming one of the most crucial factors when it comes to our daily lives. And one of the best books written by accurately the Power of Now and you might be familiar with it. I was reading the book and then there's something about emotions that really really grab my attention. The author says emotions are a disturbance whatever you want to do whatever you want to say. If it's affected by emotions it'll be completely different. I gave an example in previous lectures where my marketing professor said if you ever feel depressed or sad of e the pressure is not an emotion. When we talk about emotions we talk about fear anger sadness joy disgust surprise as well. So in this case we're talking about sadness or temple or anger and what the professor said Don't work on anything related to marketing. If you're feeling angry or sad and the reason why is because when you're having these emotions they block your creativity when you're stressing out about something and you keep thinking about it over and over and over again. Even if you're writing a test even if you're trying to study even if you're trying to write a book you have days where there are things done. Whatever you do you can't stop thinking about them and the reason why is because they are triggering emotions inside of you which is causing disturbance. It is disturbing. Whatever you're doing it is disturbing your tasks of e it's disturbing your stream of thoughts and it's disturbing your body chemistry. If you have feelings of joy you're going to feel a dopamine rush inside your body. You're going to feel euphoria when you feel surprised. You

might have feelings of being overwhelmed. You might if something surprise you in a scary way you might be your heart beating fast. Of e when you have the emotions of fear you might get sweaty. You might start trembling all of that to make you understand that emotions are not just random feelings that you get. Emotions are powerful and they can change everything. If you wake up every day feeling emotions of joy no matter what's happening in the world you wake up and you're feeling joy. Your life would be so much better but if you wake up every single day and you have emotions of sadness your life is not going to be as good. You're not going to have the same motivation the same drive the same work ethic that you would have if you were feeling happy. If you're feeling emotions of joy on a consistent basis and the thing about emotions is that to an extent you can't always control them. But what you can do is that you can be intelligent about it. You can know how to use your emotions to your advantage and control them to an extent. Nobody will have emotions of joy when they break up with somebody they love. Of e unless the relationship was starting and they wanted to break up. But if the person was in love and they wanted to stay with the other person and then they break up you can't avoid feeling a bit sad. Even if you have a lot of emotional control it gets to a point where you're going to feel some emotions but you need to know how to be smart about it how to overcome it how to not let it affect you now adding to that is well Organizational Behaviour theories and research that basically deals with all the factors that can contribute into having a better organizational structure keeping the employees happy and keeping them effective and efficient so they can finish the work really well finish the work faster and at the same time be happy and be comfortable where they are. And when I was going through different organizational behaviour studies I ran across something really important in organizations and of e in life there is a difference between emotions and mood that people usually mix up emotions are short lived feelings that come from known cause while moods are feelings that are longer lasting than emotions of e and there's no real starting point for its formation emotions as we said can include sadness joy feeling happy feeling sad while moods they're kind of different. You either have a positive mood or you have kind of a negative mood and sometimes you can experience both of them at the same time. Even when you have a bad mood and you feel like you don't want to do anything you're being very negative about everything around you and then your kid or your partner or your friend looks at you with a genuine smile and you feel happy

you feel joy for a second you feel this warmth in your heart even though you're in a bad mood you still feel the emotions of happiness even if it's for a brief moment but you did. And of e in contrast when you're in a good mood and something bad happens you find out that the exam that you wanted to get an A plus on you got an A minus. So you're kind of a little bit disappointed. And even though you're in a good mood you might feel a little bit sad but your good mood will help you boost it up. And usually you can explain your emotions. You can explain why you're sad. You can explain why you're happy because you know what's going on when you feel emotions. There is always a source where these emotions came from. There's always something that happened that triggered these emotions but moods when somebody is in a bad mood and you ask them why are you in a bad mood. Most of the times most of the times the answer is I don't know. Most people don't even know why they are experiencing this bad mood. They have absolutely no explanation and they can't seem to control it. Most of the times. And because moods cannot really be linked to any specific cause. At one point a lot of people mix between being a moody person which means a person whose mood fluctuates a lot and somebody who suffers from bipolar disorder. People can't explain moods where it got to a point where they put them on the same equivalency as a mental health disorder. A lot of times I know a lot of people who referred to people who have a lot of mood fluctuations as people who are bipolar when in fact it is not true moods fluctuate fluctuates a lot. Of e some people experience it more than others. And this of e is linked to different factors. That includes the environment where you're living. Even lights a lot of people during winter they get these bad mood phases because there is no sun and they feel like everything around them is dead especially when it's cold and there's nobody out in the streets. They feel bad moods and they can't even experience a lot of emotions like. They might feel sad they might feel lonely at one point. And to top it off there is also a difference between emotions moods and feelings. There is a difference between being angry and feeling angry and there is a difference between saying I feel cold and I feel cold. One of them is physical and the other one is emotional. Feelings are usually things that we feel we feel on a physical level not just on an emotional psychological level. And another thing about feelings at that it can be influenced by your own personal experience beliefs cultural beliefs and memories and recalls and the worst part is most of the times it's subconscious. Your personal experience your beliefs and your memories are

not things that you're consistently conscious of. There are things that are in your subconscious mind that you can't really control or see unless you do a lot of introspection. And what happens when you have some emotions that are triggered then your subconscious mind spells out all of these personal experiences beliefs and memories that are related to this feeling sorry emotions I mean your brain will spur out all the memories personal experiences that are related to the emotions you're feeling and based upon that you will start feeling your brain will interpret these emotions and turn them into a physical face. And of e this is where neuroplasticity steps in. We have our mood that if that is influenced by a lot of factors and of e the influence of all of these factors on your mood depends on past experiences on how each and every one of these experiences is wired in your brain. If every single thing every single experience that you went through in your life triggered feelings of joy and excitement nothing can put you in a bad mood. Of e we're not talking about body chemistry when we talk about body chemistry. You might get to a point where we're talking about mental health problems and that's a completely different issue. When it comes to people who are suffering from mental health issues and we are not talking about some very rare examples of in cases mental health let's go according to statistics we're going to go through the statistics of Canada only the Canadian Mental Health Association states all these different things on their website. Mental illness indirectly affects all Canadians at some time through a family member friend or colleague. I'm going to include this article in the e. For those of you who are interested in knowing more about it. Moreover in any given year one in five people in Canada will personally experience a mental health problem or illness and approximately 8 percent of adults will experience major depression at some point in their lives. To top it up about 1 percent of Canadians will also experience bipolar disorder or manic depression. The total number of 12 to 19 year olds in Canada at risk for developing depression is at a staggering three point two million and unfortunately only one out of five children who need mental health services would actually receive them. And the problem is not the health system in Canada. There is a lot of mental health awareness and all the health services are free. You can get a psychiatrist psychotherapist or psychologist for free and I know that this is not the case for a lot of countries there are a lot of countries who culturally disregard the concepts of mental health illnesses who consider mental health illnesses just as any mood or emotion and feeling

and can't really differentiate between all these different factors that can have different experiences on the human brain and the human body. So for those of you who are experiencing some symptoms of mental health disorders if you have feelings and you and you feel like you just can't control them you feel depressed and you feel switching in mood that is abnormal. You need to see someone. It's for your own good. Otherwise you will live with this problem for the rest of your life not being able to change it sometimes. Very rarely a change might happen without any use of medication or without talking to a doctor. It just happens through experiences and of e wiring. There are a lot of experiences that can affect you that would get you out of where you were but the safest and best way to deal with it is to see somebody who is a specialist mental health disorder can disturb your emotions your mood and of e your feelings now going back to our topic of emotional intelligence the question is after 30 minutes of talking what is emotional intelligence and big what is the big picture behind emotional intelligence. Well it's basically the capacity to be aware of to control and express one's emotions and to handle interpersonal relationships in an emotionally intelligent way. So emotional intelligence is not just about your own personal emotions. It's about the emotions that are coming from external stimuli which means the emotions that other people are committing. When you walk by someone who is angry you can feel the emotions of anger. You can see it in his eyes sometimes but when you pass by somebody who's smiling has his head up listening to some joyful music when you know that this person is probably experiencing emotions of joy. And the thing is we're not going to go through feelings and we're not going to go through moods because both of them are mainly affected by emotions and experiences by dealing with your emotions. You will deal with the experiences and then automatically your feelings and your mood will work accordingly. So by now you know that neuroplasticity is affected by emotions big time. And we talked about this before. First time experiences what kind of emotions you felt during this first time experience. This has a huge impact on what this first time experience will do to your brain. This plastic brain that is vulnerable especially when it comes to first time experiences. If there is a huge load of emotions involved there is going to be a strong wiring right there. And now the big question is what kind of emotions did you feel. And we gave the example of going to the zoo before. When you went to the zoo and you got bit by snake your guide emotions of anger fear maybe sadness and what that there is a developed two fears first a

fear of snakes. Every time you see a snake you will have emotions of fear and of e emotions of doubt around zoos. You're not sure if it's a safe place for you anymore. And most probably whenever you go back to a zoo you'll feel uncomfortable. That's if the emotions were so strong you might not even want to go to the zoo anymore you might feel such a high level of discomfort that you just don't want to go at all. And the second idea is it's not just about first time experiences. And I know we already talked about this before but for those of you who were not paying a lot of attention back then this is crucial and really if you didn't listen to it before go back and listen to it again and again until you really grasp the concept. Emotions are one of the most important concepts when it comes to neuroplasticity. So emotionally charged situations I'm going to give a really far that example that is of e its reality. In case you have somebody who's really close to you who dies this experience will have a lot of emotions involved. This is exactly what an emotionally charged situation will be like. There was a huge fight between Mike Tyson and Douglas Douglas's mother died a few days before the fights and she told everybody that he's going to win. He's going to win against Mike Tyson when his mom died and there is of e a lot of articles and YouTubevideos that talk about this experience because it's absolutely inspirational after his mother died. He was so emotionally charged in a positive way he didn't dwell and get sad. He felt a lot of motivation. He felt like he needed to make his mom proud. And in fact he beat Mike Tyson and afterwards when reporters asked him how did he do it. He said before my mother died she told everybody that I'm going to win. And when I was in that ring I had one of two choices either die with my mom or I live on to make her proud even though it was just a few days before his mother died in these three days a situation that is highly emotionally charged can start wiring your brain. And now one of the obstacles that might stand between emotions neuroplasticity is emotional instability and failing to keep up with consistency. And of e we talked about this not being consistent well failed to ensure the linking between the different neurons and ensuring proper neural networks forming because of it but emotional instability which is exactly the opposite of emotional intelligence is also one of the biggest problems. And it's usually it causes problems with consistency when you have a lot of different emotions and you're unstable emotionally. You will experience a lot of different behaviours from yourself that can stand in the way of consistency no emotional stability can be caused by current situations by stress and anxiety and thoughts that

you're having your minds the problems that you have to deal with. And of e it can be caused by mental health issues. And we talked about this. You need to find a professional that can help in case you feel that the problem is bigger than just controlling your emotions. And it's something deeper. It's something on a mental health awareness level. But if it's something random something that's causing distress and anxiety something that you're experiencing because there's a certain problem that you want to solve don't focus on working and breaking your head over finishing work when you're feeling emotional instability deal with the problem first finish the problem and then move on to work. And in case you can't really find a solution for the problem maybe you're waiting for something and you're anxious you don't know what the result is. I would highly recommend a book called How to Stop Worrying and Start Living the biggest enemy of emotional intelligence is worrying and which of e brings us to emotional instability and this 352 pages book cannot be summed up in a few simple words. If you also feel like worrying is one of your biggest problems getting this book would be a good idea. Or looking at some articles to help you cope with this problem can be also a really good idea. I'm going to include an article that also talks about worrying and how you can overcome it. But I read the book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie and that's why I'm recommending it. One of the best practices in the book that I always use is to ask yourself the following question How bad can it get or what's the worst case scenario. Now once you know what the worst case scenario is you can't overthink it anymore because it can't get any worse than that. This is how bad can get and you need to know and understand that it can get to this point. And of e you need to accept and understand especially if it's something that you can't do anything about it. If you're already abroad an exam and you're waiting for your grades you can't do anything at this point. So look at the worst case scenario and accept it. This of e works when there is something that you're not very very worried about. But as I said the article will give you way more information and will help you way more if you want to cope with worrying. Now once you really understand the concepts the techniques and the exercises of emotional intelligence you can use emotions to your advantage and ensure emotional neuroplasticity enhancement. If you want to try to make working out a lifestyle and every single time you go to the gym you have emotions of sadness and irritability. You're most likely going to drop it and not go there

because your emotions are not helping you. They're wiring bad ideas bad experiences bad emotions to the idea of going to the gym. But if every single time you go to the gym you have these positive thoughts in your mind how you want to look. What's your goal where you want to get and you keep this image in your head when you have a certain when you have a certain body and you have a certain aspiration a certain future body that you want to attain. Keeping that in your heads thinking about it thinking about how you would feel about it having these emotions of joy and a lot of motivation linked to it then you'll be linking neurons in a different way your neural structure and network will actually start to encourage you to go to the gym more. That's exactly why before the gym becoming a lifestyle that you don't even have to think about you're going to experience days where you just say you know what. I don't feel like going to the gym anymore but because you have a lot of emotions of joy involved with it one of two scenarios would happen. One scenario would be that because the wiring is already starting you will not stop going to the gym you will just say you know what. I don't have to skip I can't skip. I have goals and I need to train them. I need to achieve them. That's why I'm not going to skip and I'm gonna go to the gym and this is mostly willpower neuroplasticity is more automatic when you're thinking about it and you have different ideas in your head. Should I go or not. You did not reach a point where neuroplasticity has been perfected and working out became a lifestyle. Now the other scenario and this is also not linked to neuroplasticity. We're talking about the phase before neuroplasticity. You're trying to reach the point where you're using your plastic flexible brain to make out of exercising a lifestyle or a consistent automatic behaviour or habit. So in the second example you feel emotions of sadness you feel down and when people feel down you're not being lazy. That was the first case scenario you were feeling lazy didn't want to go to the gym but used your willpower to go there. Now in this scenario you're feeling emotions you're feeling emotions of sadness emotions of fear anger whatever it is and you just say I don't want to go to the gym these emotions will give you feelings and the feelings might put you in a certain mood and then you will have the motivation and the willpower to go to the gym and when that happens this is exactly where emotional intelligence will step in. You have two solutions. One you say Okay I am sad I don't want to go to the gym I want to sit at home watch netflix and eat ice cream. And the second scenario would be closing your eyes and thinking about why you started going to the gym.

Thinking about your why Nietzsche says he who has a why can bear almost any how. There was an entire book and an entire field of science based on the question why there is a book written by Dr. Victor Frankel. The book is called Man's Search for Meaning. It's one of the most fascinating book you can ever read. It sold millions of copies and it talks about prisoners experiences and concentration camps and how the people who survived are the people who had a Y in concentration camps. Usually you can't have positive emotions you're always feeling anger and sadness you're always having these bad emotions that would affect you in a negative way. What's the only thing that can give you good positive emotions at a concentration camp. You're why. What is your why. And just like worrying. Figuring out your why is not that simple especially when we're talking about the big image. The big question of why why do we exist. And of e this gets us into existentialism and it's an entirely different field of study as well. It is one of the most common problems nowadays people are thinking about their existence and they're asking themselves a lot of questions. Back in the days religion was way more reinforced and the Y was always explained through religion. But now that a lot of people are switching towards atheist them and others stream of thoughts that don't follow religion they started asking themselves the question why why do I exist. What am I doing in this world. And when they don't find it when they don't find an answer of e they will feel empty. They feel like there is nothing to do in this world and they're just going to live and die and then a lot of people would suffer from depression. Some of them would even get to suicide when in fact it's not that complicated. From my experience and from what I've read and I can assure you I read a lot about a lot of books a lot of articles and I've watched a lot of videos that talk about the question of why why in life putting the concepts of religion aside having or why in life not just to know where you're going but to know what you need to do every single day. But on a smaller scale you can always figure out what your why is. Why do you have problems in relationships. Well maybe because you're not ready to be in a committed relationship. Maybe you had past bad experiences that are still affecting you. You can figure out what your why is. Why are you going to the gym. Maybe you want to have a better body. Maybe you want to prove somebody wrong. Maybe you want to just improve your health and take care of your health more whatever your why is when you go to the gym. You have a why. There is a reason why you're going to the gym people do not just wake up and say

oh I should go to the gym for no reason. So when you feel these emotions of sadness close your eyes and think about your why letting go of the scenario where you would just sit at home and avoid going to the gym. And this is where people most people when they do this they say I don't feel like going today because I feel sad. Their brain gets adapted to it that the thing about neuroplasticity is that it's happening every single second. So when you drop the gym when you say I'm not going to go because I'm feeling sad this is wiring your brain in a way that affects your willpower in a negative way. This will not give you better mental state for you to be able to go to the gym tomorrow and be way better in some cases and in some very rare cases it is when there's a highly emotional charged situations that you encounter that day and you just couldn't focus and just couldn't go to the gym it's fine. But I'm talking about people who just do it as an excuse. When you close your eyes and you think about your why you will start having feelings of and emotions of e of joy of hope and what you do is you just go to the gym. There is a lot of exercises that we're going to talk about in the section where we talk about habits to be able to push yourself and go to the gym. One of them and of e we're going to go more through details later. The bracelet technique where you have an elastic band on your wrists and every single time you feel like you're trying to establish a habit of go into the gym and making a lifestyle and every single time you have a feeling that you don't want to go to the gym for any reason you just close your eyes. You think about your why and then you snap the bracelet on your wrist in a way that it hurts a bit. Of e you want to cut yourself but in a way that hurts a little bit. And then you just go to the gym. You stop everything. Whatever you're doing whatever you're thinking just stop everything and you go to the gym and I can I can assure you if you do with this. If you have a goal of going to the gym and you have a Y behind it and you had feelings of sadness you didn't want to go to the gym and you were thinking about skipping. Close your eyes. Forget about the bracelet for now. Just close your eyes. Think about your why. Think about it and feel it tried to generate emotions from it and then go to the gym. And if when you finish the gym if you don't feel at least 1 percent better than how you were before. Keep in mind that you did not skip and you're ensuring the plasticity to be working effectively. If you did not feel any positive emotions you would not feel any better out of it than you need to look at your why again. Sometimes your Y is not strong enough. If the answer to your Y is I want to go to the gym it's probably not as strong y. Ben when you have a

reason why and the answer is I need to go to the gym. You don't just want but you need to go to the gym then your Y is on a whole new level. And when you have a y that you answer with I need to go to the gym and you go to the gym. I can assure you you are going to feel better. So what's happening right there is your experience about emotions then you close your eyes and you thought about positive thoughts that brings you good positive emotions. A big part of it is being optimistic of e looking at things from positive perspective can sometimes be hard. Most people tend to be negative when it comes to a lot of different things in their life. There is a blog that has a lot of useful information on how to become more optimistic. And I'm also going to it in. In the e. So in case you feel like you're not really optimistic you can always go look at it. But the big picture is regardless of what you are if you're optimistic or your pessimistic whenever you feel bad emotions one of the best things to do as emotional intelligence is to close your eyes and block everything. BLOCK your phone like a computer like everything set down your room close your eyes maybe arts and music if you know if you have any music that would encourage you that would give you some positive emotions. Any music that is linked to positive experiences that you love listening to you might want to put this but this but this music but the song and close your eyes and think about why think about your why think about positive emotions. Think about where you want to be and where this particular thing they're trying to avoid with data you see the thing about the brain is the brain cannot tell the difference between reality and imagination. When you close your eyes and you imagine yourself at the gym lifting weights your brain can't really tell the difference between Are you actually there or are you just imagining lifting weights. Of e your body knows because you're not lifting any weight but your brain doesn't really tell the difference between reality and imagination. So just imagining yourself at the gym is a start imagining yourself going to the gym and reaching the body that you want to reach. Reaching the goal that you want to reach. I'm giving a gym as as a general example you can apply this on every single aspect of your life. But these emotions would reinforce the links these emotions would ensure neuroplasticity. Even though you're not at the gym but your mind is still getting the connection of going to the gym and there's a reinforcement there's the link happening between neurons and they're getting the link is becoming stronger and stronger and stronger. Now of e I'm not saying you should just sit in bed and imagine yourself working out every single day and then out of

nowhere is going to become a lifestyle. This is not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that emotions can be met with positive reinforcing emotions and then these would give you a little push some motivation some willpower that you need to use to go to the gym. And when you go and you actually do with the experience not just mentally but also physically because as we said Imagination is one thing but your cortical map is linked to different motor skills from the fine motor skills to the gross motor skills. When you go to the gym and you bench press this is a gross motor skill. When you go to the gym and you do some exercises for the forearms usually this is a fine motor skill. Yourperception hearing the weights drop hearing yourself pushing the weights and then dropping them on the floor smelling maybe maybe the dumbbells smell a certain way you're visual perception of everything that's going on your touch on the bar. All of these things would reinforce the neuroplasticity. And to top it off the emotions. And that's why imagination can be really different than reality for your neuroplasticity. Even though it can help a bit but it's nothing compared to what you will get in terms of actually going to the gym. So having emotional intelligence having a high IQ having a high emotional IQ will ensure better social skills better focus and concentration better mental wellness and better life overall when you know how to use your emotions when you know how to control them every single aspect of your life will change. And you know in the example that we gave before where if a person wakes up every single day feeling joy his life will be completely different than a person who wakes up every day feeling sad or from person who feel sad twice a week. It's just common sense right. So using emotional intelligence to work on your social skills you have social anxiety or you feel like you don't want to go out because you're being lazy. Then you close your eyes and you think about your why why do you want to improve your social skills. You want to have maybe a bigger connection bigger networks so you can reach more people. You have a business in your reach more people maybe you just want to make more friends. Maybe you want to become the cool kid. What is your why. And when you feel lazy and you want to have better social skills. Close your eyes. You think about your Why you reinforce it with positive emotions and you just go and do it. And then when you're there you're using your emotions you're using your sensory and motor skills and you're ensuring proper integration in your mind. Eventually the goal is to ensure neuroplasticity and you're walking on the right track. Same thing goes for focus and concentration. When you're having

bad emotions you will not be able to focus and concentrate a lot. But then when you have reinforcing emotions when you close your eyes and think about why you need to concentrate and focus on a certain task you're working on then it's a different story. You might regroup your focus and concentration and this you can apply this to as I said every single aspect of your life whether it's social skills focus and concentration going to school going to class writing a book public speaking anything to be able to eventually ensure better mental and physical wellness. And once that happens you are working on an effective and efficient neuroplasticity method. Now moving on we're going to talk about a few techniques that you can also use to ensure emotional intelligence. And the first thing is plan A is not guaranteed having plan B or and C can prevent negative emotions in case of disappointment and failure. I usually listen to motivational speeches that always say don't put a plan B and don't put a plan C put a plan A and put all your work into it to ensure that it works. And I admire these speakers and I admire every single word they say. But if we pause for a second and we think about it isn't there a zero point one chance that for any reason Plan A might not work. This has nothing to do with being optimistic or being a pessimist. This has everything to do with being realistic. Now the biggest achievements in the world were made when people weren't realistic when they thought about what's impossible and they made it possible. So I'm not saying you should be realistic in that way where you shouldn't have high expectations and aim high. What I'm saying is being realistic we might know and we for sure we know and plan a is not guaranteed. Even though there is a very small risk it might not work. But having a plan a where you're aiming for something impossible and you think that you can reach it. You think that you have what it takes to get there do it. You need to do it. It's people like you who are going to change the world. People who believe that the impossible is possible. These are the people who will change the world. But if you don't have a plan B or plan C in case of failure you will experience a lot of negative emotions not just from you but for everybody around you. Nowadays we live in a world where social media controls everything where people celebrate their success on social media. People go out of their houses looking like absolute shit sorry for the work. But it's true. And then when they want to post something on Instagram or Facebook they make sure that they look top not that they're wearing the best clothing they look happy and joyful even though they're feeling miserable. So having to deal with your own emotions of

disappointment and sadness after failing you also have to deal with your social image. How people will look at you how you've been talking about your dreams and you're saying that you're going to make it and then everybody's going to look at you and say here's the guy who worked for five years and didn't make anything. Here's the guy who worked for five years when we were in college studying he was working on his business and now he failed. He doesn't have a degree and he doesn't have a business. When we have a degree and now we're going to find a job and we're going to start making money and life is good. This will make you feel bad. We compare ourselves to our peers and our friends without even noticing it because we live in a social media. Instagram Facebook world where it's all about comparison you see in your posts somebody posted something. It's your friend and you liked it. You would like the post and somebody else would post something where they make you feel like they're there kind of better than you and you won't like the post it'll make you feel bad but if you have a plan B then it's an entirely different situation. Plan A is almost there but having a plan B and working on risk diversion is always good especially when we're talking about emotional intelligence sticking with a plan a and not figuring out any plan B or plan C is you taking an emotional risk you diving into a puddle not knowing how this might affect your emotions in case of failure. And I'll give you a very quick example. A very personal example actually I started working on my business on my social media marketing agency about a year ago and I was still in school and I met a mentor that gave me an advice that changed my life. She was the one who explained to me how having a plan A and Plan B is always a good choice for your emotional intelligence. I was talking to her my business was growing and it needed a lot more work and she knew it. And I said I'm thinking about dropping out of college. I'm thinking about just dropping out of my program and focusing on my business. And then she asked me a question. She said How Positive Are you that your business is going to work and make you a lot of money. I said I'm very positive. And then she said What if something happens that you cannot control and your business stopped working. Maybe you can find any reason why your business might not work. But keep in mind people who died never planned on dying. People who drove their cars at one hundred and twenty miles an hour were not planning on having an accident and dying. They always thought that they have everything under control and that nothing bad can happen. Nothing can make them die but it's the things that you don't

expect. It's the zero point one percent risk that you don't look at that can actually destroy you. And then she said carry on with your business and keep working on it but don't drop out of college because if in three years your business fails for any reason for any reason now saying that it might fail but there is a zero point zero one risk that it might and if it does you can have your degree and you can find a job to save some money so you can get back up and work again on your plan. But if your business fails you don't have a degree to get a decent job and get good money to be able to save. You may be lost money and now you don't have a degree. You need to find a job as probably paying minimum wage so you can barely afford your living expenses and you will find it very hard to stand back up and work on your plan a specially because when this happens you will have emotions of anger disappointment and sadness. And usually these are emotionally charged experiences but when you have a Plan B the disappointment the sadness and the anger will not be as hard because you always know that you're working on your plan B to get to your plan. A I would never advise anybody to drop their plan A because usually Plan A is what you want the most and you shouldn't stop working on it until you die. Every single person has has a moral obligation to work on their dreams and their goals. These are the people who live life to its fullest. These are the people who once they're on their deathbed will not look back and say I wish I had done this or I wish I had done that. So even though you're feeling down even though you're feeling sad and you're feeling disappointed because you failed. You have a plan B that supporting you. You go to Plan B and you keep in mind your plan A you're not gonna stop. You know that you're not going to stop until you get an achieve plan. So when you have a plan B you will get back up your work again and you'll be more likely to jump back into Plan A and make it work. When I have a degree and my business fails I can get a job that pays well and I can invest money again in my company to make it grow. To fix the problems that I couldn't fix before and then I can chief Plan A. And once that happens once Plan A is done. I have my boot. I have my business and it's working well. I always have my plan. My plan B in my pocket which is my degree which is the situation where for any case in the future my business failed again. I always have my degree to go back at it. And here's the beauty of it. Most people in college they want to drop out of school because they want to focus on their business. But let's put it this way. Focusing on your business and going to college. And of e this is just an example of Plan A Plan

B your plan A and B can be applicable on any aspect of your life of e. Just like emotions and experiences. So after following her advice I was always in school and I was still working on my social media and digital marketing agency. And in fact she was right. I got to a point where my business wasn't working the way I wanted to work things were not working according to plan and I had to put some money into the business but I couldn't because I was going to school I was not working and I was working on my business and I had no source of income but my plan B. The fact that I was pursuing my degree plus all the experience that I got from building my business got me an internship right away with one of the biggest marketing firms in Ottawa. And it all happened because I had a plan B. And once I got back into plan B I was able to go back into Plan A and grow it bit by bit. And now it's working well. It's not where I wanted to be but if I didn't have a plan b maybe I wouldn't have the agency anymore. I couldn't have I couldn't get any money into the company and I couldn't grow it anymore. And then it would fail. So whatever goals you have whatever you're trying to work on whatever plan you have. Sit down and figure out a plan B or a plan C if you can. Now second thing is accepting the inevitable. Sometimes we can't control the situation no matter how many plans we have. We can't fully control the situation and then we need to adapt we to overcome and accept the inevitable because when something happens and you have no control over it you have one of two options you either dwell or you accept. And when you dwell you're going to be stuck. You're not going to move forward when the rest of the world is moving forward. But if you accept and you move forward and you move on you adapt and you overcome it. You will be wiring your brain in an emotionally intelligent way. You are learning to accept failure overcome it learn from it move on and grow from it. But if you dwell on it you're going to learn that failure is bad. Failure will make me feel sad. I want to avoid failure at any cost and you just want to avoid failure because it doesn't make you feel good and that's just our human nature and we want to avoid the things that makes us feel bad. And that's where most people would drop their dreams where most people would not have such high aspirations anymore. They accept so little because they don't want to encounter failure anymore. And unfortunately it becomes wired in their brain. The concept of not failing and the concept of security and becomes hardwired in their brain. If your dad's ever worked on a business and it's failed and he dwelled on it for years and eventually started working full time and you grow up and you say to your

father that you want to start a business he's not going to say yes go for it it's gonna be awesome he's gonna say no starting a business can be risky. You might fail. You might get disappointed. It's better to work on a degree and get a safe job. And did you ever pause for a second and ask yourself why would you say this. He would say this because of neuroplasticity process has experience and the emotions that came with this experience all the different motor and sensory skills that were involved and everything wired his brain in a way that he wants to avoid risk okay. He wants to avoid business because well business is risky. So even though you have a plan A or Plan B or plan C even though it's a very small percentage when you have a lot of different plans. But it might get to a point where all the plans didn't work and you don't have any more plans and you need to accept your reality and look at your options. Look at what you can do to get yourself out of where you are and just start going back at it to go against your plan A or through Plan B or your plan C or just change the plan entirely. If you think that it's not working right. Moving on to the next exercise. Count to 10. A lot of you heard people say count to ten before you say anything or just take a deep breath. Nowadays it became just a slang that people would just say randomly when they want to tell somebody to just chill down they're like Dude take a deep breath count to 10 you know. But there is a lot of wisdom behind this technique. When you react based upon impulses you are reacting based on your current emotions. And when you react towards your current emotions you are reinforcing them when you're mad at someone and they try to talk to you and then they start arguing with you. You know that the most probable result is that you guys are going to have a fight. If you start arguing back and you start screaming at him and shouting and having hand gestures you're just going to get yourself more angry. The other person in front of you is going to feel also emotions of anger maybe fear or you might feel threatened and you will also get affected by external stimulation. And before you know it you find yourself having a huge argument a fight feeling even more angry at the person and you guys had a fight. You you're not talking to each other anymore but if when the argument starts and you know that you're getting angrier you're getting more upset and you know that most probably an argument is going to happen and eventually a fight you guys are going to start talking to each other or whatever but instead of arguing back if you count to ten it just stare not at the person to stare elsewhere. Count to ten. Take a deep breath and be aware of the emotions you're feeling. It's a very simple yet effective technique that you can

use on a daily basis to ensure emotional intelligence. I promise you this is one of the techniques that helped me personally the most. This also implies two different examples. The example that we gave about the gym if let's say we put the scenario in a way where you're having a conversation with the gym. The gym is saying hey come here workout and you're saying no. I feel sad. I don't want to go but then you sit there somewhere and you count to 10 and you take a deep breath and you really become aware of your emotions. You're going to see that you're feeling sad. Most people never get aware of their emotions. They get sad but they're not aware of their emotions. But when you get aware of your emotions and you know that you're feeling sad you have the chance to change this. So when you're arguing with someone and you get upset you're mad or angry and you come to town you take a deep breath and you realize that you're angry and you know that if you're angry you're having these emotions of anger if you're going to talk to the person more it's going to result in a fight. And once you know the consequences you need to ask yourself Is it worth it. Is it worth it. Just because you're having some emotions and enemies as we said emotions are usually short term you have a fight with your best friend. Two hours later as you guys text back and everything's working and everything's back to normal. So when you ask yourself Is it worth it. Are these emotions worth getting me to have a fight with my friend or are getting the consequences that might happen. And most probably most of the times the answer is No. And once you figure out that the answer is No. Think about something else. Think about something positive. Think about all the good things that the person did and not all the bad things that the person did. Think about why go into the gym would help. Why go into the gym would make you get closer to your goals and not why going to the gym might take a lot of effort and a lot of energy and I just don't feel like it's easy and it's quick you're not feeling OK you're not feeling comfortable. Usually when you have bad emotions you don't feel comfortable at all you feel uncomfortable and then you pause for 10 seconds. You ask yourself very quickly what am I feeling. And usually when you ask yourself this question you're gonna find the answer right away once you find the answer you ask yourself what's going to happen if I keep having these emotions. What's gonna happen if I keep being angry at the person. And also the answer is going to be like a light bulb that lights up. You guys are gonna have a fight. And is it worth it. The answer is no. Now we know that you need to switch up your emotions to avoid the consequences and instead of screaming at the

person you will look at them you would smile and you'd say can I tell you something I was really upset about. One two three things that you did but I love you a lot and you're my best friend and I don't want to have a fight and I don't want to argue but I just want to talk about these things because I got upset and I don't want to have these feelings again and I'm pretty sure that as a friend you would understand this boom completely different scenario that can change everything. Maybe the first scenario could have led to to a moment where you lost your friendship and just because you counted to ten it took 10 seconds you changed the tap stream of actions link your bad motions. And guess what that does. You guessed right it works better towards your neuroplasticity. You are reinforcing positive emotions and therefore positive habits. The goal behind neuroplasticity is to wire everything that is positive in your mind. Positive emotions positive thoughts positive actions and through everything we're going through in dis e. This is where you're heading now. The next exercise is to learn to say no a lot of people don't know how to say no. You can trace this back to failed parenting strategies. You can trace that back to past experiences. You can track that back to guilt trips that you went through for saying no. When your friend asked you to help him with with his essay and you didn't have the time to do it and you said no. And then he failed the class and he says if you only help me like I could have at least past this guilt trip that you went through. Eventually as we said before our human nature wants to avoid all these bad feelings and bad emotions. So when you get wired your brain gets wired at one point that whenever you say to somebody when somebody asks you for something and you say no a guilt trip will follow even if he doesn't say anything. Just when you say no you are going to feel guilty for saying no. There is even a book that I ran across at the library at the University and the title is when I say no I feel guilty. And of e as we said the way it happens is that it becomes wired in your brain but you need to learn how to say no. And most importantly learn how not to feel shame when you say no. And how do you do that you control your emotions. You can use the count to 10 strategy. Take a deep breath strategy do some introspection and understand that you're feeling shame and simply switch back to positive emotions. Think about all the good things that you were able to do because you did not spend six seven hours working with your friends on an essay. And of e you shouldn't always say no. If your friend needs your help and you have the time you have nothing to do. You might as well just help them but the problem is when you have some things to do and you don't

know how to say no because you feel ashamed and then you say yes at work. When your boss asked you to do something and you just can't say no because otherwise you'll feel shame you'll feel that you're not working hard enough and you're too hard on yourself. And then you got a lot of workload and before you know it you find yourself sitting at the office till 9:00 at night. Why. Well simply because you didn't know how to say no. I will also include an article about this how to say no without feeling guilty. So you guys can take a look at it. If this is one of your problems but one of the strategies that I use is kind of different. The way I look at it is trying to help other people because eventually they will help you back when you take six hours to work with somebody on his essay. If you ever needed something from them they will be there for you. Most of the people of e some people are just full of B.S. and interests won't help you even if you help them over and over again. But what happens when you want to help someone but you're running short on time. He needs you to help him for six seven hours when you only have one hour to spare. This is where emotional intelligence would step in instead of going through the roller coaster of saying yes or no and feeling guilty or feeling shame or feeling pressure because you said yes you can simply say this. Let's imagine two scenarios your friend says Hey can you help me with my essay I have I have a due tomorrow and I have three three four pages I'm not sure how long it would take maybe five six hours but I mean I just really don't know what to do. And you might say look man honestly I have a lot of things to do and I can't really help right now. If you're working on your emotions you might say this and not feel bad about yourself you'll feel ok you'll just think that well this is my right. I have other things that I need to do and I did the right thing. People who feel shame about saying no needs to work on their emotions and look at the article that I included. But the scenario that I would follow is the following he would ask me the question and I would say of e I can help you. There's no doubt about it just let me know what's what's the essay about. And then he would say what the essay is about. And then you showed genuine interest that you really really want to help. And then you say OK no problem I got your back. Let me check my schedule. I'm not sure what I have to do later on today or tomorrow but I'll let you know just give me a couple minutes and then just think about what you have to do today and tomorrow. Think about if you have the time to help him or not and if not if you have some time to help him maybe you have one hour or two hours. But the fact that first you didn't show emotions of negativity.

We said before how powerful the word no is when you say no to somebody most probably they're going to feel a little bit sad because if they weren't if they didn't have a zero point one percent possibility in their head that you will say yes they would have never asked you to begin with after checking your schedule you might say look I only have one hour because I have this this this not to do. So how by how about I help you with the curriculum so you can know what you're going to write about and then you do your research and you go from there. Now he's not just gonna appreciate that you're helping and he's not just going to owe you and he's going to help you in the future of e if he's a good person but he will feel that you went over this to check your schedule and squeeze in your schedule and you sacrificed an hour to be with him and of e to help him with his essay. In this case you feel good you're not pressured. You had an hour to spare and you spent it with him next time you might need something from him. He will be there. Hopefully he doesn't. He didn't feel bad. He didn't feel any negative emotions in the country. He felt really good. He felt like you're a loyal person. He felt like you're somebody you can trust. He felt like you're a true friend and everybody is a winner. And even if you don't have the time to spare you have a lot of stuff to do after you say yeah for sure ma'am. Let me know what's going on what's the topic about OK. For sure. Let me let me check my schedule. Can you check your schedule. Can you say look I have this this this and that that I need to finish today and you precise what the things are. You say I have to write my assignment. I need to get the groceries and I need to help my dad with something instead of saying I have a lot of stuff to do. Being precise is always better. It gives you more authenticity and you seem more genuine and more trustworthy. It basically just shows that you're not just saying no because you just don't feel good. And even when you don't feel like it you can always. You can also use this strategy because it's really helpful and you carry on to say I don't think I can help today but I will try to finish things as fast as possible and if I do the right time I'll let you know. And then we can work on the essay of e he's not going to feel as good as when you said I have an hour and let me help you with the curriculum or with the outline of the of the essay. But he's not going to feel as bad as just saying no sorry man I can't I have a lot of stuff to do today and just try it next time somebody asks you to do something. Try the first scenario. Say no bluntly that you have a lot of stuff to do and see how you feel and see how they feel. You feel negative emotions just back. Close your eyes. Think about positive emotions what you

are going to do in this time and move away from these sad and bad emotions and trials or the other scenario. Get excited. Ask him questions. Let him talk. Let him let him see that you're interested and then if you really have the time to spare do it. If you have six hours do it. If you have one hour do it or if you don't have time. Say look I have this this and that to do. I'm going to try to finish them as soon as possible and then I'll help you then the person knows that even though you're not helping right now but you have him on your mind and you're going to try to finish things fast so you can help him. And even if you don't he will consider it as not a person who said no not a person who just refused to help but as a person who tried his best but he just had a lot of stuff and you just couldn't help. You can add to it saying at the end if you didn't find any time you can call him or see him and say look I still have this to get it over with if I don't find the time I'm sorry but next time you need anything just let me know and I'll see what we can do about it. This is exactly what emotional intelligence would look like. You are taking care of your proper emotions. You're taking care of the other person's emotions in a way that of e the other person's emotions if they're bad emotions they will affect your own emotions. We already talked about this. So you're being emotionally intelligence with your own emotions and with the other person's emotions as well. Now going further more into emotional intelligence some concepts that we already talked about and some concepts that are kind of new that we need to discuss real fast and that you need to keep in mind because there are also a part of raising your emotional IQ and first things first stop blaming others when something happens and you blame others you will feel helpless you will feel that the other person has the control over the situation and you had no control over it. The reason why this happened is because of what other people did and not what you did. And you can never change what other people did but you can always change what you are going to do. So if you got a bad grade and you just say the professor just doesn't like me or the professor it's just too hard on the students even when you're studying for the next exam you're going to have these emotions where you're just going to think that even though you're going to study hard and no matter how hard you study the professor is not going to give you good grades. And this of e will affect the quality of your studying. But if you used your emotional intelligence and said No I don't want to blame the professor I want to blame myself maybe I didn't study hard enough now in this case

when you want to study you're going to have emotions and a mentality that's saying you need to work harder. You need to study harder for you to get a better grade because it's all up to you. And this will affect the quality of your studying and an absolutely positive way. And you know it you can control situations way better than other people. So stop blaming others. Take responsibility yourself. Even when there is some blame to put on other people try to work it out yourself. Because as we said you have more control over yourself than over other people and with control comes stability and with stability comes stable emotions. Now working in an emotionally intelligent way will help you get these positive and good emotions in while your brain in the way that you wanted it to be wired. Second thing is avoid making excuses. And this is interrelated with stop blaming others when you blame others. You are usually giving excuses but it's not just about blaming others making excuses can be you saying I can't go to the gym because I can't afford supplements this excuse right there you're committing emotional suicide because first you're not go into the gym and this will hurt the process of wiring and making out of exercising a habit or a lifestyle and then you're getting more bad emotions. And by saying I don't have money and all of this just because you wanted to make an excuse. But if you did not think about excuses you want to go to the gym and you want to make it a habit. You don't look at excuses. You just look at executing and just look at going to the gym and you make a habit out of it even though results are not going to be the same for example with our supplements. But in three months when you save up some money and you buy supplements you're not going to start from scratch you're going to start from three month into the gym. You have good power. Your body's getting better. You can lift more. And the supplements will help you even more. Third is learn how to communicate. And one of the most important techniques to learn how to communicate is of e to counter them when you're having bad emotions that might cause bad consequences. That we already talked about before. And another way to deal with it if you find that you have a lot of problems communicating with people you might want to get Dale Carnegie's other book How to Win Friends and Influence People. It's one of the best books I've ever read. When it comes to influencing others communicating and building trustworthy authentic connections on a daily basis it would also help you avoid these arguments and all these situations that would actually hurt the relationships and affect the way you communicate in a negative way. And because this is also a very important

topic and we communicate every single day if we don't know how to communicate properly it can cause us a lot of problems on an emotional intelligence level. And furthermore on a plastic brain level. So there's going to be also an article regarding this problem. Now the next technique is to embrace change. Most people are afraid of change. Sometimes people are excited to change but most of the times when a sudden change happens in your life you will not feel comfortable at all. And these bad emotions that comes with this unexpected change you need to be aware of them and to be emotionally intelligent. You need to switch them into positive emotions as we talked about before once you become aware of them and this will bring us to the last technique that we have which is focus and focus on introspection focusing on introspection is basically you becoming aware of your emotions. You every single time you're feeling uncomfortable or or you have some feelings that are making you feel bad. Look into your mind and ask yourself what's going on. What kind of emotions and my feeling and then deal with it. Switch up these bad emotions into positive emotions that would actually help you look at change as an opportunity to increase your neuroplasticity. You have more experiences. That's one way to look at it. If you just look at change as an opportunity for you to enhance your neuroplasticity to enhance your brain and build more connections and more neural networks. This by itself will make you embrace change instead of dwelling on it. And lastly being optimistic as we said there is going to be an article about it to know more information about it. But it's one of the most important when it comes to emotional intelligence and just ticking away the bad emotions are being optimistic. Just looking at the positive and the positive would always give you good emotions and this would bring us to the end of this lecture. Mastering these techniques you need to make out of Emotional Intelligence a lifestyle that supports you not drag it down. You need to use these techniques in neuroplasticity reinforce desired actions with emotional charge and protection and avoid network disruption by using prevention and adaptation methods. All the techniques methods that we discussed in this lecture. If you use them and you understand them and you look into them in an emotionally intelligent way it will not just help you on a day to day basis. It will not just help you with your mental and physical health but if you are putting in the right actions that you want to wire in your brain it can change your life. When it comes to neuroplasticity you will find yourself wiring all these actions way easier than you would if you were having bad emotions. The

goal is to understand how important emotions are and of e that reflects in all the different examples that we gave and to understand how to use it to your own advantage. Which basically means how to be emotionally intelligent and how to focus on the good emotions to reinforce the desired actions and a huge part of it is to also use bad emotions to prevent undesired actions. So when you want to stop something and every single time you do it you enjoy it then you love it and you think about every single thing that you love about it and not the things that are actually hurting you. You are not being emotionally intelligent when you want to stop smoking and every time you smoke you have emotions of joy in that that seems that you can't really control when in fact you can. You are not being emotionally intelligent but if when you smoke you feel shame of yourself wanting to stop and you just can't you feel shame about what you're doing to your body when you're smoking and you imagine the smoke getting in your lungs and ruining them when you imagine yourself getting a chronic disease that will hurt your health a lot and you do all of these things while you're smoking instead of having these emotions of joy. You'll have emotions of anger sadness disappointment and the more you do it. If every single time you smoke you think about these things as we said the Human Nature wants to avoid bad feelings bit by bit you will start to wire this in and every single time you want to smoke you will have these bad emotions and bad feelings and because the human nature wants to avoid it. This will help you if you're trying to quit smoking. Now physical dependence on the nicotine is a different story and it can be hard especially when you're suffering from withdrawal symptoms. You'll feel a lot of discomfort and you're going to learn way more about this in the habits section how when you have physical dependency on something how your body on purpose would make you feel discomfort and would make you feel like the only way to feel comfortable is to go back to the thing that you're withdrawing from the thing that's that you have physical dependency on and that's where most people were given and they would just go back to smoking or whatever habit they're trying to stop. But for now this is more enough for you to understand and be emotionally intelligent work on these techniques and be consistent and you will start seeing results in no time.

CHANGE THE ENVIRONMENT, IMPROVE YOUR LEARNING Till very recently it was thought for instance that to be very efficient when learning you have to keep a very steady calm environment you have to be in the same place. That is very similar to the place where you first heard the information, for instance, you have to sit at a desk and to sit up straight and have a pencil in your hand and to be exactly like in school. And in this way, Your learning is very efficient. But many studies and neuroscientists lately are contradicting this. This general traditional view on learning because it seems that the brain is more active and the retention what we memorize what we remember is much better much more like the amount of the information and the clarity of what we remember is bigger if we vary the environment if we vary the instances when we are learning. Why would that be important? And why is that possible. How is this possible. Well why it's important to know how we can make learning more effective and better. But why is this possible. Because when we are learning something so the brain is there with his 40 billion 40 million subconscious bits per second out of the bought environment that it absorbs so the moment when we are in a new environment the brain is more alert to the changes. So whatever can menace us or help us or whatever it is more alert. And this is important because if it is more alert it will absorb the information better. If we are in the same at the same desk with the same pen with the same white piece of paper in front of us looking at the same window the brain says oh it's the same thing and is not interested. It's not interesting to remember the information. Therefore it's good to change. The first rule is never learned embed that's the first rule because their learning slips easily into something else like the cold sleep. But other than that it's very good to change the environment. For instance, some days maybe when you're learning something for the history you go to a park

and some other days you learn in a coffee place in some other days you go to a friend in some other days you are in your house but in a different room. It is important though that your environment is not disturbing. If you go to a discotheque or you go in now in a place where you have to be careful you I don't know if you are on the tallest building in the town on the margin. Maybe you're not very careful about what you're learning because you're very careful about surviving right. And if you are in a place where the noise is very strong and you are literally annoyed you won't be very efficient. Remember we learn better when we're happy when we are less stressed and when we like it. So go to places you feel good. Go to new places. The idea is to be safe right. It's good to be safe in a place and to be allowed. That's another idea. But other than that just to find enjoyable places it's time to put to use some of the strategies. Therefore I have a little task for you I hope it's fun. Make up a list. Take a pen and a paper. Change the place. Go to some other room. Make up a list of five places that could be fun and should be fun for you to learn in. I don't know some cafeteria you haven't been to someplace you. Some I don't know the park. You haven't been before or you are rarely going there. So the idea is not to be something completely familiar. Is not the same place you're going every day the same cafeteria you're learning with your friends. So it has to be new. It has to be fun it has to be I said allowed and safe. And if you will if you go there all to test yourself. yeah. So make some little subjects put some little subjects on the piece of paper and put them in a hat and make your review there for instance and see what happens.

THE TRIANGLE OF ESSENTIAL PHYSIOLOGICAL HABITS

In this lecture we're gonna be talking about exercising resting and nutrition of e throughout the e. We talked about this concept a bit and by now you know that these are essential concepts and essential habits that you need to have in order to ensure effective neuroplasticity. And of e in order to do that you need to have a healthy brain. You need to have a lot of brain cells and lot of neural links that are happening. And these three concepts are not as hard as some people think. They're actually pretty straightforward and really easy to understand. So as we discussed previously proper resting healthy nutrition and consistent exercising can and will ensure a better overall brain health. Now when we say proper resting we need to understand that each and every person has different needs when it comes to resting. Some people can live off four hours of sleep. Some people need six seven eight and second healthy nutrition you ensuring that of e your diet is healthy maybe include

intermittent fasting as as we talked about it before and each and every person's notion of healthy diet can be different. Some people think it's being being vegan is being healthy or being vegetarian is being healthy or it doesn't matter. But at the end of the day if you're not eating an excess of sugar salt or processed foods you'll be good. And lastly consistent exercising of e people can invest time that other people can't invest. Some people are just busier than other people can practice for six or seven days a week. But the good news is we already talked about this is that you do need more than 30 minutes three times a week and it can be as simple as squeezing 20 minutes before you wake up and 20 minutes before you sleep. If you wake up 20 minutes before and you go to bed 20 minutes later these are the 40 minutes you need to finish your exercise. But now the thing about exercising is that exercising is usually when we're talking about habits is considered as a keystone habit. When you guys get to the habits section you will understand way more the concept of keystone habits. But in a nutshell there are some habits that just for the fact that you're doing these habits would generate other habits that you would do automatically. And this is exactly the example we're talking about right now. All of these three habits are actually interrelated and highly correlated when you start exercising. You have the tendency to eat better food and your body will adapt to better sleep schedules because your muscles are tired and you need proper resting and your body knows this. In this case what we're getting to is the following if you focus on each and every one of these habits separately is going to be a bit hard for you to manage all of them. But if you just focus on reinforcing the habit of exercising nutrition and sleep they will just come along automatically. So set a fitness goal that you have and use the SMART goals techniques that are included in the e and the time management techniques and planning so you can ensure that you will have a plan and you will eventually execute and make out of exercising a habit to eventually make it part of your neural network once you have this image of how you want to become in your head when you start exercising and you notice that you need to lose your belly and you drink a lot of soda and eat a lot of junk food well automatically to be able to get to where you want to get you have to cut down on these things and you're moving into a healthier diet. And then you go exercise your muscles and you get really tired you burn a lot of calories at the gym. Now when you go back home your body needs to rest. And that's why you'll be able to sleep better because your muscles needs recovery and before you know it you developed all of these habits altogether.

And two of them were automatic following the keystone habit method. Now we're going to go deeper into the concept of resting sleep serves to reenergize the body's cells. It also works on clearing waste from the brain. And on top of that it supports learning and memory. So taking a 15 to 20 minute nap during the day had similar effects in the brain and adding of e increasing the numbers of brain cells. Usually when you're a professional and you have a really busy life you don't always get the sleep that you want or the sleep that you need and you don't usually rest a lot. You're always in a constant state of thinking about what you have to do in working. And a lot of people when they start to get tired a little bit during the day they take a nap and a different instances. I heard people who were talking about a half a minute not that they wanted to take that turned into six hours. And what that does is going to be instinctive response for the difference between day and night and how our sleep schedule works accordingly. And this very long nap is actually not beneficial at all. What researchers found is that if you take a 15 to 20 minute nap during the day is much more effective than taking a one hour nap and the reason why is because there is something called the sleep cycle and somebody sleeps he goes into different phases and usually sleepers pass through five stages. One two three four and R E R M stands for Rapid Eye Movement. But what you need to understand is that while you sleep you go through these cycles of sleep states and the first phase we talked about phase number one is usually referred to as the phase where the sleep is still very late. And then this is followed by a deep sleep and a dream state referred to as E M what we mentioned before. Now once you go through the sleep cycle you have to go through several stages before you wake up. This is the part where your brain thinks it's time to rest and then the sleep cycle starts. And to be able to rest properly there are a certain number of or Ms that you need to go through if you go through all of them. You're going to feel very well rested but then when you skip one of them you're not going to feel as good. And this would probably add up on the next time you're going to rest. That's why when you have two three four days of poor sleeping then the weekend is here. You're going to sleep a lot. So the purpose of a 15 20 minute now is to not fall into this cycle because once you fell into your sleep cycle it doesn't matter what time you wake up unless you finish all the Ori and phases that you need to go through. You will feel groggy and pretty sleepy actually. And of e this has side effects on your brain where you're not resting properly. You're not getting the right amount of energy your brain needs brain cells

will start to die and with brain cells dying. This will affect your brain's neuroplasticity by now you must know this by heart. So ensuring a good sleep schedule where you get anywhere between six to eight hours of sleep ensuring that you don't use your phone right before you sleep because it can also affect your sleeping cycle when you're looking at your screen your brain thinks that because of the sleep that it's still daytime and this is one of the biggest problems nowadays for kids when they need to sleep. And finally if you are ever really tired that you need a nap go for it but go go for a really long nap make it a short 15 to 20 minute nap and that's it. And believe me try it. And when you wake up you're going to feel way more energized than the previous times where you took a one or two hour nap. Now we're going to go back to exercising. We're going to go through it very quickly because we already talked about it a lot. And by now you guys know most of the things concerning exercising so I'm just going to pinpoint some ideas that are really important in case you missed them the last time. Exercise helps memory and thinking through both direct and indirect means meaning that going to the gym itself lifting weight and exercising for example whatever the type of exercising is it doesn't matter if you go to the gym or go for a run your willpower that you're using and your motivation is increasing and it's ensuring neuroplasticity in your brain when it goes to these two concepts in the same time when you exercise. There are nutrients and proteins that are released in your body that would help the brain a lot. The combination will improve mood and sleep and it will reduce stress and anxiety and finally ensuring proper diet. Increasing the consumption of the brain foods. It will give you an advantage when it comes to mental energy levels. It will also help boost the number of cells which plays a primary role in neuroplasticity. Is going to be an article in the e with a list of brain foods the more you eat these the more brain cells you have the more mental energy and brain energy you will have. And of e when you have more of these you have way more brain plasticity. So one last thought before the end of this lecture I had a lot of friends who asked me about neuro stimulating medications and I'm not talking about triggering medications like ADHD medications Adderall or Ritalin I'm talking about products that you can find on them in the market over the counter that claim that they can boost your focus your energy level and your neurological state. And research is still not really clear on whether these would actually help or not. I did my own research and I actually tried them. I personally did not feel a difference. However there are substances and

in ingredients in those pills that are known to naturally boost memory and give more brain energy. But of e each body would adopt differently to these nutrients so if you ever run across a brain stimulant make sure to check the ingredients and what's in the pill and then research to see if those are ingredients that would actually help with whatever they're claiming to help. And if the answer is yes you can test it out and see if it works well with you. And if you see that it doesn't suit you you will just know because you won't feel a difference.

LIMITING AND EMPOWERING BELIEFS If you believe you can do a thing or if you believe you cannot, you're usually writing Henry Ford. There are two types of beliefs empowering belief and limiting beliefs. limiting beliefs prevents us to reach our goals. While empowering beliefs cause us to reach our goals. The first step to changing limiting beliefs is to forget about them. limiting beliefs such as I cannot do this could be transformed into Yes, I can. Take note and write down all your limiting beliefs and rewrite them one at a time into empowering beliefs. Whatever we believe shapes our reality, because we always act following our beliefs. Develop a belief system that supports you in getting what you want. Challenge beliefs that do not support you and replace them with empowering beliefs confidently, confidently expect good things to happen to you.

INTRODUCTION

After decades of scientific research, we now know that no one is born a genius, instead of talented people for a car to develop the skills they make seems, second nature, dedicating countless hours to practising correctly. So how do you need to approach practising to become a top performer? And what's part of your brain play in this process? Well, let's get into it.

NO ONE IS BORN A GENIUS With diligent practice, everyone can develop special skills from a young age. They say that Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's cool isn't by any musical notes, regardless on which instrument and Oh, it was plated, but few people know how he was able to do this. Have you ever wondered how Mozart achieved some such tremendous musical ability or how some people memorize thousands of tickets in pi as if doing so as easy as knowing your phone number? We used to think that genius was the product of innate talent or special spiritual gifts. But in reality, anyone can acquire highly specialized skills. It just takes practice the concept of perfect pitch, the ability that Mozart had to identify any musical notes with that known tone for reference, this skill is rare. Only one in 10,000 people can do it. perfect pitch is considered an example of an innate ability. Yet a recent study found that having perfect pitch is not innate at all. In 2014, Japanese psychologist Ayako Sakakibara set out to teach 24 children between the ages of two and six. How to identify the 14 different chords on a piano several times a day Every day for months, she taught the children coats. As the children progressed, Sakakibara tested them on individual nodes. At the end of the experiment, all the children could correctly identify notes templates. In other words, they had acquired the perfect pitch. It stands to reason that with the right training, any person can learn perfect pitch to this will require a diligent instruction and practice. However, starting at the age of six, the point is under favourable conditions perfect page is something that almost anyone can master. Humans can develop highly specific skills, regardless of the skilling question, beat music or otherwise, because of the way the brain responds to practice. You will learn how in the next lesson London's taxi drivers have bigger brains than you do a product of diligent training. London is a West sprawling city with thousands of streets that intersect at the orders of angles. With a population of more than 8 million. The city is also home to hundreds of restaurants, shopping malls, office buildings, and all sorts of establishments catering to its many inhabitants.

HOW TO USE MIND MAPS Our brain even if it sounds very hard to it seems very hard to accept wasn't built yesterday wasn't made even thousands of years ago but was made millions of years ago and the last improvement. The modern mind if you will be two hundred thousand years ago it was the last improvement made like in structure. Therefore everything it was built and everything was built. Everything that was made was made for a purpose that was made then. So if we use it now with our technological skills and everything it was it's the old circuits that we put on the new skills if you will. We're looking for a job as a hunter was looking for instance for prey we are desperate about. We have cravings of food for instance as though someone two hundred thousand years ago was desperate about finding something to eat. Let's say it's the same circuits. Yes, but we put we're adding on different and different and different subjects and purposes if you will. Why am I saying that? I'm saying that because it's very important to know how the brain was made and the purpose of it. For instance, 65 per cent of all the information that comes in our brain comes through our eyes. Vision is the most important. And why is that important because of what we. We walked on force and then we walked on twos and we were able to see very far and that was an advantage. That's why the brain knowing that this is an advantage allows vision to be the main information hub if you will. Therefore when we are learning it's very important to know these structures that can help us. For instance, our mind wasn't made to be linear because two hundred thousand years ago we didn't have writing. We didn't have a reading. This is a six thousand years ago invention. Therefore if you write something like this your brain isn't designed to remember this. If you write information like this but if you are doing something if you are seeing the information as you would see the environment as the map then the brain becomes interested.

UNDERSTANDING YOUR PERSONALITY AND YOUR HABITS In this lecture we're gonna be talking about personality and neuroplasticity. Is it possible to rewire your personality. Now the answer to this question is a bit more complicated than expected. But first off we need to talk more about personalities. What are the different types of personalities out there. First off we have extroversion people with high levels of personality dimensions people that are really outgoing and tend to be really comfortable in situations that involve social mechanisms compared to others that would feel a bit less comfortable or way less comfortable. These are the people who tend to restore their energy through being in social situations through being with other people. And second thing is agreeableness and these are people who are usually time sympathetic and there are more than happy to help others. They love helping others. A good example would be Mother Teresa and this personality creates a thin line between being poor creative and being competitive with others. Then we have conscientiousness. These are thoughtful people who have usually traits and mechanisms that are oriented towards detail. These are people who are usually driven they plan ahead and they're never spontaneous. Of e there are a few exceptions but usually they like to plan ahead and make sure that they have everything under control. Then we have neuroticism people who usually have a lot of mood fluctuations. They usually worry a lot. And in a nutshell they have a lot of emotional instability. Lastly openness people who are open to new experiences. People who are comfortable trying new things new ideas people who usually appreciate a variety of experiences and there are a lot of different positive or negative objectives that can describe one's personality traits. Some are lot of his objectives can be impartial independent observer an encouraging dependable confidence valiant trusting and other negative

objectives can be arrogant impulsive obnoxious rude self-centered thoughtless unfriendly vulgar and you can probably associate each and every objective with a certain type of personality. When one's personality tends to words neuroticism you'll notice they are sometimes Eragon. They might be vulgar and unfriendly they might be rude or sarcastic but another one whose personality tends towards extroversion is usually confident adventurous reliable and optimistic. Somebody who has a personality that tends towards openness can be observant imaginative cultured and capable. And of e adventurous personality is not just limited to psychological studies and assessments. It goes all the way to get into the business world and other different sections that you would never think of in organizational behaviour personality traits are one of the most important study subjects because each and every employee each and every person that works for a company has a different personality and the goal of the organization is to keep those employees are crucial these employees that are adding a lot of value. They basically don't want to lose people who are bringing them all sort of outcomes to the company. But each and every person has a different personality and therefore different personality traits. And you can't treat everybody the same way because if you do you treat everybody just like you treat a certain type of personality. Most probably it will be unfair or UN agreeable for the other personality traits that other people have. And this became one of the biggest issues in organizational behaviour. What are the coping mechanisms to deal with people with all these different personalities and be fair with all of them without making them feel uncomfortable or making them feel like there is something wrong or there is something missing in this organization that they are looking for and the thing about personality is even though it's something personal its effect is social. Yourpersonality has an effect on each and every person around you. And usually having positive personality traits and other positive influence on other people and having negative personality traits can have of e a negative effect on people around you. People with a personality that tends towards extroversion usually smile more to people to strangers in social situations and this will produce a lot of positive outcomes. Most people will smile back at you and will make both of you feel good. Now through personality comes your attitude different personalities are associated with different attitudes when it comes to certain tasks and social situations where you have to meet new people and talk to new people. If you have a job affair for example and you need to network

with a lot of different people the best personality type would be extroversion. He is the person who would deal with them the best. But maybe people whose personality tends towards neuroticism will have a really hard time during the job offer. They might get upset they might get irritated and just leave and the thing is we can never control situations of e unless you can actually control it. But generally speaking most of the situations are out of our hands. We can't control the situation but we can't control the attitude. So this person instead of getting irritated if he just said to himself I need to be here because this is to be good for me. There is a lot of advantage for me here and it just took a deep breath. He relaxed and he went for it. This is him controlling his attitude towards a situation that he cannot control. So after understanding all of these concepts we can now understand what is personality and personality. In a nutshell is the combination of thoughts emotions behaviours that makes you unique. Those the personality makes you you. When you don't act like you usually do. If you don't act according to your personality. People tend to say you're not you today. There is something different. You don't seem like that like the same person I know and hence came the famous quote People change. But if you want to rephrase this quote You need to say personalities change. People say the same but personalities change because of well we're going to talk about how it happens later on. A personality is the way you view understand and relate to the outside world as well as how you see yourself. Now the sad truth is most people are not satisfied with their personalities and they wish they can change it because personalities as much as they are personal. They have an effect and an impact on work experience mental and physical health social relationships and eventually financial situations. And going back to our question Can personality change. And as we said before the answer is not quite simple. It's a bit complex and complicated but I'll let you answer the question. Think about your personality as a kid when you were growing up. Think about your personality right now and think about if your personality changed during this period of time between the time you were born and where you are right now in between. Did your personality change. And if so how did it change. Were you a really shy kid and then you grew up to become this confident person who is social and he goes out and he's a he's an extrovert and he doesn't care about being shy. He's comfortable in social situations and he has really good coping mechanisms with social shared situations. Or is it the opposite. You grew up being really really confident and right now you feel like you're really

shy and you're really introverted you just want to stay at home because when you grow up you feel irritated and you just want to go back in and the majority of people will notice that their personality changed over time but they never had any control over it. They never said at the age of eight oh I want to become confident and then at the age of 12 boom he's confident there are a lot of different mechanisms that can interfere with this process. So what can change your personality. First labels and labels are what we call today as judging when somebody is judging you. Veryprobably putting a label on you. And people get affected a lot by judgments especially when it comes from people who are close to them from family acquaintances and peers and friends. When you don't want to go out and go out with your friends and your parents just say why your comfort in command go out. There's nothing to lose. Go have a good time. You're living your life. You only live once. Wherever they encourage you and they put this label on you that you're this confident person who likes to go out and who wants to live his life. And of e then it happens also with your friends. It's like oh my god this person. He always goes out he always he's always good in social situations. You're so confident you will grow up with this personality trait you will grow up feeling confident you will grow up feeling that you're comfortable in social situations. And the reason why is because of of e neuroplasticity. This is how your brain was wired and it's not because of you. It's not because of you. It's because of your social environment. But at this point it is for you because before people put a label on you right now you believe that this label is true even though it might not be true you believe it to be true. So you are labeling yourself as well. Now the roots of this problem are not caused by you. That's for sure. But right now you can control this problem because you are putting the label on yourself. Just the fact that you become conscious that other people put this label on you you're going gonna start to understand that this became a part of who you were and then you took this train or this label as part of your personality. And of e through labels comes affirmations. And I'll give a really quick example so you guys can understand immediately. We'll take a situation where you want to talk to someone you're attracted to before talking to him or her you will do some affirmations. You will talk to yourself. You will either say Oh my God he or she is beautiful. I'm gonna go talk to them or you might say no I can't go talk to them. What if they rejected me. What if they don't want to talk to me. What if I feel uncomfortable and then you start with other affirmations I'm not good looking enough. She's way

ahead of me. She's way or he's way more good looking than me or my body is just not really good. And I just don't have the confidence to go talk to them. And the thing is these things don't happen only once these happens on a repetitive basis and these affirmations would change your brain's wiring. These thoughts that you have whenever you want to talk to someone would actually become your reality neurons that fire together wire together of the neurons that are firing together are triggering emotions and feelings and personality traits that tends towards a negative personality traits being shy not being outgoing not wanting to talk to anybody is going to become a reality. These neurons are going to link together and they're going to fire every single time you face a similar situation a similar social situation. And eventually it's not just about social situations. It becomes a personality trait. It becomes an automatic mechanism that you have in your brain. Moving on we're going to also talk about stimulants usually stimulants have different effects on people. People who smoke for example a lot of weed tend to be really relaxed. They tend to avoid social situations because usually when a person is high they would feel a bit anxious in social situations. But that's the majority of people. Some people of e have different reactions to certain stimulants. But we're talking about the big image right here and people who drink a lot for example they have a tendency to have this personality that tends towards neuroticism. People who take ADHD medications especially ones with amphetamine and it like Adderall for example they tend to be more confident and more happy these stimulants can trigger these these personality traits inside your brain and in the long run it becomes hard wired in your brain and rarely talked about stimulants and how they can affect the brain. So not only they can affect the brain but of e they can affect your personality. And another thing we can also talk about is traumas we're not talking about physical traumas like physical injuries or damage or ones. We're talking about some deeply distressing or disturbing experiences that affects human beings. And a really good example would be a TV show actually. It's called Thirteen Reasons Why I don't know if anybody watched it before but if not basically talks about a girl who had a school committed suicide because of certain bullying that were happening around her in school around her social environment that led her to commit suicide and how this had a huge effect on the entire city and on all of her friends and acquaintances and people in her social circle. And this show had a lot of reviews and a lot of impact on

everybody. And it opened their eyes on how first bullying can of e affect people. But second on how this experience affected everybody who was involved or everybody who was close to the situation. People went from being these happy outgoing people who love being out with friends and in social situations to people who just want to stay and not talk to anybody. People who are always irritated people who are is experiencing a lot of different mood fluctuations and they had absolutely no sense of emotional stability and all this happened because of this trauma because of this distressing and or disturbing experience that happened with them another thing as well as time as we said before growing up and going through different phases in life can have different personalities that comes along with it. Another thing is brain structure and chemistry which basically means your genes your genes would play. Also a really important role in your brain structure and your brain chemistry. Nonetheless it's not something that is fixed. It's not something that you cannot change because the entire concept of neuroplasticity is based on the idea that you can change your brain structure and chemistry. So even if you're where you are accustomed in a certain way your genes gave you a certain brain structure and chemistry you can always change it because your brain is plastic. Moving on imagination also plays a huge role when you want to do something when you want to have some social experiences when there's something you want to do usually and mostly at a young age before embarking this you would sit down and imagine how the scenario would unfold. So let's say you got a new job a job for the summer and you don't really like where you're working or the job itself. So before starting the job you'll start imagining all the bad things that would happen if you're working as a waiter for example. You'll start thinking about all the bad customers that would be rude all the long hours you have to work. Now you will get really tired because you're standing and walking all the time. And obviously this will not have a good impact on your personality. But if you look at it in a different way in a way that wow I'll get the chance to meet a lot of people. I'll get the chance to have a lot of conversations with different people. I'll get to make some extra money and I'll meet a lot of new co-workers. This is you adopting a positive personality that can actually help you that's more beneficial than detrimental. Imagining how scenarios would unfold is a start but usually people's imagination tends to be oriented in a certain way. So if you think about this job in this way unless you get the dream job that you had with every single detail that you thought about or

imagined you will find an excuse to start imagining negative scenarios that would of e in return unfold some negative personality traits that are coming along with it. Moreover we have habits people who tend to work out every day for example they are facing social situations every day because they are going to the gym every single day. And as we said before working out is a keystone habit. So with this habit comes along proper diet comes along proper sleep and of e people are getting in better physical shape which will boost their confidence and encourage them to be in social situations. So this habit can push your personality from a shy introverted person to become this to have this personality that tends towards extroversion and being comfortable in social situations. And finally and most importantly emotions each and every thing we mentioned before is correlated with emotions without emotions all the things that we mentioned before from labels affirmations stimulants trauma all the way down to hobbies can not have a good effect on your personality unless it's associated with emotions. So how can we change our personality through the concept of neuroplasticity in a way that is beneficial for us in the way that we want to make it. How can we change our personality right now to personality that we want to have eventually. And the first thing to keep in mind is that it's not going to take a couple weeks or a couple months. It is a long process that you need to adapt and you're going to see the difference happening every single day. But bit by bit you will not wake up tomorrow having a completely different personality even if you do it's going to be fake and you're probably going to lose it after a while. But faking it is always good because there are emotions that are coming with it. And this is always positive for the neuroplasticity system to work effectively. Now the first step towards changing your personality is to identify the labels the labels that people put on you and the labels that you accepted and put on yourself because of e there are a lot of labels that people put on you you'll never actually accept or you never actually label yourself based on these people tend to say a lot of things but we don't but all the things that people say so be aware of what people are saying and what you are applying and find this combination that matches both what people are saying in what you are experiencing in your personality. And once you do you found what labels you have put on yourself and what labels you accepted. The first goal is to be mindful and to be aware of these labels. Second thing is to use affirmations that would contradict with these labels but do not use affirmations. I would say I am not something if people say that you're a shy

person and you want to be a bit more confident and outgoing using an affirmation as I am not shy is not a good affirmation. But using an affirmation like I am confident or I am outgoing is way better. Affirmations need to be positive not negative. So try to avoid words like I am not or know when you're using affirmations. In a nutshell it's what you are not what you don't want to be. It is exactly what you want to be and what you are. So it's not even I want to be confident or I want to be outgoing or I don't want to be shy. It's I am confident I am outgoing I am trustworthy I am reliable I am disciplined and always use them in a way that would help you overcome the labels that you discovered. And next you need to identify if you take any stimulants and if you do how these stimulants are affecting you and what you can do about it. If some semblance are giving you these bad personality traits and one way to actually know if this is what's happening is to stop stimulants for a while a week or two and see how you feel. C of your personality is changing even if it's changing a bit and you know that these stimulants are causing this certain problem in your personality. And if that's the case you either have to change this fact yourself stop taking the stimulants and getting over it but if it became a habit or if it became an addiction then you need to seek different ways maybe seek support seek help or seek other structures. Going into the psychology of habits and habit loops to be able to overcome these stimulants and of e when you do overcome them you're going to notice that all the personality traits that were coming along with them are going to start to fade away bit by bit. Next you need to think about traumas. Usually when you have this huge huge event that happened in your life that had a negative effect on you and that affected you in a trauma time away it's usually something that you will not forget about. It's something that is still in your mind and because it's in your mind it has an effect on your personality. And as usual the first thing to do is to identify become conscious of it know that there is a trauma and it is affecting your personality just like it did before and is still doing it right now. And the best way to deal with this trauma is to read it based on what we talked about in the memories lecture on how to overcome and change memories when you change the memory of a certain trauma and it becomes different in your mind the entire trauma will change and you might actually turn it into a positive thing that can affect your personality in the way that you wanted to be. So if you use the memory strategies in a way that you would replace this old memory with some memories that you think would reinforce the personality that you want to

reinforce it can actually be very beneficial. You're not just getting rid of the trauma but you're getting rid of the negative trauma and replacing it with a positive event or memory that can actually help you even more. You are basically turning the venom into water. And lastly the three last concepts that you can use to change your personality. First is imagination using your imagination to your advantage using your imagination in a way that would actually align with the personality you want to have. If you want to be confident don't use an imagination that would make you feel shy that would reinforce these thoughts on you that would eventually unfold in the social situation you're gonna face but use your imagination to your advantage. Identifying habits that might be causing a certain personality trait that you want to get rid of. And or she can do that first through mindfulness. And second you can change this habit or eliminated or create a new one through the different concepts that are present in their lecturers. And finally emotionally charged all of these events in a positive way. Associate all the different personality traits that you want to have through the labeling affirmations imagination habits trauma stimulants and associate them with positive emotions that would reinforce them in a positive way. As I've said before changing your personality will not take a couple of days nor a couple weeks or couple months. It's a long process but you're going to notice the change happening bit by bit. You're going to see it. And with enough resistance and consistency shortly people will start noticing it. And also as I said before people will start saying things like you changed. You're not the same person anymore and they might be saying it in a good way or in a bad way they might say it in a way where they seem happy about it or they might say it in a way that they seem a bit upset about this change. And no matter what their reaction is. Be careful because this is you falling into labelling again if they have a negative opinion about how your personality is turning up to be and you don't want them to have this negative opinion you're gonna start regressing and falling back into the old personality because you're associating this new personality with negative thoughts that are coming from negative social structures. Therefore you will be labeling this personality trait as a negative personality trait. You'll be falling again into your old personality trait and you're going back to zero.

WE ARE WIRED TO ENJOY LEARNING So if there are just one or two things that I want you to remember out of this e of whatever that I'm telling you about the brain about the learning. Actually, there are two things. The first thing is that our brain is designed to learn is a learning machine. It's it's made in such a way that makes learning fun and makes learning interesting. Why. Because it likes new things. And secondly, because it has so much processing power. Think about it. We have over 100 billion neurons in our brain is the synapses the connections between them are more than the stars in the whole universe. You understand it's a lot. I mean that the processing capacity is huge. Therefore just use it because this brain is designed is made to learn why because it's adaptive. If we learn we know and we know what it can happen and then we survive and then we thrive and everything you know is made for us to be well to survive and then to thrive. So just think about it. Learning is good why your brain likes it and is good for you. Let's stick to this. And the second reason why am I what I of what I want you to know about this though. Neuroscience for exams. Why is it good for you to know that it's because we have a place in our brain. You have that place. I'm sure you do. I have the help place and we all have it. And it's somewhere deep inside. Let's say this is the side of the brain is some somewhere deep inside is like here. Let's pretend this is my eye. If it turns out to be really nasty let's just pretend it's me. No not someone you know.

NEURAL NETWORKING STRUCTURES REWIRING MENTAL EXISTENCE And the previous lecture we gave a general insight on the concept of neuroplasticity. On what we're going to see throughout this e. And we also briefly discussed how neuroplasticity can change your entire life. Now as we all know neuroplasticity is backed up by science. So understanding the scientific approach is necessary. And of e we need to go above the concept of neuroplasticity itself. We're going to talk about concepts that are related but they are kind of different. We're going to talk about the brain's gray matter the sign ups as in details and you are going to discover some fascinating concepts that will help you even more when it comes to understanding neuroplasticity. So according to Wikipedia gray matter contains most of the brain's neuronal cell bodies. The gray matter includes regions of the brain involved in muscle control and sensory perception such as seeing hearing memory emotions speech decision making and self-control. Now when the proportion of gray matter changes guess what's going to change as well. Of e the cell bodies synopses and the neural structure that is formed inside the gray matter and for those of you who don't know what the gray matter is it is a tissue inside the brain and the spinal cord that has a lot of nerve cell bodies and branching dendrites that comes from the axons until at the end of the 20th century scientists assume that gray matter could never increase in adults. But of e recent research found that this is not true. Now age is negatively associated with gray matter volume. Elderly people shows lower volumes of gray matters in the brain. Nonetheless when it comes to neuroplasticity we look at things in a different way. Every single person as we said before whether it's a baby whether it's a child whether it's a teenager an adult or an elderly person can be able to change his brain his neural structure through the concept of plasticity. However we need to keep one thing in mind even

though scientists found a lot about neuroplasticity and even though we got to a point where we can hike our neuroplasticity in a very effective way we need to keep in mind that the concept of neuroplasticity still has a lot going on. There is an ongoing research about this concept that will not stop until we get to a point where we know everything about it of e at this point. There are some things about neuroplasticity that we're not sure of or that we don't actually know.

MUSICAL THERAPEUTICAL METHODS FOR STABILITY And this lecture we're going to be talking about the neuro plastic wiring through subliminal music therapy and the concept of this lecture is very easy to understand because right now by pausing this lecture and putting any song that you like you will feel a certain change in your mood and your mental state or in your emotions you might feel a bit more happy you might feel a bit more relaxed or you might feel a little bit sad but that's exactly where you see that music can have a very huge impact on the brain. There are a lot of people nowadays that can not function on a daily basis without listening to music. People who are addicted to music there are people who would feel way more anxious in social situations if they don't have their earphones plugged in and listening to music and that says something. It says that even though music can help a lot. It can also have a lot of detrimental effects. Your music has deep roots with the plasticity through music and the science of neurology emerged from musical therapy. Now what music therapy is is a clinical and evidence based use of music interventions to accomplish individual goals within a therapeutic relationship. By a credentials professional last completed and approved music therapy program according to Wikipedia. And in this lecture we're not gonna go through the classic music therapy system. We're going to look at musical therapy from neuroplasticity standpoint that is a little bit different. The goal is not just to give you what to do each and every situation needs a different approach. And since we as instructors cannot know exactly what each and every person wants to use the music therapy for the goal is to make you understand the entire system and implement the best solution. Awesome. So the first question is How is music processed in the brain. Well there are eight functions in the brain that music can usually influence. We have sensory processing memory attention emotion regulation language production language comprehension motor movement and motor movement planning. We have parts associated with our senses with our

motor skills language and culture. Attention memory and even emotions and if at any given point you know that there is anything going on in your brain that is heading a lot of these spots such as memory and emotions and senses you immediately know that this is something that can affect your brain's plasticity a lot and obviously through all this information we can see that music can be an incredible neuro plastic learning and rehabilitation system by forming new neural connections and pruning existing neural connections and makes it possible to learn new behaviours and rethink them as well as relearned lost behaviours and the arrangements of the areas of the brain that respond to different similarly can change in response to altered circumstances and all of these can be the result of music therapy. Dopamine is one of the main hormones that is produced when music is played. Listening to music will release these dopamine. Music stimulates the same neural network that is involved in reinforcement with learning and reward. And the easiest thing to do for a habit to become automatic or for a behaviour to become wired is through reward. Your body loves it. Your entire system loves it and then it becomes wired. So you need to first ask yourself what type of music are you listening to. Is it a certain genre or song that gets you in your fields or is it any music in general. It's important to understand what it is exactly because we're talking about emotions. And once you understand the music you understand your emotions and then you need to analyze everything which describes you more. You need to look at different scenarios and see which one describes you the most. Some people said I find no pleasure in activities until I listen to music. The second music goes away so does my emotions. Some people say whenever I hear a certain song I feel this overwhelming amplified sense of emotions in me and I just love it. And the reason why they love it is because of of e the dopamine rush. Now the truth is music becomes a habit just like chewing gum or smoking a cigarette. It just becomes a habit that gives you pleasure is something you do. It's a behaviour that you do you put on music and then there's a routine. Some song that you listen to and then there is the reward and it's just a habit system that you need to solve. But what we want to look at is not a you have a problem always listening to music. The problem we want to look at is how can we use music to your advantage because it's such a powerful tool. And the answer is really simple. Listen to what you want to be. If you want to be sad listen to sad songs. If you want to be happy listen to happy songs. If you want to feel confident listen to music that is upbeat. Maybe that has some lyrics that would make

you feel comfort in some lyrics that you have a certain connection with or a certain song that maybe can make you feel more confident because it's linked to a certain memory and you use these to your advantage. Music as we said serves as the reward and the motivation. So by pairing both music and in non music ask dopamine is released during both. As a result the synaptic connections may be strengthened by LCP which is mediated by dopamine. This ultimately leads to the learning of a new task or behaviour for the music or reward so you can use it to actually make the process of neuroplasticity. Way way faster so not just that it's easy but it is certain that when you listen to certain types of music you'll experience certain emotions and then when you link these emotions that are coming from a song to a certain situation it will be attributing to words the neuroplasticity system that is taking place now. Some things that you need to keep in mind when you talk about music and neuroplasticity. First and foremost the sensory and motor integration behaviours are reinforced the most by music through sensory and motor integration. And I'll give the following example if you have a certain song that you listen to at the gym every single time you are lifting let's say a lot of heavy weights are doing an intense exercise usually after finishing this exercise you have a certain sense of reward inside of you and dopamine rush coming from the song itself and from the reward will have a big impact on you. You will have a big gulp in Russian side of you and then the song becomes linked to these high levels of Pleasure by itself. So even if you're not working out and you listen to it you would feel extra happy you would feel an extra rush of dopamine inside of you. So make sure when you want to use music to accomplish neuroplasticity to change a certain behaviour or create a new one. Make sure that your sensory and motor systems are in sync. And second thing is lifespan integration which means the more you listen to a song you have one of two possibilities you're either going to get bored of it and stop listening to it or you're gonna keep listening to it more and more and more and builds stronger connections with it through neuroplasticity. That explains why we have a lot of songs that we listen to for a while and then stop listening to and there are some songs that even after years of listening to when we listen to them we feel happy. Now these songs are just an example. There might be a lot of songs that you will listen to after a while that can make you sad. And this is all related to the subliminal understanding and effect of the song. Some songs I just linked to negative emotions or bad experiences or bad memories and therefore they will bring you bad emotions

and other music and other songs are linked to positive memories which can give you a lot of happiness and joy and opening. So whenever you want to use a musical therapy make sure to reflect at these three conditions and most importantly the first and the third being aware of the sensory and motor system integrations and being also aware of the subliminal understanding and effect of a certain song on you. One last example I will give in this lecture for you to also understand the subliminal effects of a certain song when exams come closer and a lot of people want to start studying for their exams. They start becoming sad or depressed or anxious and especially nowadays most people have this tendency to fight depression and anxiety with some happy songs. But the problem is a lot of the songs would actually give them a rush that is too high. It would throw them overboard this amount of stress that can be used as effective self pressure to study more and finish with the person has. When listening to these happy songs that talks about happy life and a lot of different different links can come through the lyrics but then the person becomes a bit more comfortable and even if they fail an exam they're not going to be as sad. And this can just give them one more reason to care less. Now I'm not saying you shouldn't listen to happy songs when you're feeling sad or upset. What I'm saying is you need to understand the subliminal effect of each and every song or experience you're linking a song to once you understand your sunscreen water systems well and once you understand the subliminal understanding and effects then work on the lifespan integration to make sure that the process of neuroplasticity is effective and very well fixed.

SELF-REGULATION USING AFFIRMATIONS AND REFLECTION

In this lecture we're gonna be talking about the neuroscience of self talk affirmations gratitude and self-regulation. We are moving from the external neuroplasticity process into the internal one self talk affirmations gratitude and self regulations are used by the most successful people in the world. And there was a lot of research that confirm that indeed all of these different concepts helped the brain long and long run. It helps with neuroplasticity for sure it would help the brain through building the neural networks. It helps the brain building links between neurons and then it helps with neuroplasticity because it reinforces it in a beautiful way. We're gonna start off by talking about introspection or self talk and when you say self talk you're saying introspection self-taught can be cheerful and supportive or negative and self-

defeating. It combines your conscious thoughts with your unconscious beliefs and biases. And this is how your brain processes and interprets daily experiences. When you see a girl looking at you. What are you going to say to yourself. You'reprobably going to say she's attracted to me and this will give you a dopamine rush in your body. You might even start to feel aroused and out of this. You get emotions and to be able to understand these emotions. You need introspection. Seeing a girl looking at you is one example but you can switch it all the way to all the different habits smoking to not exercising to losing concentration and focus very easily. All of them started with self talk. You try the cigarette and you say to yourself Wow this is actually really good. And then you start having emotions of joy and before you know it it's wired and you can't stop smoking. So always be careful what you're talking to yourself how you're using the self talk. Are you talking positive thoughts into yourself or negative thoughts. Because remember that these would affect emotions and emotions can cause through the process of neuroplasticity they can cause a huge disturbance. Now moving on we're going to talk about affirmations. And for those of you who don't know what affirmations are I'm going to give you a quick example about Tony Robbins who is one of the people who uses affirmations and tells people to use them as much as possible. In his documentary I'm not your guru. He said when he was broken he was going through really tough times. He would go for a run and he would keep repeating for an hour I'm unstoppable. I'm unstoppable and unstoppable. And guess what's going to be stuck in his head. After two weeks. So I think now you get what I'm talking about. What do you say to yourself consciously. It's not like self talking. There's no relations between conscious and subconscious here. You are using affirmations to your own advantage when you're not confident enough. You start saying I'm confident I'm confident I'm confident it will start to wire in your brain. That's how it works. Your brain can't separate reality from Niger nation. When you say I'm confident over and over and over again your mind will say yes you are not going to say no because you couldn't do this before. It's not about thoughts right now. It's just gonna become an automatic process. And the more you use these affirmations the better we're going to talk about gratitude later and you're gonna see that you can also use affirmations when it comes to gratitude. Just imagine walking for half an hour looking around you interesting. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Over and over again. Imagine repeating for half an hour. I'm grateful and grateful I'm grateful. I'm blessed.

I'm blessed. I'm blessed. You will definitely feel gratitude. It will make you feel better. And with consistency it will change the entire situation which of e brings us to gratitude. Practicing gratitude is also very essential for the neuroplasticity process. All the feelings all the emotions all the benefits that comes with gratitude. They help the overall brain health. They let you avoid a lot of mental problems. A lot of negative thoughts and they've been found to actually help with a lot of mental health diseases. And the technique is simple use the affirmations. This way you're being grateful in the same time you're focusing on affirmations and not focusing on two different things. You are reducing the mental toll and affirmations can be considered as a keystone habit. Because when you do affirmations every day you are improving your gratitude you're improving your willpower your confidence you can improve any factor or any part of your life and you don't even have to take time off for it. You can do it while you're driving to work in the morning you can do it at the gym even if you have music plugged in your ears just keep repeating inside. Just keep saying your head keep saying these words these affirmations and lastly self regulation despite all the different factors out there you can control your thoughts and your brain nobody can control your thoughts and your brain more than you there might be limitations. There might be an extent but there are also solutions to make yourself stronger and control these thoughts and these emotions and control your own raw brain better. And don't go bank your head trying to find different techniques to implement and try. You only need one which is meditation. We talked about it before and this is the last time I'm going to talk about it. You need to start with mindfulness. Once you start with mindfulness and meditation you will understand your thoughts. You'll be able to control your thoughts when you meditate and you're trying to focus on your breathing for example and you get a thought but then you need to keep focusing focusing on your breathing. So you would just let this idea go away. This thought would just disappear because you're you're focusing on your nose again on your breathing. So the next time you're just sitting around and then you have these negative ideas that are starting to build up you can easily just let go of them. And that brings us to the end of this lecture.

PRACTICE CHANGES YOUR BRAIN if you want to be a taxi driver in London, you have got to know your way around this maze. By some tasks, like memorizing all of London's streets might seem impossible, humans can learn many difficult skills given the brain's ability to adapt. Just as your body grows stronger when you lift weights. Your brain is plastic, meaning it changes when you train it. And neuroscientists at the University College London experimented to test this idea in the 2000s As part of her work, she compared the brains of London taxi drivers with those of non-drivers. She felt that cab driver had a larger posterior hippocampus, the part of the brain that helps to navigate space and memorize locations. Also, drivers who have been the trades, the longest had the largest hippocampi to ensure the data she gathered was scientifically relevant. That is that the cab drivers did not just start with large hippocampi, which helped them accelerate the job. She scanned the brains of two groups of people. Her two groups were people about to start taxi driver training and ordinary non-drivers as a control. At the start. She found no difference in hippocampus size between the two groups. Four years later, however, when she performed the test again, she found that the hippo can be of the now train taxi drivers for larger than those of her control subjects. This study implies a connection between navigation skills and the size of the brain's posterior hippocampus. When trained, this part of the brain can grow, becoming capable of executing tasks it could not handle before deliberate training. So now we know that practice can change the human brain, but does practice affect thinking or the way we perceive situations.

PRACTICE DOES MAKE PERFECT The images stored in long term memory help people excel at a variety of complicated tasks. When you read about Steve Jobs, you probably think of the inventor of the iPhone holding an iPhone with a smiling face. When this happens, your brain sees the picture. This is called a mental representation. Mental representations are structures that are stored in the brain that correlate to particular objects. Images move mints are anything that the brain might have processed and stored for later retrieval. in a broad sense, mental representations allow you to sidestep your short term memory and ability that can be quite useful. Short term memory is great for certain things, like remembering the words you just read to understand the sentence. But to memorize an entire language, you need the power and capacity of your long term memory. Simply without the ability, without the ability to store all the rules of a language in your long term memory, you will not be able to communicate with the ease that you do here is for mental representations come into play. These will organize patterns of information stored in long term memory allow you to respond quickly to the situation in which you find yourself. For example, these representations remind you that Steve Jobs was a famous businessman, which is why you do not need to constantly relearn the significance of his invention every time we come across a reference to it. Mental representations also play a role as a performance booster. We know it takes years of practice to become an expert in a field. When driving a taxi or playing chess. Only to practice can you develop detailed representations of the situations or movements that matter to your performance? Let's consider the sport of baseball. Plenty of fans have a handful of mental representations stored away but they're nothing compared to those of professional baseball players. Because all of the practisings they do, professional players have

developed sophisticated representations of all the potential trajectories of a baseball. This means that when a batter receives a pitch He can predict within a split second, how fast it will approach, whether it's a curveball or slider and know and know exactly how to swing his bat. In this way, practice does make perfect, but not any type of practice we'll do next, he will learn which type of practising is required to develop special skills.

UNDERSTANDING YOUR PERSONALITY AND YOUR HABITS In this lecture we're gonna be talking about personality and neuroplasticity. Is it possible to rewire your personality. Now the answer to this question is a bit more complicated than expected. But first off we need to talk more about personalities. What are the different types of personalities out there. First off we have extroversion people with high levels of personality dimensions people that are really outgoing and tend to be really comfortable in situations that involve social mechanisms compared to others that would feel a bit less comfortable or way less comfortable. These are the people who tend to restore their energy through being in social situations through being with other people. And second thing is agreeableness and these are people who are usually time sympathetic and there are more than happy to help others. They love helping others. A good example would be Mother Teresa and this personality creates a thin line between being poor creative and being competitive with others. Then we have conscientiousness. These are thoughtful people who have usually traits and mechanisms that are oriented towards detail. These are people who are usually driven they plan ahead and they're never spontaneous. Of e there are a few exceptions but usually they like to plan ahead and make sure that they have everything under control. Then we have neuroticism people who usually have a lot of mood fluctuations. They usually worry a lot. And in a nutshell they have a lot of emotional instability. Lastly openness people who are open to new experiences. People who are comfortable trying new things new ideas people who usually appreciate a variety of experiences and there are a lot of different positive or negative objectives that can describe one's personality traits. Some are lot of his objectives can be impartial independent observer an encouraging dependable confidence valiant trusting and other negative

objectives can be arrogant impulsive obnoxious rude self-centered thoughtless unfriendly vulgar and you can probably associate each and every objective with a certain type of personality. When one's personality tends to words neuroticism you'll notice they are sometimes Eragon. They might be vulgar and unfriendly they might be rude or sarcastic but another one whose personality tends towards extroversion is usually confident adventurous reliable and optimistic. Somebody who has a personality that tends towards openness can be observant imaginative cultured and capable. And of e adventurous personality is not just limited to psychological studies and assessments. It goes all the way to get into the business world and other different sections that you would never think of in organizational behaviour personality traits are one of the most important study subjects because each and every employee each and every person that works for a company has a different personality and the goal of the organization is to keep those employees are crucial these employees that are adding a lot of value. They basically don't want to lose people who are bringing them all sort of outcomes to the company. But each and every person has a different personality and therefore different personality traits. And you can't treat everybody the same way because if you do you treat everybody just like you treat a certain type of personality. Most probably it will be unfair or UN agreeable for the other personality traits that other people have. And this became one of the biggest issues in organizational behaviour. What are the coping mechanisms to deal with people with all these different personalities and be fair with all of them without making them feel uncomfortable or making them feel like there is something wrong or there is something missing in this organization that they are looking for and the thing about personality is even though it's something personal its effect is social. Yourpersonality has an effect on each and every person around you. And usually having positive personality traits and other positive influence on other people and having negative personality traits can have of e a negative effect on people around you. People with a personality that tends towards extroversion usually smile more to people to strangers in social situations and this will produce a lot of positive outcomes. Most people will smile back at you and will make both of you feel good. Now through personality comes your attitude different personalities are associated with different attitudes when it comes to certain tasks and social situations where you have to meet new people and talk to new people. If you have a job affair for example and you need to network

with a lot of different people the best personality type would be extroversion. He is the person who would deal with them the best. But maybe people whose personality tends towards neuroticism will have a really hard time during the job offer. They might get upset they might get irritated and just leave and the thing is we can never control situations of e unless you can actually control it. But generally speaking most of the situations are out of our hands. We can't control the situation but we can't control the attitude. So this person instead of getting irritated if he just said to himself I need to be here because this is to be good for me. There is a lot of advantage for me here and it just took a deep breath. He relaxed and he went for it. This is him controlling his attitude towards a situation that he cannot control. So after understanding all of these concepts we can now understand what is personality and personality. In a nutshell is the combination of thoughts emotions behaviours that makes you unique. Those the personality makes you you. When you don't act like you usually do. If you don't act according to your personality. People tend to say you're not you today. There is something different. You don't seem like that like the same person I know and hence came the famous quote People change. But if you want to rephrase this quote You need to say personalities change. People say the same but personalities change because of well we're going to talk about how it happens later on. A personality is the way you view understand and relate to the outside world as well as how you see yourself. Now the sad truth is most people are not satisfied with their personalities and they wish they can change it because personalities as much as they are personal. They have an effect and an impact on work experience mental and physical health social relationships and eventually financial situations. And going back to our question Can personality change. And as we said before the answer is not quite simple. It's a bit complex and complicated but I'll let you answer the question. Think about your personality as a kid when you were growing up. Think about your personality right now and think about if your personality changed during this period of time between the time you were born and where you are right now in between. Did your personality change. And if so how did it change. Were you a really shy kid and then you grew up to become this confident person who is social and he goes out and he's a he's an extrovert and he doesn't care about being shy. He's comfortable in social situations and he has really good coping mechanisms with social shared situations. Or is it the opposite. You grew up being really really confident and right now you feel like you're really

shy and you're really introverted you just want to stay at home because when you grow up you feel irritated and you just want to go back in and the majority of people will notice that their personality changed over time but they never had any control over it. They never said at the age of eight oh I want to become confident and then at the age of 12 boom he's confident there are a lot of different mechanisms that can interfere with this process. So what can change your personality. First labels and labels are what we call today as judging when somebody is judging you. Veryprobably putting a label on you. And people get affected a lot by judgments especially when it comes from people who are close to them from family acquaintances and peers and friends. When you don't want to go out and go out with your friends and your parents just say why your comfort in command go out. There's nothing to lose. Go have a good time. You're living your life. You only live once. Wherever they encourage you and they put this label on you that you're this confident person who likes to go out and who wants to live his life. And of e then it happens also with your friends. It's like oh my god this person. He always goes out he always he's always good in social situations. You're so confident you will grow up with this personality trait you will grow up feeling confident you will grow up feeling that you're comfortable in social situations. And the reason why is because of of e neuroplasticity. This is how your brain was wired and it's not because of you. It's not because of you. It's because of your social environment. But at this point it is for you because before people put a label on you right now you believe that this label is true even though it might not be true you believe it to be true. So you are labeling yourself as well. Now the roots of this problem are not caused by you. That's for sure. But right now you can control this problem because you are putting the label on yourself. Just the fact that you become conscious that other people put this label on you you're going gonna start to understand that this became a part of who you were and then you took this train or this label as part of your personality. And of e through labels comes affirmations. And I'll give a really quick example so you guys can understand immediately. We'll take a situation where you want to talk to someone you're attracted to before talking to him or her you will do some affirmations. You will talk to yourself. You will either say Oh my God he or she is beautiful. I'm gonna go talk to them or you might say no I can't go talk to them. What if they rejected me. What if they don't want to talk to me. What if I feel uncomfortable and then you start with other affirmations I'm not good looking enough. She's way

ahead of me. She's way or he's way more good looking than me or my body is just not really good. And I just don't have the confidence to go talk to them. And the thing is these things don't happen only once these happens on a repetitive basis and these affirmations would change your brain's wiring. These thoughts that you have whenever you want to talk to someone would actually become your reality neurons that fire together wire together of the neurons that are firing together are triggering emotions and feelings and personality traits that tends towards a negative personality traits being shy not being outgoing not wanting to talk to anybody is going to become a reality. These neurons are going to link together and they're going to fire every single time you face a similar situation a similar social situation. And eventually it's not just about social situations. It becomes a personality trait. It becomes an automatic mechanism that you have in your brain. Moving on we're going to also talk about stimulants usually stimulants have different effects on people. People who smoke for example a lot of weed tend to be really relaxed. They tend to avoid social situations because usually when a person is high they would feel a bit anxious in social situations. But that's the majority of people. Some people of e have different reactions to certain stimulants. But we're talking about the big image right here and people who drink a lot for example they have a tendency to have this personality that tends towards neuroticism. People who take ADHD medications especially ones with amphetamine and it like Adderall for example they tend to be more confident and more happy these stimulants can trigger these these personality traits inside your brain and in the long run it becomes hard wired in your brain and rarely talked about stimulants and how they can affect the brain. So not only they can affect the brain but of e they can affect your personality. And another thing we can also talk about is traumas we're not talking about physical traumas like physical injuries or damage or ones. We're talking about some deeply distressing or disturbing experiences that affects human beings. And a really good example would be a TV show actually. It's called Thirteen Reasons Why I don't know if anybody watched it before but if not basically talks about a girl who had a school committed suicide because of certain bullying that were happening around her in school around her social environment that led her to commit suicide and how this had a huge effect on the entire city and on all of her friends and acquaintances and people in her social circle. And this show had a lot of reviews and a lot of impact on

everybody. And it opened their eyes on how first bullying can of e affect people. But second on how this experience affected everybody who was involved or everybody who was close to the situation. People went from being these happy outgoing people who love being out with friends and in social situations to people who just want to stay and not talk to anybody. People who are always irritated people who are is experiencing a lot of different mood fluctuations and they had absolutely no sense of emotional stability and all this happened because of this trauma because of this distressing and or disturbing experience that happened with them another thing as well as time as we said before growing up and going through different phases in life can have different personalities that comes along with it. Another thing is brain structure and chemistry which basically means your genes your genes would play. Also a really important role in your brain structure and your brain chemistry. Nonetheless it's not something that is fixed. It's not something that you cannot change because the entire concept of neuroplasticity is based on the idea that you can change your brain structure and chemistry. So even if you're where you are accustomed in a certain way your genes gave you a certain brain structure and chemistry you can always change it because your brain is plastic. Moving on imagination also plays a huge role when you want to do something when you want to have some social experiences when there's something you want to do usually and mostly at a young age before embarking this you would sit down and imagine how the scenario would unfold. So let's say you got a new job a job for the summer and you don't really like where you're working or the job itself. So before starting the job you'll start imagining all the bad things that would happen if you're working as a waiter for example. You'll start thinking about all the bad customers that would be rude all the long hours you have to work. Now you will get really tired because you're standing and walking all the time. And obviously this will not have a good impact on your personality. But if you look at it in a different way in a way that wow I'll get the chance to meet a lot of people. I'll get the chance to have a lot of conversations with different people. I'll get to make some extra money and I'll meet a lot of new co-workers. This is you adopting a positive personality that can actually help you that's more beneficial than detrimental. Imagining how scenarios would unfold is a start but usually people's imagination tends to be oriented in a certain way. So if you think about this job in this way unless you get the dream job that you had with every single detail that you thought about or

imagined you will find an excuse to start imagining negative scenarios that would of e in return unfold some negative personality traits that are coming along with it. Moreover we have habits people who tend to work out every day for example they are facing social situations every day because they are going to the gym every single day. And as we said before working out is a keystone habit. So with this habit comes along proper diet comes along proper sleep and of e people are getting in better physical shape which will boost their confidence and encourage them to be in social situations. So this habit can push your personality from a shy introverted person to become this to have this personality that tends towards extroversion and being comfortable in social situations. And finally and most importantly emotions each and every thing we mentioned before is correlated with emotions without emotions all the things that we mentioned before from labels affirmations stimulants trauma all the way down to hobbies can not have a good effect on your personality unless it's associated with emotions. So how can we change our personality through the concept of neuroplasticity in a way that is beneficial for us in the way that we want to make it. How can we change our personality right now to personality that we want to have eventually. And the first thing to keep in mind is that it's not going to take a couple weeks or a couple months. It is a long process that you need to adapt and you're going to see the difference happening every single day. But bit by bit you will not wake up tomorrow having a completely different personality even if you do it's going to be fake and you're probably going to lose it after a while. But faking it is always good because there are emotions that are coming with it. And this is always positive for the neuroplasticity system to work effectively. Now the first step towards changing your personality is to identify the labels the labels that people put on you and the labels that you accepted and put on yourself because of e there are a lot of labels that people put on you you'll never actually accept or you never actually label yourself based on these people tend to say a lot of things but we don't but all the things that people say so be aware of what people are saying and what you are applying and find this combination that matches both what people are saying in what you are experiencing in your personality. And once you do you found what labels you have put on yourself and what labels you accepted. The first goal is to be mindful and to be aware of these labels. Second thing is to use affirmations that would contradict with these labels but do not use affirmations. I would say I am not something if people say that you're a shy

person and you want to be a bit more confident and outgoing using an affirmation as I am not shy is not a good affirmation. But using an affirmation like I am confident or I am outgoing is way better. Affirmations need to be positive not negative. So try to avoid words like I am not or know when you're using affirmations. In a nutshell it's what you are not what you don't want to be. It is exactly what you want to be and what you are. So it's not even I want to be confident or I want to be outgoing or I don't want to be shy. It's I am confident I am outgoing I am trustworthy I am reliable I am disciplined and always use them in a way that would help you overcome the labels that you discovered. And next you need to identify if you take any stimulants and if you do how these stimulants are affecting you and what you can do about it. If some semblance are giving you these bad personality traits and one way to actually know if this is what's happening is to stop stimulants for a while a week or two and see how you feel. C of your personality is changing even if it's changing a bit and you know that these stimulants are causing this certain problem in your personality. And if that's the case you either have to change this fact yourself stop taking the stimulants and getting over it but if it became a habit or if it became an addiction then you need to seek different ways maybe seek support seek help or seek other structures. Going into the psychology of habits and habit loops to be able to overcome these stimulants and of e when you do overcome them you're going to notice that all the personality traits that were coming along with them are going to start to fade away bit by bit. Next you need to think about traumas. Usually when you have this huge huge event that happened in your life that had a negative effect on you and that affected you in a trauma time away it's usually something that you will not forget about. It's something that is still in your mind and because it's in your mind it has an effect on your personality. And as usual the first thing to do is to identify become conscious of it know that there is a trauma and it is affecting your personality just like it did before and is still doing it right now. And the best way to deal with this trauma is to read it based on what we talked about in the memories lecture on how to overcome and change memories when you change the memory of a certain trauma and it becomes different in your mind the entire trauma will change and you might actually turn it into a positive thing that can affect your personality in the way that you wanted to be. So if you use the memory strategies in a way that you would replace this old memory with some memories that you think would reinforce the personality that you want to

reinforce it can actually be very beneficial. You're not just getting rid of the trauma but you're getting rid of the negative trauma and replacing it with a positive event or memory that can actually help you even more. You are basically turning the venom into water. And lastly the three last concepts that you can use to change your personality. First is imagination using your imagination to your advantage using your imagination in a way that would actually align with the personality you want to have. If you want to be confident don't use an imagination that would make you feel shy that would reinforce these thoughts on you that would eventually unfold in the social situation you're gonna face but use your imagination to your advantage. Identifying habits that might be causing a certain personality trait that you want to get rid of. And or she can do that first through mindfulness. And second you can change this habit or eliminated or create a new one through the different concepts that are present in their lecturers. And finally emotionally charged all of these events in a positive way. Associate all the different personality traits that you want to have through the labeling affirmations imagination habits trauma stimulants and associate them with positive emotions that would reinforce them in a positive way. As I've said before changing your personality will not take a couple of days nor a couple weeks or couple months. It's a long process but you're going to notice the change happening bit by bit. You're going to see it. And with enough resistance and consistency shortly people will start noticing it. And also as I said before people will start saying things like you changed. You're not the same person anymore and they might be saying it in a good way or in a bad way they might say it in a way where they seem happy about it or they might say it in a way that they seem a bit upset about this change. And no matter what their reaction is. Be careful because this is you falling into labelling again if they have a negative opinion about how your personality is turning up to be and you don't want them to have this negative opinion you're gonna start regressing and falling back into the old personality because you're associating this new personality with negative thoughts that are coming from negative social structures. Therefore you will be labeling this personality trait as a negative personality trait. You'll be falling again into your old personality trait and you're going back to zero.

ENSURING COMPLEMENTARY NEURAL GROWTH AND WIRING

In this lecture we're going to be talking about neural growth pressing your neurons and the connection between them and increasing all the neural networks that you have that are interconnected with the cortical map. And of e the rest of the human body. And what this will do is that it will help you build your brain when you don't work on these things. The older you get the weaker your brain gets. And this is of e science when we talked about elderly people and young people and how their brain develops in a different way how when people age their brain starts moving backwards instead of instead of forwards. This is reality but when it comes to neuroplasticity itself there is no difference anybody can ensure neuroplasticity. Anybody can have new neural networks and you neural connections and new neural links not just young

people not just adults everybody. And by doing that you're increasing the size of your brain. You'reincreasing your brain power your brain energy during pressing the brain cells and neural connections and neural networks. As we said and this is you increasing and building basically your brain overall on the first exercise to do that can of e help a lot. It's intermittent fasting. You can create more brain cells and therefore improve your brain power. According to Dr. Mark Mattson a professor of neurology at John Hopkins University. Fasting has been shown to increase rates of neurogenesis in the brain neurogenesis is the growth and development of new brain cells and nerve tissues. And when we talk about brain cells nerve tissues we talk about neuroplasticity. I'm gonna include an article that talks and details about intermittent fasting and how you can do it. There are a lot of different ways that people use. There are a lot of different methods to to do this intermittent fasting. It can be fasting for 16 hours a day. It can be fasting eight hours a day. It can be skipping a meal as as an intermittent fasting. And of e the articles can guide you more through it. But for now what you need to know is that not only does fasting increase your rate of neurogenesis it also boost production of an important protein called DNF b it can be done as has been hailed as Miracle Grow for your brain median enough has been shown to play a role in neuroplasticity which allows the brain to continue to change and adapt it makes your brain more resilient to stress and more adaptable to change begin off helps to produce new brain cells. It protects your brain cells and stimulates new connections and sign ups while also boosting memory improving mood and learning. This one simple exercise that you can do twice a week or once a week or three times a week and that just consists of you skipping a meal or you're not eating not eating anything for six or eight hours. Keeping in mind that intermittent fasting doesn't stand in the way of your fitness goals in the country. Most studies found that it actually helps. So just go back and listen to all the benefits of intermittent fasting and then decide if it's worth adding this as a habit or routine to your life or not. Now moving on we're gonna talk about mnemonic devices mnemonic devices our techniques a person can use to help them improve their ability to remember something. In other words it's a memory technique to help your brain better and coach and recall important information. It's a simple structure that helps you associate the information to remember with an image a sentence or a word if there are two pages that you need to memorize and after memorizing you feel that you're still not 100 percent sure of how much you actually will you will

actually recall from the information that you actually memorized and you decide to do a illustration a drawing of the story. Then you look at the drawing and you memorize it. It's easier to memorize a few images in front of you a few drawings and to memorize two pages. But what these two images would do is every single time you forget something you forget what's next. You remember the images you remember the sequence of the story and you're more likely to remember what what part comes where one of the most effective mnemonic devices can be mind mapping which is also as I said before including the dis e using these mnemonic devices will help stimulate your memory and your recalling ability. It will boost your creativity which will overall increase the number of brain cells and neural structures that you have. Now lastly we're going to talk but some other techniques that can also help in terms of neural growth first. Expand your knowledge and information which right talked about before. And of e this would help with your neural growth. It will add more brain cells and it will ensure more neural links and neural systems and networks. Another technique would be using your non dominant hand. A lot of different concepts are related to this technique. Coming from your comfort zone all the way to your habits and your memory. So when you use your non dominant hand you'll be boosting all the different concepts that we talked about before and therefore you will ensure neural growth. And just a quick thought before continuing everything that we mentioned before would also help with neural growth and the purpose of this lecture is to just pinpoint some information that are important even if there is a little bit of repetition. It's important for you to know these concepts and become aware of them especially when I repeat how important some things are. And in this lecture there are going to be just some techniques also that are not in other lectures and there are also really really important for your overall nerve growth. Third exercise is doing an abnormal action sequence. What that means is try this. Take one hand that is stopping on your stomach and the other hand on your head moving in a circle motion or try moving one arm left and right and the other arm up and down even if at first you find that it's a little bit hard with consistency you'll get to a point where you can do it easily. At that point there are a lot of neural growth and of e a lot of connections that form a lot of neural networks that are interrelated with this action. So since it's an abnormal action it's going to create new networks and new connections and ensure overall as we said neural growth. Moving on to the fourth exercise solving a Rubik's Cube just by looking at it you can know

that this will ensure mental stimulation. It's not easy. It needs a memory. It needs creativity imagination. It needs very well understanding of what's going on. And of e experience because the more you do it the either the easier it will be for you to solve it. Some people nowadays can solve it in 10 seconds. Why. It's because of consistency of e it's hardwired in their brain. They know the ins and outs of it. They know how to solve it. And even with their their brain shut down even with their eyes shut down they can solve it easily. Imagine getting to a point where even if you're not looking at the Rubik's cube when you're trying to solve it it just seeing it at the beginning and memorizing where each and every thing where each and every square of color is you can solve it. And this is extra ordinary memory. Now moving on to the fifth exercise which is having sex. Research found that having sex would actually ensure neural growth. It will make your brain increase in size and it will ensure in more brain cells and neurogenesis processes happening neural networks forming because of different reasons including on the emotions that comes with it including all the different stimulations that you experience when you have sex. The sixth technique is not just a technique it's an entire concept that you need to be aware of which is emotional intelligence. The more emotionally intelligent you are the more control you will have over your emotions and therefore you'll be able to prevent bad emotions that would kill your brain cells and reinforce good emotions that would actually help you develop your brain get more brain cells and more neural connections. And lastly plastic unique is resting properly and avoiding restlessness. We all experience days where we feel restlessness we're all over the place we're so motivated want to do a lot of things and then you go to bed you barely see for three hours and you wake up the next day and you're so tired but you keep going back at it because you're restless and then the next day you just crash. This is killing your brain cells. If you don't sleep enough a lot of your brain cells will die. A lot of neural structures will start to dissolve and you will destruct a lot of things in your mental structure. Scientists found that the more you age the less sleep you need but if you're 18 19 all the way up to 30 35 and you're actively working and maybe working out and all that you need at least six seven eight hours of sleep to keep up your brain's health. And with all the techniques mentioned in this lecture this is where it comes to an end.

UNDERSTANDING YOUR MEMORY SYSTEM In this lecture we're gonna be talking about memories and neuroplasticity. The purpose of this lecture is to help you understand how memories are formed how they are different how to control replaced and eliminate some memories and see if it's even possible. Now we all know that memories affect us on a daily basis our past memories affect us till this day when a person fosters a certain experience whether it's good or bad positive or negative. This experience will eventually turn into a memory. We can write texts because of our memory. We can read because we memorized the alphabets and we memorized how it works. In a nutshell we function as the sum of our memories and of e growing up each and every event that turns into a memory has a certain influence on the way we perceive situations and how we handle them. So when something negative happens and it turns into memory it is usually associated with negative feelings and thoughts and as our human nature we want to always avoid pain and negative thoughts. We refer back to our memories to avoid these situations happening again and on the other hand when there is a positive experience it is usually associated with good memories and good feelings good thoughts and that's exactly why we act in different ways depending on on the situations and how our memory is associated with it. You will either feel that you're uncomfortable or you feel that you're happy and joyful. And of e this can all be traced to our neurological system. Now of e there are still a lot of questions that remain unanswered when it comes to memory and recalling. But generally speaking the storage capacity of the human brain is virtually limitless where an average adult can memorize up to 100000 words and even more the more you age the more your vocabulary will increase the more it will develop. So when people think that the older you get the less memory you have and the more your memory is affected in a negative way. In fact this is not true at all. The reason why when people get older their memory gets weaker is because the older

they get the less they train their brain muscle the less new experiences they have the less information and knowledge they try to absorb because they kind of know everything at this point and they don't have the energy to explore more things. And when you don't train your muscle it will get weaker. However when you use this muscle and you improve it you'll learn more you stimulate your brain more physical changes in your brain structure can occur researchers through MRI found that the brain structure will be different before and after learning processes. And lastly there is no main center of e when we talk about scientific approach we're going to focus on some parts of the brain more than others but memories are scattered all around our brain. They're all over the place. So in order to understand your memory more you need to understand the fundamentals. That comes from the scientific approach. Memory is the reactivation of a specific group of neurons formed from the persistent changes in the strength of connections between neurons. As I'm saying it. And as you can read it you can simply figure out that it is exactly what we talk about when we talk about neuroplasticity. It is the same process strength and connection between neurons form memories and the reactivation of these memories and how well you remember these memories depend on the strength of the connection or link between the neurons and every memory has a certain neural network or neural structure that is formed by the combination of all these neurons associated with this experience that turned into a memory. But there is a lot more to it than just bruises some changes in the strength of connection between neurons. Memories don't always just depends on consistency and repetition. You eat every single day but you probably can't remember what you had for lunch three days ago unless it was something out of this world that was associated with a lot of emotions unless you ate the best chicken wings you've ever had. You will most probably not associated with any kind of memory in the long term but when you have a certain experience that do turn into a memory neurons will start to communicate through synaptic connections through of e chemical structures and neurotransmitters and the stronger the link the better the more you'll be able to recall this memory. If your first relationship was a disaster and your heart was broken you will always be cynical when it comes to relationships and this memory will definitely affect you. But as time passes by you start forgetting about this and it always gets better with time. You don't remember as much. Sometimes you barely even remember it for months but then another relationship comes along and the same thing happens and

again it's going to take some time to forget about it and let's just say it happened the third time and the same thing happens. And at this point you're always thinking that your partner is the problem. But what if we pause for a second and think about what if you're the problem. What if those past experiences with different partners that led to you being hurt were stored in terms of memories and as their bad memories that got you a lot of bad feelings. Your brain wants to avoid them. So every time you're in a relationship and you feel like things are you're not really in control of the situation your brain will start acting in a way to remove this trigger. Your mind will associate relationships as a trigger that is linked to bad emotions and you being hurt. And of e this is not on the on the conscious level you'll you're not aware of this. It's in the subconscious level and that's exactly why it can be detrimental. But of e when also you have a lot of repetition especially when it comes to motor skills you're usually more likely to develop a good memory. And we're talking about a case where there's a lot of consistency when a person starts learning the guitar at first. They need to keep looking at their fingers and keep looking at their pick but after a year of practice they can play anything without even looking at the guitar without even looking at the pic. When you're first learning how to play basketball and you're dribbling. You're always looking at the ball but then after six months you find yourself that you're moving around dribbling the ball without even looking at it. And it's because the link between neurons that form this neural structure linked to this certain behaviour experience or whatever you're doing and gets stronger your memory gets stronger and that's why you're recalling becomes way way better. So synaptic plasticity allows the reactivation of a specific combination of neurons over other combinations of neurons sign ups as defines the strength of brain cells connections. These connections can be made stronger or weaker depending on when and how often they have been activated in the past and active connections tend to get stronger whereas those that aren't used to get weaker and can eventually disappear entirely. When you have a test the next day and one day before you memorize 20 pages you might remember 50 60 percent of them the next day but then after a week you can probably remember no more than 1 percent of the information you memorized but when you spend the entire semester following up and every single time you finish a lesson you go back to it again and again and you started studying for this test 2 weeks before and you went through these 20 pages over and over and over again. It's not just that you

will remember more when you're taking the tests but after one week you will remember way way more than the other person who studied one night before. But is it as simple as just repeating something over and over and over again to form a memory out of it. What about your first kiss. It was a one time experience and it's stuck in your memory till this day. What about when you graduated and you got your diploma. It only happened once but it's stuck in your mind till this day. What about that time when you had a fight with a friend. These were not recurring. It was just a one time experience. So how come you still remember these experiences. Even if it was years ago and it only happened once so of e the question we're trying to ask is what makes a memory stronger. One thing that helps make a memory repost is if it has strong emotional content you'd probably still remember as we said your first guess or where you were when you found out that a close family member had passed away. You can remember details how we felt what happened how people reacted the environment that was around you and even how you felt afterwards and not just at the moment of the experience or when the memory happened over the e as we talked more and more about neuroplasticity. We found out that emotions have the strongest link to neuroplasticity. Emotions have this amazing ability to change the brain like nothing else. One single experience as a kid can change your entire perspective for a lifetime. When it comes to a certain situation and it is all because of the emotions associated with it so memories are not just about consistency and persistence and doing it over and over and over again. It is also about the emotional connection and the emotional content related to it but it doesn't stop there because there's not only one type of memory. There are actually different types of memories and each and every one of them is linked to another situation and another perception and another analysis. But now you're probably asking yourself why why two emotions have such a strong link with our memories and our brain plasticity. What's so special about emotions that can they can actually change the entire brain structure. Well this happens because of the amygdala which brain imaging studies have shown is activated by emotional events. The amygdala boosts memory encoding by enhancing attention and perception and can help memory retention by triggering the release of stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol to boost arousal. And what this amygdala does is that it has a primarily role and when it comes to forming and storing these memories that are associated with emotional events and the correlation between these events and your memory depends on how severe or

how intense the emotional situation is. The stronger the emotions the bigger the similarly when it comes to the amygdala being triggered and these emotions will increase interaction between New York cortical store sites which can promote synaptic plasticity. Therefore neuroplasticity. So when we talk about stressful situations while memories of a stressful event can be enhanced. Stress tends to have negative effects on memory storage for events that coincide with but are not the direct cause of the stress. Stress also alters the way that our brain processes information changing from a flexible holistic approach to more rigid stimulus response associations. This can change the nature of the memory stored as well as what we recall under stress so stressful situations even though they are linked to a lot of emotions can actually affect your memory in a negative way. Let's take an example you have an exam coming in the next two days and you haven't studied anything yet and as soon as you realize that your exam is in two days you will start stressing out especially if you're the kind of students who always maintain high grades. The stress levels will be higher but let's take another example of somebody who is used to doing this. Somebody who would always study at the last minute who was always who would always 32 days before the exam. He's used to it and maybe adding the factor that this person doesn't always get high grades. The stress levels are definitely going to be lower than the first example and that's why people with less stress people who are used to studying two days before the exam will perform better than people who are not used to studying two days before the exam. Who will stress out and try to study everything before the exam. So not only does stress affect our memory but also the intensity of stress can play a crucial role when it comes to the memory loss. Now understanding the basic fundamentals of memory is one thing but knowing the different types of memories is an entirely different situation because as we said before there are different types of memories and each and every one of them has particular face to it starting with the sensory memory. It holds information coming in through the senses for a period ranging from a fraction of a second to several seconds. These memories formed through our senses our sight hearing taste smell and touch they are usually short termed and the memory don't last for a long time. Try listening to a new song that you've never heard before and at one point you would just pause and try to remember what words the artist used 15 seconds ago. Now you probably won't be able to remember what he said but if you want to remember what he said one second before you paused. It's going to be much

much easier but there is one exception if the song you're listening to has such a strong emotional effect on you that you felt every single word the artist was saying as if it was your own personal experience. A lot of times you hear a song and you're like this song is about me. In this case you might be able to remember what he said for a longer period of time. Moving on to the short term memory it holds information we are actively thinking about for about seven items for no more than 20 or 30 seconds at a time without rehearsal. It's basically the information we are currently aware of or thinking about. And this information is either stored and moved to the long term memory or you would just forget about it but it will always be existent in your mind somewhere somehow and something can always trigger it back but it's not that simple. However long term memory holds information for a long period of time almost permanently with a virtually unlimited capacity. Now when we talk about long term memory we talk about two different types of memories implicit and explicit memory implicit memory is information that is remembered unconsciously and effortlessly. How to drive your car how to drive back from work all the way back to your house. How to Write your name but explicit memory is conscious intentional remembering of information you trying to remember what you read in the textbook you're trying to remember what your boss told you about work ethic you trying to remember the best lesson you've ever learned from your father or your mother or your brother. So one of them needs conscious attention and the other doesn't. And of e both of them will fall under the category of long term memory. Moving on we have the declarative memory which is recall of factual information such as dates words faces events and concepts and we have procedural memory which is recalling of how to perform an action task or skill. So when you remember that the capital of Canada is Ottawa you are using your declarative memory and this type of memory is usually involved and associated with conscious remembering and not unconscious remembering because you can't unconsciously remember dates words faces events and concepts you have to think about it in order to remember and procedural memory is always linked to as we said action task or skill how to ride a bike how to change water filters and usually procedural memory is considered as implicit and not explicit because you don't have to consciously remember how to do certain skill or action when you want or when you know how to ride a bike and you want to ride a bike you just do it you don't think about what you're doing but you just do it. And lastly semantic memory and

episodic memory semantic memory as a recall of general facts whereas episodic memory is the recall of personal experiences. So knowing that basketball is a sport or knowing that water is good for your health you are remembering general information which is linked to your semantic memory but when you remember what happened during a basketball game and it's a personal experience then you're talking about episodic memory

NEUROPLASTICITY TO IMPROVE YOUR MEMORY

In this lecture we're gonna go more in-depth into the memory system how neuroplasticity can affect our memory system how we can overcome and replace memories. And the first question is is it actually possible to forget bad memories. Is it possible to have bad memories and replace them with better memories. That has a positive effect on you. And the question cannot be answered by simple yes or no. Throughout the analysis of this lecture you will find the answer yourself. Now of e we all have things in our past that we'd like to forget bad breakups. Some experiences somebody you lost a huge failure that you went through and no matter what you did no matter how hard you tried you can never forget about it and the effect of this memory will stay with you till the rest of your life especially when you have a

traumatic memory that had a really severe emotional effect on you. These memories can cause phobias and anxiety post-traumatic stress disorder and most importantly a biased opinion when it comes to similar experiences. And we mentioned before an example when we talked about breakups. People had a few breakups where they were hurt where their heart was broken. Usually they would react in relationships in a similar way. So every single time they go in a new relationship they feel like it's not working and they end up breaking up with the person thinking that the other person is the mistake when in fact they are being the mistake unconsciously they are having some behaviours and they are doing a lot of things that would just Butch pushed the other person away from them without even being conscious of it because the effect of the memory on them the heartbreak and the bad memories when it came to breakups had this effect and now they act on an automatic basis in a way that pushes the partner away to avoid relationships people human beings want to avoid pain and come closer towards joy happiness and positive emotions. That's just how our nature works. Now researchers showed that you can actually change delete and even implement memories. There were questions about some drugs that can help with that. Some psychiatry sessions and mostly when it came to deleting or implementing memories it was all based on psychological assessments. However it is possible to change memories on a daily basis without seeing anybody without seeing a psychologist or psychotherapist or psychiatrist without seeing anyone. You can buy yourself change bad memories and turn them into good memories through the process of neuroplasticity. But as we all know neuroplasticity is not a simple concept and therefore changing a bad memory and turning it into a good memory is also not a simple process. Trying to think about the following scenario. Have you ever met someone and they share the memory with you. And then some time passes by and they're telling the memory again to somebody else while you were there and you noticed that some things changed. The memory is not the same. And then after another period of time they tell it another time. They're trying to explain and tell the memory to someone and they also tell it in a different way than the way they told it before and the way they told it even before that to you. So researchers actually found that people have this habit of altering memories and changing them according to their own personal opinions and biases. And it gets to a point where they actually believe that the memory. This is how the memory went not the way it actually went but they believed that the way they're

structuring it this is how it actually happened when in fact it is not how it actually happened. This is just something that they built on top of the memory and they changed it. This usually happens and there was a lot of jokes on it when it comes to two people who are in a relationship when they first met when they started talking about it at first. They are being extremely realistic about how it happened. Unless they are trying to hide something. But in general it starts off the memory starts off with a realistic approach. I was in a coffee shop and he saw me and he wanted to talk to me. He approached me and offered to buy me a drink. Yada yada yada and we went out. I didn't really like him and the story unfolds. This is how it happened. Now we're together a year later the story becomes I saw a person who had a heart attack right next to me and I was screaming for help and then he'd jump and he saved his life. And then he asked me for a drink. Several years afterwards. They get married and they have children. And they tell their children the story how their father saved somebody's life and met their mom. And now they're living happily ever after. But supposedly if we had a time machine and those kids went back in time to the moment where their dad and their mom met it's a completely different story you see nobody had a heart attack and nobody almost died even further than that. A lot of people sometimes they lie about things and they need to keep lying about it because they don't want anybody to figure out the truth. So what happens is the more they tell this lie the more they themselves start to believe it. So when the parents are telling this story to their kids they're not telling it in a way that they're thinking that they're lying about the memory or they're changing it. They actually think that this is how it happened. They're not lying. It is wired in their brain that way. This is how they remember the memory. And the reason why they actually think that this is how it happened is because of neuroplasticity. Now what if we can use this system to our advantage. I'm not saying we're going to delete and a recent memory and it's never going to be there and I'm not saying we're going to implement a new memory that's going to change your entire perspective on life. But what I am saying is is it possible or is it practical to change a memory into another memory to kind of replace a memory by another memory by keeping some key factors and pinpoints there going back to our example the dad offering their mom a drink is a key point their dad asking her out is a key point. The coffee shop is a key point but what happened in between is not and this is where the scenario changed. And going back to another example when we talked about breakups

you remember the pinpoints you remember the fights you remember how you guys broke up. You remember how you felt about it. But you don't really think about what happened in between and most of the times you changed the scenario. If two people broke up you talked to one person he has a story and then you talk to the other person and he has a completely different story. And we just say Yeah each and every person has his own point of view. Of e each person will alter the story based on their personal interest. So when you go through several breakups and you keep remembering how your heart got broken and how you guys broke up and how you felt about it when the scenario is always the same you thinking that the other person is the problem nobody understands me. I have a really difficult lifestyle that nobody can keep up with. I have a mentality that is different from everybody else and it's hard for people to understand it. And what's happening is that you're hiding behind your thumb. You are changing the story you're changing the memory based on your own personal interest but when you pause for a second and you think about that night when you called her and you were freaking out because she did an answer she wasn't answering her phone for an hour. That time you freaked out because she put a picture and she got a comment from a guy that time when you guys were supposed to go out but you stood her up because you wanted to hang out with your boys. You don't look at these things because this is not your interest. You don't want to look like you're the bad guy here. And what happens is you start believing it. You start believing that the problem is not you. It's always the other person. But what if the scenario was different. What if you understood that what happened what you did was the problem when you start being realistic or you start being unrealistic as we're going to see later on everything is going to change the next time you're going to go into a relationship you're not going to go with a mind or a brain that is wired in a way that is going to always look at what the other person is doing wrong. But in fact it's going to start looking at what you're doing wrong. And when you start seeing what you're doing wrong you're going to stop working on fixing it. And this will lead to a healthy beneficial relationship. So how do we do it. How do we replace bad memories with good memories. The goal is to have weaker links to bad memories and stronger links to good memories or memories that you might create that are actually beneficial for you. And I'm going to explain later and you guys are going to understand what I'm talking about so first and foremost avoid objects and places that triggers the memory neuroplasticity has to

happen at one point in order for these neurons to fire. There needs to be something that would trigger them something that would start the process of this memory in your brain over and over again. So usually there's a trigger you seeing pictures of couples that are happy together you watching a love movie a dramatic romance movie you restlessly looking for a partner that would understand you and not finding anybody. And every time you don't you start remembering all the bad things that happened. So what's happening is you're not creating a healthy thought pattern when it comes to these memories at all. Now sometimes you can avoid the trigger completely and just stop watching these romantic sad dramatic movies that always ends with a happy ending of the two people who are in love getting together because most of the times you need to keep in mind that this is a movie and it's different than reality. Even movies that are based on a real story you know how many times I watched ghost movies that are based on real stories when in fact most probably it's B.S. but just being able to avoid these triggers. You will recall the memory less and less hence not giving the chance for the neurons to have a stronger linked together and make this memory stronger and stronger and stronger. Sometimes the memory just comes back because of a certain trigger and just by eliminating this trigger you're good to go. If every now and then a certain song comes up on your phone a song that you shared with your partner before and every time it comes up you start remembering the partner and everything. Even though it's been years you can simply lead this song from your playlist and by avoiding this trigger you avoided having the memory again and again just by simply eliminating the trigger. You're making the memory weaker and weaker and as we said before if you don't use them you lose them. So when you don't use these memories you're going to start losing them. You're going to start losing the connection and the link between neurons and therefore losing the memory and its effect on you. But if the trigger is unavoidable if it's your bedroom and everything happened in your bedroom and every time you step into your bedroom you remember there are other things to do to take advantage of your neuroplasticity to change and alter a memory become conscious of the memory before it becomes unconscious. Most people they have recalls and memories without being conscious that they are having a memory. When you think about somebody you broke up with you don't pass for a second and think oh I'm thinking about this memory of a certain person I broke up with an idea like you just remember and you start filling up with emotions and

before you know it you feel sad these emotions of sadness will put you in a bad mood and the next day when somebody asks you why are you in a bad mood. You just say I don't know man I just woke up like that. But if you're conscious of your memory you were conscious that yesterday night the song that was on your phone made you remember your your breakup and now you're just not feeling okay because all of these emotions came back. It's a completely different story. This is exactly why mindfulness is extremely important. I think there is no part in this in dis e where we didn't talk about mindfulness meditation because the first step to master your plastic brain is to become mindful to be able to control and be aware of everything that's going on in your brain all the thought patterns and emotions and moods you're having and the thing is a lot of people sometimes know that a certain memory brings them bad feelings so they try to avoid it as much as possible but there's a very interesting psychological concept that says the following rejection breeds obsession. The more you try to reject the memory the more you try to avoid the more your brain will think about it the more you will become obsessed about it and the more it will affect you because when it does pop up in your brain again you're not just going to feel bad about what happened but you're also going to feel bad about the fact that the memory came back to you again after trying to avoid it after not wanting to remember this at all when you're trying to break a habit and you fail and you do the old habit again. You feel bad you feel angry at yourself. And this is just our nature. So believe it or not. Instead of trying to push the memory out of your brain. Think about it in a conscious way would actually help when you spend years trying to avoid the pain and it just keeps coming back and truckloads. If you pause for a second and you just let yourself remember what happened let yourself get angry let yourself become sad without judging let the emotions flow instead of them catching you off guard let them happen consciously let yourself feel these emotions because when you do there is no rejection and there is acceptance. Most people come up with advices when you have a bad memory and you're trying to forget it. Most people would give this advice this stupid yet very wise advice saying you just need to accept it and move on. And I went through this before and I can tell you that you're not going to listen to them you're going to nod and say okay but deep down you're gonna be thinking like if it was as easy as just accepting the memory and moving on I would have done that a long long time ago. So there must be something else going on. Now most people when they give this advice they don't give it the

right way because the big question is how can I accept this memory. Well you accept it by stopping the rejection you accept it's when you start consciously thinking about this memory letting it sink in feeling the emotions remembering the details even though it hurts. Even though I'm pretty sure some some memories will hurt a lot. But when you let yourself react to it in an honest way when you let yourself feel it. And even if you got mad even if you cried this is what your body. This is what your brain needs when you think about it and you feel a lot of pain a lot of sorrow when you feel like you're so angry you want to punish the wall or you start crying. This is a sign that your brain needed that and you were trying for so long to avoid this when in fact your brain needed this and every single time the memory comes back to you. Your brain is trying to say I have something. There's something trapped inside that needs to go out and you need to make it happen. Otherwise your brain will not be at ease. Your brain will not rest until you either have this memory that goes from your conscious mind your unconscious mind or you just let it be Let it sinking and you really feel the emotions and accept them. Once you stop rejecting these memories you'll start accepting them. So don't focus unaccepting the memory and moving on. Just focus on feeling the memory. Don't avoid it feel it consciously let yourself on purpose remember this memory and let all the feelings out. A lot of times when there's a lot of pressure in life and of e most of you can relate. Most of us don't just crack under pressure when something happens even if it's especially when it's not significant but it builds up. Something happens you start struggle struggling financially and then you feel like their relationship with your girlfriend is not working really well. You start noticing that for example your grades are not as high as before. And all of these would kind of pile up together and eventually you crack. You start crying and you get angry and you get mad and you talk to people about it only to realize that you actually feel better after you cry after you punched this wall. You feel better. Now I'm not trying to say to anybody that you need to punch the wall so hard that you break in. What I'm saying is you need to let these emotions flow. Stop trying to control these emotions because when you do try to control these emotions you're just making it worse. And the second thing is not to just be aware of the memory itself but be aware of the emotions because as we said you're not trying to reject the memory anymore and you let the emotions and the feelings just sink in and you just let them go. There is going to be a flow of emotions inside of you as as soon as you start

thinking about this memory. Now here's where it becomes really interesting. We often talked about the concept of how that human nature wants to avoid pain and goes towards happiness joy and just avoiding pain at all costs because we just hate the feeling and we don't want it. And when you think about a bad memory for 10 seconds and it makes you feel but for the next 10 hours after maybe half an hour you will not be conscious that you're feeling bad because of this memory. But when you consciously think about it and when you are conscious about your emotions when you know that you're feeling sad when you know that this this is bringing you a lot of negative emotions on a conscious level what your brain will do is that it will try to avoid these emotions at all costs. And in order for it to avoid these emotions it will have to avoid the main reason which is the memory itself. Now a lot of you are probably thinking that force we said before that the more you use emotions the stronger the link will become and the more you think about something stronger you will become the stronger the link between neurons will be. So how come if you think about memories on a conscious level and you feel the emotions to such a huge extent you will actually weaken the link between neurons. And that's a really good question. But first things first we need to realize that before thinking about this memory on a conscious level letting the emotions. Thinking and feeling them. The link is getting stronger day by day because you are thinking about it and then you're feeling bad about it without having any specific reason in your mind. This memory is slowly shifting from your conscious mind to your unconscious mind. And every time you remember it and you feel bad for the next 10 hours even though you're not aware of it this link is getting stronger. We were not aware of every single thing that's happening in our brain. We're not aware of how the structuring between neurons and neural networks is happening but these emotions that you had for 10 hours because of a certain memory that happened that triggered it ten hours ago it is getting stronger in your brain. The link is getting stronger. But when you think about it and you let it sink in and you just stop rejecting it and you just let it flow for half an hour when you calm down after this half hour of rage or intense crying feelings you're going to calm down and you're not going to think about it again. You're not giving it the chance to affect you for a long time. You're not giving it the chance to put you in a bad emotional state for the next 24 hours. You're not giving it the chance to turn this bad emotional state into a bad mood that would last for a week. And when you remember the memory consciously and

you feel all use bad emotions and then when you calm down and you start thinking about the memory you start having good feelings feelings of acceptance feelings of calmness and feelings of joy that you actually feel relief. Your brain will start linking as we said the bad memory to a lot of bad emotions and moods. And it will start linking forgetting these memories to feeling of relief calmness and happiness. Now moving on to the third method altering memories to your advantage. Trick your mind into it and use happy memories. And this is one of the most fascinating techniques when it comes to memory and neuroplasticity. You'veprobably heard about a quote that says fake it till you make it. And we mentioned before the story of the parents who got married that started out at a random coffee shop that turned into saving somebodies life. And in previous lectures we said how the mind can not really identify the difference between imagination and reality. That's why a memory that happened in the past can have effects on you in the present moment even though it's something that happened before and can never change your mind would consider it as something that is happening right now because of your imagination. So a quick example would be instead of thinking how your girlfriend broke up with you thinking about how your friends supported you when this happened is you altering the bad memory and transforming it into a good memory. You link this breakup to the memory of your friends supporting do you alter this memory from feelings of hopelessness sadness to emotions of confidence reliability feeling that you have support and you have people around you that are there to help you and who will make you feel better. So every time a trigger comes up and you consciously understand and know the memory and the emotions that comes with it you alter your thinking to words your friends supporting you of the good things that happened how this gave you the freedom to pursue your career or to do something that you've never done before. How this breakup you into starting to exercise and having fitness goals that are taking you places. I mentioned the example of my professor and previous lectures where he wanted to marry this girl and her father refused because because he wasn't really wealthy and he couldn't support a family. But when he told us the story. So he was thinking about this memory consciously and explaining it to us. He didn't say that he was so sad about it. He didn't say how it broke his heart what he said is that this relationship that ended in him having his heart broken and him feeling a lot of bad emotions gave him the chance to succeed in his career. And now he's making so much money that he doesn't even care

about what happened back then. And the reason why he's so in ease with this memory is first because he's conscious of it. And this is exactly why he can he can still this memory he can. He can explain it to people without feeling bad. And second thing is because he did not always focus on the negative which is how he got hurt and all the bad emotions. But he altered this bad memory into a good memory. How this instead of this being the end of the relationship. This was the beginning of his career. So on a neuroplasticity level what's happening is the following your neurons had this linked together when it came to this past memory and this linked brought a lot of bad emotions. This link would always fire starting with a trigger and then the emotions would start to flow as we move on with the movie and think about it. Now once you became conscious of it once you became conscious of the emotions and you let yourself remember and you let the emotions sink in. What's happening at first is that you are not making the link stronger you're making the link weaker because you're not giving it control over you you are giving yourself control over it and then you're altering this memory and turning it into a happy memory. You are not looking at the half empty glass you are looking at the half full glass of water. Now these neurons linked together form a neural structure and this entire neural structure is what's causing this destruction in emotions. Everything that happens from when you start thinking about the memory all the way to you having bad emotions and eventually bad mood is all linked together. But when you start altering into good memories the triggers are still there. The neural structure is not entirely changing but neurons are starting to link to other neurons and the link to the previous neurons is becoming weaker than the neural network keeping the pinpoints that we talked about at the beginning of the lecture keeping this Keystone pinpoints that are essential as the coffee shop or as offering to buy her drink. There are still there but they are being linked to other neurons that triggers different emotions and different feelings usually feelings and emotions of happiness and joy. And the second part in altering memories to your advantage which can be a little bit harder is you simply lying to yourself every time you remember the breakup. Don't think about yourself even if even if after the breakup you felt so sad and you were crying and you felt like the world is coming to an end. Lie to yourself keep the pain points there. Keep the scenario of the breakup there but change your reaction and man imagine yourself instead of crying imagine yourself smiling instead of remembering all the bad all the bad feelings that you had. Try to remember

gut feelings try to put in some good feelings even if you're faking it. Try to imagine yourself after the breakup feeling like you're on top of the world feeling like you're the happiest man ever feeling that you were just sick of this relationship and you just wanted to move on and as soon as it ended you felt awesome. So every single time you remember this thing you start altering your feelings and you told altering the memory into whatever story you created in your mind. And even when you tell people this story you tell it in a way that yeah I was in a relationship you know when you meet somebody new. Most probably they're going to ask you about your previous relationships. So when you talk about it and say Yeah we broke up but you know what. It was a good thing that happened. I felt a lot of relief afterwards even though it was a bit hard but I really felt better after we broke up. I think it was a really toxic relationship and now that it's over I feel way better and I never want to go back there and I repeat. Even if you're lying because at the end of the day morally speaking it's not good to lie to people. But you're lying to yourself here. You're trying to help yourself and saying that you felt good and you went out of a toxic relationship and instead of saying you were depressed and you were crying cannot be considered as a lie because this has nothing to do with how the other person's perspective is going to change if anything the person's perspective is going to be better. And the fact that you're actually saying this is making it wired in your brain that this will actually become your reality. Next time you break up with someone you're not going to cry because you have all these memories back then of you breaking up and feeling good about and feeling that you know you're doing the right choice and this this is happening to your advantage and not happening to and against your advantage. It will become hard wired in your brain and it will become simply your reality. And I know it seems really simple and in fact it is the only thing that it needs is you actually feeling the emotions because if you just think about oh no I felt really good about it when in fact you're feeling like shit at the moment. This will not help you. And second thing is consistency every time you have this memory you keep repeating the same scenario that you created. You keep remembering the positive scenario that you created or to use what we talked about before and you looked at the full half of the cup. You think about the advantage of the breakup how instead of this being the end of the relationship. This being the start of your career and with emotions with the right emotions and with consistency you will start altering the bad memory and turning it into a good

memory. And lastly if this memory went from the conscious level to the subconscious level when you have behaviours that you can't seem to control and you just don't know why when you have a certain obsession or you have a phobia then using these techniques is not going to be as effective with enough consistency and repetition and good emotions. You can definitely make it but it's going to take a longer time. So getting the help or the support you need is something you need to consider if you feel like you just after trying all these techniques that it's so something that you can't really control. You might want to get the help or the support that you need from professionals as much as we can control what's happening on a conscious level which is exactly what we're doing when it comes to our subconscious mind. It takes a while to understand what's going on and it takes a while to rewire what's happening in the subconscious mind a part of these previous techniques that were talked about would deal with the subconscious mind but it all depends on how strong the link is. When it comes to phobias and obsessions the link is way stronger than just feeling sad about a breakup that you had or feeling insecure about a certain financial situation that you were in. And that brings us to the end of this lecture.

SOCIAL PLASTICITY NEUROPLASTICITY In this lecture we're going to be talking about the concept of social plasticity. Using social exercises for neural plasticity and we already talked before about the importance of society and your social circle on the neuroplasticity and the connection between neurons and the formation of neural networks and eventually society and environment are linked. And most of the times they're complementary so by mastering some exercises that you do in your social circle when you understand some of the concepts some of the information that you need to know this awareness will guide you in the right path. Human beings are basically a social species. Now when we say society we say interpersonal relationships we talk about a group of people sharing the same geographical or social territory. The concept of society is explained through different theories through of e the theories of evolution where human beings evolved naturally as social beings because they needed to belong to something and that's why there there's a famous quote that says humans are by nature social animals and of e we are hard wired to be social animals. When we talked about how genes can affect your brain and can affect your neuroplasticity obviously different genes will lead to different structures in the brain and different neural networks and through evolution human beings were safer together if they ever encountered any danger. There's several people and it makes it easier for them to overcome the danger if there is one person by himself. And there's a tiger in front of him who wants to attack him. Most likely the tiger is going to win but if there is 40 people in a village and they see a tiger and they put many resources together they built things together houses and they get weapons to defend themselves. Human beings evolved in that way and with evolution our brain whereas altered which formed a neural network that makes us social beings. Now of e a lot of problems can happen with these genes and that explains why some people are more social than others. Others are less social. Some people hate seeing other

people. Some people just don't want to deal with anyone. And this difference is of e linked to the fact that genes don't stay the same. There is an entire variety of genes in each and every person who has a gene structure related to society. He has his own proper gene structure when it comes to this concept of society and he acts differently now when we talk about the concept that genes don't stay the same. We are talking about a long term process of evolution doesn't happen overnight. It takes years for it to happen it takes a very long time and it takes it takes a lot of time to become effective and what's happening nowadays is we still are social animals. Most of the people nowadays are saying that Millennials are the first generation to start moving away from society and just logged themselves up in their rooms and spend their time on their phone on Netflix on their computer. And that said they don't want to go out go out of the house they don't want to meet new people. There are just closed up on themselves and the big misconception there is to think that they don't want to be part of society. We are hard wired to be social beings and we are. But the difference is technology and we're going to talk more about it later. But what's happening is their social structure is not out there in the world anymore but it's on their phone. Every single person they know they can talk to them and socialize in a matter of seconds they can face time bombs. We do a Skype phone call. They can just call them regularly. They can send them text and they can see what they're uploading on Instagram and Facebook and this became their little society. And then when they look around it and they see the external society where for example life is not as good your close friends are not close to you and you don't have anybody to hang out with. Well maybe it's happening because you're spending most of your time on your phone. So what's happening right now is if we keep up on the same pace the generation that's coming after the Millennials are going to be even worse. You see two years old in the three year olds kids who are just sitting for hours and hours and hours on their tablet on their phone and on the computer watching stuff texting people and with repetition. Generation after generation what's going to happen. Well of e this is where evolution steps in and then it's going to become hard wired in their brain that the of society and being our Nature's social beings. It's not out there in the world but it's in the phone. And what you do on your computer. This is where your society is. And who knows even further with virtual reality. Expand fast and you know all the technologies happening around us and augmented reality. We might get to a point where we can do much more

through our devices but going back to our subject. We are social animals and our social life shapes most of our mental structure without society. The mind wouldn't progress the way it's progressing and won't suffer abnormal structures the way it's suffering because it's society that brings experiences. It's society that brings a lot of memories. It's society that makes you use your motor skills a lot. It's society that teaches you things when you close your eyes and you think about your best memories. You'reprobably going to think about people more than moments. You're going to remember the people and then you're going to remember the moments nobody would ever have a memory of a tree they saw. Unless it's one of the most astonishing trees you've ever seen in your life. But otherwise most of the times we remember human beings and groups of human beings are only found in societies. Now all the things you also learned in your life whether it's actually somebody teaching you something or your experiences in life that taught you lessons. Most of the times it's because of social interaction. When somebody teaches you math and an expense the logical side of your brain. You were born by yourself and nobody would teach you these things you will never develop the same logic that you developed when you were learning math and in fact research showed that we now recognize the considerable impact of social structures on the operations of the brain and the body. If you look at bodybuilders a hundred years ago and you look at bodybuilders today there's a big difference. Of e one of them is due to all the new supplements and drugs that athletes can use bodybuilders can use but also it's because of society's effect on them growing up in an Instagram and Facebook worlds where usually the perfect image. The people who are popular and making it big are the people who have money who have nice buys and they show it off and they work out and they post their workout on Instagram and Facebook and they get thousands of likes and we are social animals. So we are going to follow. We are going to mirror what's going on in our society. We're not going to go against it. If we go against it we are opposing society and therefore we will have a lot of trouble with our social interactions. And of e nobody likes to have social discomfort social problems specially with their day to day interactions now as this is progressing from generation to generation where if social networks did not end at one point and then it's going to start becoming hard wired in their brains and of e hard wired in their children's brains and then is going to keep moving on until eventually it might start changing the body structure because we're putting a lot of

pressure and putting a lot of weights on our bodies maybe our bodies will evolve in a way where people will be born with a different physical structure even if it's minimal things that we can't really notice at least in the short term. But from an evolution point of view it's in fact possible and these social factors operate on the individual through a continuous interplay of neural neuroendocrine metabolic and immune factors on brain and body in which the brain is the central regulatory organ and also the Millwall target of these factors. And just to make the ideas clear I'm going to include an article that talks about the effect of porn on the brain and the body. You're going to find that it's really interesting if you've never read about it before you're gonna be astonished by how much porn only is changing our brain and our body. So now moving on to the exercises and the first exercise is called the mirroring exercise. We all have somebody we look up to and every behaviour we have or want to have is already in someone else's mental structure mirror your way into it. If your dream is to become a basketball player look at saving courage for example. And if you look up to him start mirroring everything he's doing. There are a lot of videos actually that shows how much the technique of curry is close to Kobe Bryant and of e nobody ever asked about it. But is it possible that when Kerry was growing up he was so influenced by Kobe Bryant as he was one of the best basketball players. So he married him until it got to a point where he has the same techniques as Kobe. Exactly the same techniques same release same jump same movement. And we all know if for example your brother is your role model and your brother is an Abercrombie and Fitch model who has a startup company making him good money and he just lives his life and he has tattoos over his body. Well most of the times if you're if you really look up to him and he has this huge influence that he's an idol for you you will adopt the same behaviour you will do the same things he's doing and then both of you will have very similar brain structures when it comes to the neuroplasticity concept and how neurons were connected and how neural networks were formed. Now here's the issue. Try to sit in front of someone and look at them every now and then as soon as you see them looking back at you just yawn for three seconds and you know what's going to happen. They're going to yawn because by nature we sometimes imitate a lot of behaviour without being even conscious about it when we yawn especially when we're tired. It means that we're breathing slowly and our lungs need more oxygen and when we yawn we're getting more oxygen and because our body needs it. Now when the other person sees you yawning and he knows

that you're getting more oxygen in my instinct he will replicate the behaviour. And it's absolutely fascinating. But going back to the problem it is on a subconscious level. Most of the times you're not conscious of it. But now that you understand it you need to start looking up to people who have seen aspirations and dreams or people who got to where you want to get or close to where you want to get if you want to become a boxer. You need to look up to professional boxers who are dominating and not look up to your friend who sits on the couch seven hours a day eating Doritos and watching Netflix and of e not judging every single person has his own goals in life and everybody lives his life the way he wants to. And if you're happy. Good for you. But as a person who wants to become a boxer you cannot mirror this person. You need to mirror somebody whose goals and aspirations aligns with yours. Because his behaviour is leading him to words his goals and his dreams. And if you replicate this behaviour most probably you'll be able to get there as well. Moving on to the next exercise. And again we're going to talk about technology but a bit more in depth. I'm adding in your URL that will redirect you to a YouTubevideo. And Simon Sinek speech about millennials. And of e we all know that Millennials are influenced by technology the most between all the different generations. So of e there is a big question mark around several questions on the effect of technology on social structures. However most of the research showed that social media and smartphones had a severe negative impact on social structures as we said before moving society from the external society into your phone is you disrupting the social structure. When we talk about social structure we talk about the general rule what we call today our society maybe in 100 days society would be would be different. When we talk about social structural we're talking about something more related to technology. But for now social structures are obvious. It's the external world. People are getting trapped in their phone and they're not paying attention to the external world. And instead of going to the mall and buying a few things you needed you can just be laying on your bed and order everything on Amazon get a cheaper price and get them delivered the next day and only through Amazon people are going out less. People used to go out because they wanted to get things and of e when you go out to get things that are going to be way more people out there you might interact with them just go into the store and picking up some stuff and go into the cashier and saying how are you doing. I'm doing good. How are you. I'm good thank you. This is how much you need to pay debit

credit whatever you finish. Have a good day. This is you having social interaction. And if every time you order something on Amazon you did that you went out and you got your stuff and you had some social interaction. I think on average people would have 20 to 30 more social interaction experiences. And this is necessary. When we talked about consistency we said that when there is a certain neural network forming that you don't want it to form if you reduce the consistency and start skipping days you will disrupt the link between the neurons and the neural structure. So if you keep ordering stuff on Amazon every single time it's gonna become hard wired in your brain and then you're not going to feel comfortable going out and buying something because you can just do it on Amazon and it's much easier and more efficient. But when you order something on Amazon and then the next two times you need things you would go out then the next time your order on Amazon. Then it's not becoming hardwired in your brain. You'rekeeping both of them and both of them is good because they go along with the social social structure you're going along with your generation and in the same time you're going along with the social structures that are crucial social structures have always been a positive on on human beings. But this social structure which is your smartphone hasn't done a lot of good so far. So the exercise would be to not keep up this consistency. Try to get out of this prison the social media and technology related prison that's changing our behaviour and making it worse. And I'm not asking you to throw your phone away and I'm not asking you for anything. Basically if you if you want to work out with neuroplasticity in the right way you need to do the following exercise and what the exercise consists of is the following you identify a piece of technology an app or software that is blocking a lot of your social interactions and then try to balance it out try to not always always use it with consistency because then it's going to become hardwired in your brain and that's not good. That's not what we want. Technology is amazing and it's changing our lives every single day. But we need to know how to balance it out. A lot of researchers are talking now about of e the VR technologies. Absolutely stunning but researchers are talking about the possible effects of VR that it can be even way worse than our smartphones and social media. Imagine instead of going on the Amazon Web site and ordering what you want you know you're going to see the picture and everything. But imagine in VR are you being an Amazon you picking what you want and then seeing it in front of you. And when you add it to your cart there's a cart in front of you and you

see the item inside the cart. And when you do the checkout and you're paying there's a person in front of you asking you these questions what's your Visa card What's your pin number what's your password what's your phone number what's the address. You finish your order and she says thank you very much for shopping with Amazon and have a wonderful day. Now this is definitely worse than the Amazon app right now where the Web site. And as a proof that simply Amazon itself is affecting social interactions a lot is done. Jeff Bezos the founder of Amazon not long ago I think a week or a couple weeks ago. And by the time you watch this e maybe it's way way longer. His net worth is around now at almost a hundred and fifty billion dollars. And of e it's because sales and Amazon itself is growing so fast because there's a lot of people ordering on it and all of these people ordering on it when they did they avoided social interaction. Now moving on to the next exercise we're going to be talking about networking talking listening explaining arguing sharing meaning networking can have huge plasticity benefits that can change the game for you at the same time. It can have a lot of non beneficial effects on you and your brain structure when you talk to someone when you have a friend and you guys always talk about the exact same things you talk about partying for example or you talk about going out and seeing people you talk about video games talk about books. And if you guys stay friends for a long time and and you keep the same kind of conversations. It's gonna become hard wired in both of your brains. It's gonna become a lifestyle. And just as a quick example let's look today at kids kids who swear and say a lot of curse words and insults and other kids that don't. Most of the times most of the times this is due to parents all factors. This is due to some influence in their lives and it's all coming from their talking. Maybe it's their parents. Every time they talk to them they say a lot of swearing words. Maybe when hurt when their mom and dad are arguing they say a lot of swear words. And of e they picked it up and then they get to a certain age after repeating these words for 10 to 12 years. They get to a certain age where they would say the word fuck or shit 50 times and a single conversation without even noticing it. And in fact a lot of times when I was in class there were people who were asking questions and then instead of saying things they would say sure they would say some other curse words and then just laugh and say sorry. And there you know you know that it's unconscious. He did not read he did not mean to say otherwise he wouldn't have apologized. And of e what is directly linked to talking is listening. If somebody can't hear he's not gonna be

affected by talking at all. And of e when he talks you listen and they go hand in hand explaining is also part of talking arguing sharing and meeting people. These are all social interaction structures that are linked together. They go hand in hand when you talk you might explain you're going to argue people are going to listen you're going to share some knowledge you're going to share some knowledge or memories. The first time you're going to meet someone you guys are going to meet and talk and listen and explain and share. It's a big structure social interaction is a huge structure. One part of social interaction is looking people in the eyes just the fact that you're looking at a person you're looking at a new face that you never saw before is better than looking at the floor unless you're walking on Hollywood's Walk of Fame and you're looking all the names on the stars. There is no reason to look on the floor or look at your phone when there are people passing by or looking at you and you're not looking back. And Forbes wrote an article about this just to show people how important it is to lock eye contact and the article it says that the impact of eye contact is so powerful because it's instinctive and connected with a human's early survival patterns. So of e it's linked to our evolution we respond in a positive or negative way to dilated pupils that signals attraction increased blink rates caused by stress and darting eyes that underscored discomfort or defensiveness. And of e the first step to networking is eye contact if you want to network with people and not through the phone. The first step is eye contact if you don't look them in the eyes you're not going to talk to them and they're not going to talk to you. Of e sometimes when you want to say something to someone maybe you want to talk to a girl or a guy if they're on their phone and they have their earphones plugged in their ears. You're just going to say no. It's not the right time like it's uncomfortable. It's gonna be awkward. But if he's just sitting there looking around and he actually looked at you and you looked back and it's going to become much easier to go and talk to him now the other side of networking is building connections of e the more connections you have the more people you can reach the more people you talk to the more knowledge you got and the more experience you got from these people. And of e the more your brain is going to develop the more you're going to ensure positive neuroplasticity especially if you follow the first thing we talked about which is mirroring. If you're an entrepreneur and you have an entire network of entrepreneurs and business owners everybody mirroring everybody. Today entrepreneurs living the hustle life there isn't an entrepreneur who would say

nowadays I work from 9:00 to 12:00 p.m. nobody would say no entrepreneur will say I work three four hours a day everybody and even even if they don't do it they will say I work every single day 12 hours 15 hours I'm putting in the work and most of the times they're full of B.S. But the mirroring itself that's coming through your networking has a huge positive effect on you. So make sure to expand your network and your connections and make sure that these connections and these networks that you're forming they match your goals and your aspirations. They match what you want to wire in your brain what you want to use to ensure effective neuroplasticity and as a tip make sure that when you're walking in the street unless you're there is something really important on your phone. Make sure to make eye contact with people passing by you. This by itself will have a huge impact on you. And worst case scenario if it didn't do you any good it will increase your confidence because it's not that easy to look at someone in the eye especially if you don't know them especially if you think that they're attractive. It'll be way harder to look at them but repeating it over and over again and your brain gets comfortable with it then might get to a point where you would look at someone and you wouldn't look away until they look away and believe me this will increase your confidence. This will give you more opportunities to network because you're always looking at people straight in the eyes. So if they want something they're going to come and talk to you. You guys already locked eyes. They're going to come in the room they're going to talk to you. Same thing goes for if you saw someone and you wanted to talk to them and you guys locked eye contact. It's much much easier to see someone you're attracted to. You look them in the eyes instead of just saying wow he's really attractive and then looking back on your phone if you look at them and they look at you and you smile and they smile back. Boom. Bingo you've made it. And that brings us to our last exercise which is social pressure and your comfort zone. Using society as a positive source of pressure can be a very effective way to build networks faster when you feel good about society. When you have people you want to talk to in the real world and not just on your phone. This is going to ensure positive pressure on you when it comes to social situations and social interactions and social structures. They create the comfort zone your number one enemy. There will be no new experiences. There will be no new knowledge if you don't get out of your comfort zone. If you are comfortable with ordering everything on Amazon even if research told you that this is not good for you always ordering stuff online is not good

for you. You will probably not stop it because this is your comfort zone and I don't want it to seem that simple. Getting out of the comfort zone is one of the hardest things to do and that's why it's your number one enemy. Because even though it's one of the hardest things to do it's one of the most rewarding things. Every single habit every single new experience is going to demand some kind of getting out of the comfort zone and some situations you will have to put way more energy to get out of your comfort zone compared to situations where it will be a bit easier to get out of your comfort zone. So for a shy introverted person it will be way harder to go talk to someone they're attracted to. But for a person who is extroverted who has a lot of confidence and he is outgoing and a social person it'll be easier for him to go talk to someone he's or she's attracted to and the exercise is you need to write a list of all the things that you don't feel comfortable doing but that you want to do. Maybe as the example we gave before you want to talk to people you're attracted to not feel yourself not feeling your heart beating so fast and feeling uncomfortable about it. Maybe you've been slacking on going to the gym because you're a bit fat or chubby and just don't feel comfortable going there and seeing people with a lot of nice bodies when you're still trying to get there right. Everything that's making you feel uncomfortable but that you actually want to do and then work it up step by step. If you don't feel comfortable going full thrown on it go step by step. Start for example by talking to girls you're not attracted to try to build up your confidence with these girls and maybe then you'll feel more comfortable talking to girls you're attracted to but not really asking them out. The more you talk to them then you're going to take the step and you're going to actually ask them out and it all happened because you went step by step to get out of your comfort zone. So imagining that the comfort zone is like a circle and then to go from not being able to talk to an attractive girl to asking the girl out is you enlarging this comfort zone circle two or three times. But when you walk step by step instead of jumping from where you are to three times the comfort zone you will go one time two times and then three times. And the second method is guaranteed. The first method is risky and it demands a lot of willpower a lot of motivation a lot of drive and a lot of confidence. And most importantly a why behind it. And we talked about having a wife before and by now you guys know why it's essential. Just as a quick reminder when we talk about your why we're not talking about your y in life we're talking about your y as things you want to do. Why do you want to go to the gym. Why do you want

to talk to a girl you're attracted to. Why do you want to study and get good grades. This is the why we're talking about. So all of these different exercises that we're listed are essential to ensure first social plasticity and of e which will lead to neuroplasticity connecting and linking neurons in a beneficial way developing beneficial habits beneficial integration behaviours that you need and the more you're consistent with the behaviours you want to reinforce the faster and the more likely you are to wire them in your brain and the less consistent you are and the more control you have over situations that you want to block out of your life the faster it'll be for you to cut this link between neurons and just break the neural structure that's causing this thing and that's it for social plasticity.

PURPOSEFUL PRACTICE

Becoming a skilled performer means practising proposed fully. We've set goals and constant feedback. Do you think that the professional musician at leats or scientists develops their skills and talents overnight, it's unlikely. Instead, they probably use proposal practice to achieve success. This technique pushes you to build skills through several mechanisms, including studying clear, specific goals, being focused living your comfort zone and receiving constant feedback have to achieve for the post will practice, a student at a university named Steve was asked to memorize an everexpanding string of numbers, as the string was read out loud to him in onesecond intervals, still did not already have any particular facility with numbers or memorizing. In general, most people can memorize around seven digits of fat much trouble. And initially, Steve proved no different. But with lots of training and practice, Steve could memorize chains of numbers that

were 82 digits long. How did he achieve this? First, Steve had a clear and specific goal to memorize more numbers than he called previously. seconds throughout experiments, he remained focused.

Steve also was pushed outside his comfort zone, as he was constantly encouraged to move past this current level of performance. If he must memorize 28 numbers in one session, for example, the trainer will start a new session by having him recite another string of the same length. Then immediately afterwards, the trainer will ask Steve to memorize a string of 29 day gets a higher performance bar. And finally, Steve also received feedback on his performance as a trainer will always inform him how he had done this last mechanism is crucial. After all, how can you improve if there is no one to tell you how you're doing? Regardless of whether you are practising as sonatas or gem grammar, it is essential to know if you are learning it correctly. Through proposal practice, you can learn all manner of special skills. But proposal practice is just a step toward a greater goal, which we'll learn about in the next lesson.

THE IMPORTANCE OF GOOD TEACHERS Informed practice guided by expert knowledge separates performances from stellar Juan's. Now we know that purposeful practice is essential to becoming a great performer. But what sets apart great performers from people who seem to touch genius. they achieve this through deliberate practice or proposal practice that informs for your practice to become deliberates, two things need to happen. First, the practice must be applied to feel that well developed, meaning that there are already more experienced practitioners in the world whose level of performance differs from those who are just starting adds seconds. deliberate practise requires a teacher or coach who can train the students using the practice activities necessary to improve the musical tradition has developed over centuries. And obviously, there are differences in the quality of musical performances. Also, it is not uncommon to find piano teachers who are expert performers in their rights. These musicians have developed sophisticated training techniques that help their students acquire the necessary skills to become experts themselves. In a sense, deliberate practice must not only be based on a field with established experts but also involve guidance on how the students can become an expert. Thus, you can take advantage of the specific techniques that teachers have used to achieve excellence, to find excellence in your practice. By adopting a teacher's knowledge, a student is given a template to follow, eliminating the need to start from scratch, or waste time figuring out basic facts come into the fields. For instance, let's say you want to become a star high jumper. With a great coach. You want to have to figure out things like the best place to start your jump or how to achieve maximum distance.

COGNITIVE PLASTICITY NEUROPLASTICITY And this lecture we're going to talk about cognitive plasticity and the previous lecture when we talked about social plasticity. We talked about exercises that can help you in your experiences and your social interaction and with your overall environment. But now we need to deal with the brain structure. We need to deal with thoughts that you have ideas and these stream of thoughts sometimes that you have and you're not very aware of when in reality they have a huge impact on the neuroplasticity process. We want to ensure that you push your brain's boundaries neuroplasticity is all about expanding your brain. If you don't expand the boundaries of your brain you can't ensure neuroplasticity. You're gonna be walking in the wrong direction. So where does cognitive improvement starts. First things first openness to experience. We did talk about this concept in social plasticity but in social plasticity we were talking about openness to experience when it comes to society more than on the cognitive level. You need to look into ideas. You didn't look into before. You need to let's say if every single time you read personal development books you might want to buy three or four novels and read them if you always listen to classical music. You might want to listen to a little bit of pop. This openness to experience will of e expand your mind and expand your neural structures second thing is creativity thinking and imagination. And nowadays again going back to technology our creativity is decreasing. Our thinking is decreasing in our imagination is decreasing. When you're using your phone going to have to think when you're watching Netflix you'll have to think. And even when you think you're looking at your phone you're thinking you're eating you don't think about your food. You think about your phone you think about what you're seeing. You're at the gym. You don't think about what you're doing. You think about the music you're listening to and you enjoying it. When you get bored instead of drawing something playing some music learning a new instrument making a

piece of art you would sit down and watch Netflix or just text friends or send them snapshots. So you need to get creative. You need to make it a habit to make some art play music do anything creative anything artistic. Usually art and creativity they go hand-in-hand. So try let's say twice a week just block just take half an hour and do something creative. Even if you don't want to make a piece of art maybe you don't like art. Do some thinking thinking and imagination can also expand your creativity. Maybe you have a problem at work that you need to solve tomorrow and you have half an hour where you're free. Maybe instead of watching Netflix you want to go to your room put on some good music that would make you relax and not distract you close your eyes. Think about the problem and think about all the possible solutions and just keep thinking about everything. For half an hour or 20 minutes put an alarm and don't get distracted by anything just close your eyes and think. Get creative. Use your imagination and if you do this most probably you're going to find a better solution than you would have. The next day the next day when you woke up early and you went to work and work is stressing and you need to figure it out by the end of the day. This pressure will not make you as effective as the previous day where you had nothing to do and instead of watching Netflix you sat down and you thought about it you brainstorm really well. One thing that's also included in the e that you can use to become more creative is mind mapping. Mind mapping enhances your creativity and imagination and of e thinking in an amazing phenomenal way that you can't I can't even explain it. Nobody ever use mind mapping and there didn't no significant improvement in all of these areas. And lastly mental cognitive stimulation getting as much stimulation on the brain and as much consistency of those simulations as possible. This stimulation can come from talking about some philosophy with people it can come from meditating. It can come from going to the gym. It can come from eating something and being conscious about what you're eating. It can be. Being in the now living in the now and being conscious of the now playing games doing art dancing even partying all of these would ensure mental cognitive stimulation. And what's going to block this mental cognitive stimulation is using your phone watching Netflix watching TV. This is where your brain can actually get to a point where it shuts off no thoughts in your brain only eyes watching and you perceiving what you're seeing that's it. And I know I talked a lot about technology but because one of the main thing that's blocking all the different areas that you need to work on is technology and a smartphone and is social

media. That's why it's so important to understand how it works and how you can control it more. Now we're going to move on to meditation. I mentioned meditation and mindfulness a few times but this is the part where I'm going to talk about it with a little bit more details. We're going to mention it later but to just link it to another idea but you're going to get to it when you get to it. And as it's written in the presentation we repeated and we'll repeat this concept. Not only can meditation prevent brain cells from dying so just stop their meditation by itself but stop your brain cells from dying because you're actively using them which typically happens as we age. But it can also boost a person's brain size in several crucial regions. Furthermore researchers have concluded that meditation can actually make a person more intelligent guys. I'm gonna talk about personal experience with meditation I spent six months at a certain period in my life where I used to wake up every single day at 4:00 in the morning. I would go downstairs to park. There was a park near my house and I would sit there and meditate for at least half an hour. And in those six months I was an absolutely amazing mental and physical shape. And after I stopped it disrupted everything and I couldn't go back to where I was until I went back to the habit of meditation. There is nobody who meditated ever and said that I didn't at least help him concentrate more. If you look up a list of all the big successful people who use that meditation on a daily basis you are going to be shocked. You will find attached to this e also an article that talks about meditation methods. Of e there's gonna be some guided meditations that read it ourselves that you can that you can use that are really helpful but you can also read the article to get a bit more information now. There is a direct correlation between meditation and neuroplasticity. In 2011 Sara Al-Azhar and her team at Harvard found that might fullness meditation can actually change the structure of the brain as we said before eight weeks of mindfulness based stress reduction was found to increase cortical thickness in the hippocampus which governs learning and memory. And we don't even need to explain what happens when the brain size increases. That of e means that there are more brain cells and with more brain cells you will have more brain energy you will ensure more neuroplasticity and especially because it's affecting your learning and your memory which are two central parts when it comes to neuroplasticity. And please don't make the mistake of taking a decision that you want to meditate every single day for 30 minutes I promise you you will get drained and you will not be able to keep the consistency just as we talked about the chin when

you when there's a fat person who's not comfortable there and he takes it step by step. You need to also take a step by step maybe start with two minutes of meditation every day for a week then go to five minutes then after a week go to seven and a half then until you get to a point where you're satisfied with the time you're meditating and then you get to go. You already got there through step by step consistency and then you get to go. You can keep it as a daily habit and keep the consistency and eventually get all the benefits that comes from meditation. Now moving on one of the most important things when it comes to cognitive plasticity is changing habits habits eventually become hardwired in your brain. And this is absolutely what we're talking about. This is neuroplasticity itself. So when you change habits you are changing the structure of your brain you are changing the neural networks and the link between all the different neurons. You might be creating a new habit and wiring new neurons together or you might be removing an old habit and breaking the links and breaking the overall neural network. Now here's the thing about habits. It takes a lot of mental energy and you probably know that whenever you wanted to stop a habit it didn't happen overnight. Nobody just woke up one day and said I'm going to start going to the gym and they went to the gym for the rest of their lives maybe very rare cases that I'm not aware of but most of the times ninety nine point nine percent of the times this is not how it happens. And what's so fascinating about habits that they can form almost inseparable neural networks. When you picked up the habit of driving in a certain way for the past 30 years and then shown somebody tries to show you a new way to drive you're probably not going to adapt to it at all because the old habit is inseparable when it comes to the neural networks it formed. And as we mentioned before there is a big section about habits where you're going to learn how to overcome them and deal with them and create new habits eliminate or replace you're going to know everything about habits. Now next we're going to talk about physical exercise even though it's physical. It has direct cognitive plasticity effects. First off endorphins are only one of many neurotransmitters released when you exercise. Physical activity also stimulates the release of dopamine and serotonin and these brain chemicals play an important part in regulating your mood. That's why before when we were talking about how if you force yourself to go to the gym when you're feeling lazy you're probably going to feel that your mood is better when you come back from the gym you're going to feel the sense of accomplishment and just the these chemicals in your brain will make you feel

will make you feel better overall will just give you a better mood if you're in a bad mood. It will definitely feel a little bit better and mood brings us back to emotions and feelings when you experience emotions that are bad. Then you're going to be in a bad mood and it's going to affect how you're feeling and it's going to affect overall what you're thinking about and what you're going to do. So if after experiencing these emotions you would just go to the gym and workout you will feel better at least you will have a better mood than before. If every single time you get mad you would go to the gym and just crush a lot of weights. This will not just release chemicals in your brain to make you feel better. But if you keep up the consistency and it becomes wired in your brain. This big change going from being angry to to feeling relaxed and feeling feeling more peaceful because you threw it all the weights and now you're feeling better it becomes hard wired in your brain that every single time you go to the gym you feel good and if you ever skip going to the gym you feel that there is something missing. And second thing is that physical exercise may trigger processes facilitating neuroplasticity and thereby enhances an individual's capacity to respond to new demands with behavioural adaptations. Indeed some a lot of studies showed that combining both the physical and cognitive elements might result in mutual enhancement. So adding a quick example to our previous example going to the gym if when you go to the gym whenever you're lifting weights you focus on the weights and whenever you're taking a break you have some music in your ears that you're listening to and you're switching up the music listening to different music you're ensuring both physical and cognitive stimulation. And finally one of the most important exercises when it comes to cognitive plasticity is learning itself. When we talk about learning we're talking about acquiring new ideas. We're talking about learning from experiences. We're talking about memories that comes from these experiences and everything you've learned basically and all of this. Some are essential for neuroplasticity working on your brain capacity and flexibility applying the principles of brain power is a must. We're going to talk about these concepts later especially brain power and some exercises that would give you more brain power and convergent learning behaviours and use memory and recalling techniques. So it's not just about learning things it's also about learning behaviours and by learning these new behaviours then you might go and move on to new experiences. It all works together. It's all interconnected and it's all a big chain. Cognitive plasticity is not just learning it's learning

memories experiences it's physical exercises it's habits. It's meditation and its openness to experience creativity thinking imagination and cognitive and mental stimulation and removing just one thing can have an effect on several things. If you just keep using your phone and you don't work on your creativity thinking and imagination your learning process is going to become slower. You will find it difficult to adapt to new situations and new experiences when you feel uncomfortable about doing something and then you decide to take a step by step dividing each and every step knowing how you're going to take it and how all of the steps are going to get you to where you want to get this is you using your thinking this is you using your creativity. It's all a big chain. And as much as there's a lot of things to do. Of e you can do all of these things at once. You need to develop them bit by bit.

PEG MEMORY SYSTEMS Pack memory systems are useful for short sequences. Remembering items on a list is useful. But what do you do if you have to remember something in a particular sequence. In this case, tech memory systems are the key. Pack memory systems use key memory words as a basis for remembering a pack is a fixed key memory verts which is used to link items. Imagine the PAC System as a wardrobe with a fixed number of hangers. Clothes come in in ads, but the hangers stay the same. Two good examples of pec memory systems are the number shape system and the number rhyme system. In the number shape system, we use the shapes of numbers as packs. Think of the numbers one through 10. What does each number look like two. For example, number one might be a pencil to kind of looks like a sweat, and three might resemble hearts. be playful and attentive in developing your own set of numbers shapes. Once you have 10 shapes, you can use them as references for a sequence. For example, imagine that you need to remember a recent sequence. The first three steps of which are mix a spoonful of milk with four x and add a cup of vanilla. Think about the images you invented for numbers 123 and the LinkedIn with these items. For example, you might imagine In the milk peering down the handle of his spirit, shaped like a pencil. Then recall as when sitting on for very yellow acts. This whence wink boasts a tattoo of a red hearts spring with vanilla. The number rhyme system is similar to the membership system, except you develop your own rhymes based on the numbers to act as packs. One, for example, could be son, two sounds like Lou, and so on. By combining both systems, you can still list of 20 items in your short term memory in any order. But what if you want to remember an indefinite number of objects?

THE ROMAN ROOM SYSTEM The Roman room system allows you to remember an indefinite number of items. Imagine creating a room very cool store countless memories. Well, that's exactly what the room room system allows you to do by filling your imaginary room With objects, you create packs to which you can attach new information, the number of fixed objects you create, it's up to you. Just remember that the more objects you have, the longer the sequences you will be able to remember. And one of the sequence of objects does not matter, it needs to be deliberate and precise. It is this position that allows new objects to be linked to fixed ones. To practice. let's sketch a few items in your imaginary room. These will be your fixed items. There is a blue doormats in front of the door with a drawing of a white cat on it. In the middle of the door, there is a rat door knob shaped like a dragon. Once you enter the room, you find an oak coat hanger with eight pegs on your right hand sides. So if you need to remember to get a vaccine from the pharmacy, pick up your system from the airports and get your shirts from the cleaners. You could imagine something like this that widespread On the doormats is being injected with the vaccine. You see the red dragons spread its wings and welcome your sister into the house. Inside the house, you see your freshly pressed shots hanging from the coat hanger by the door. It's easy rights. Once a furniture room, take multiple mind walks in order to cement the packs in your memory. Activate all your senses during these walks. Be mindful of the colors, smells and noises you hear. Listen for subtleties, like a ticking clock and really feel the sensations of the furniture. If you want to make sure you remember the pegs in your room make a drawing affects. Some people enjoy creating these rooms so much that they have made drawings with hundreds of items.

MENTAL SNAPSHOT Whenever you want to boost your Oh, it's up remembering an event. Take a mental snapshot of it. For instance, let's assume you're in Cappadocia You want to remember this wonderful place forever. In such a case, what you will do is focus intently on this place and take a mental photograph of the scene. Look at the scene in front of you with utmost concentration and hold your head steady. It's important for you to remember these details Exactly. So tell yourself this. Finally, observe the colors aren't you the colors and positional things, the hot air balloons and the weather. Now it's time to capture the image. Blink slowly your eyes at almost half the speed you actual blink at as your eyes close. Think of them as a shutter camera and imagine hearing its sound as your eyes shots. If you are done, review the scene and replay it in your mind's eye. If the images are unclear, take another mental snapshot with greater intensity. Don't give up. Once again. It's right you will find time to Forget this place

MOTOR SENSORY INTEGRATION ENHANCING YOUR SENSES And this lecture we're going to be talking about sensory and motor integration. We're going to be covering how to increase plasticity and correlation with the cortical map system sensory integration includes processes that works on the different sensors that we have in the human body but a motor skill is different. It's a function that involves extremely precise movement of muscles with the intent to perform a specific act eventually. Now of e also motor skills are divided into two different categories gross motor skills and fine motor skills fine motor skills. As for smaller actions whereas gross motor skills is for larger movements. But we're going to talk more about this as we go on through this lecture. For now we're going to start talking about the sensory integration under our skin. There is a huge number of nerve networks as well as touch receptors in the skin. It is known as the Soma to sensory system and this system is responsible for all the different sensations that we can feel through touch. We can be talking about feeling cold hot rough tickle itch sometimes pain and vibrations or a certain kind of stimulation. All of these things are things that you can feel because of your sense of touch. Now there will be an article that explains all the different information regarding how the touch sensation work. I'm going to include it in the e. So in case you want to know more about the sensations and how they actually work you can always refer to these articles to know more. However for the e itself you don't need to know how these things work. In order for you to be able to achieve neuroplasticity but what you need to know is ensuring constant sensory stimulation can ensure brain stimulation of e because as each and every one of our sensors is linked to a part of the brain that means that every single stimulation that comes through our sensations will ensure a certain brain stimulation. Keeping in mind that each and every

one of our sensors has a huge and critical role when it comes to neuroplasticity. One of the major components of neuroplasticity as we talked about it before was experience. So now let me ask you a question. How come when you put your hand on something that is hot you move your hand away. And how come you would avoid touching something because you know that it's hot. Well of e it all goes back to our sense of touch. Past experiences have taught you scenarios where that might be a danger of touching something that is hot. Now our reflex of e works its magic when you touch something that's hot and you feel pain and then you just remove your hand. Of e our reflexes play an important role but afterwards how would you prevent yourself from touching what is hot. Knowing that this might be hot. Well of e it's through neuroplasticity the experience you had when you touch something and it was hard and it was painful. This rewired your brain in a way that understands that this scenario is linked to a hot plate which is linked to pain and therefore you won't do it anymore. So each and every one of our senses has a certain role when it comes to our experiences. And therefore when it comes to neuroplasticity and as we learn to use our senses better to enhance the connection and the link between our sensations and each and every part of the brain that they can reach through any action we will be ensuring stronger and easier ways to achieve neuroplasticity. And don't think that this will need years of training. There are some concept things that you can do on a regular basis that can have dramatic changes on the link between the sensations and the brain. Now starting with the touch sensation What do you need to do to improve the link and the connection between the sensation and the brain. Well first consciousness about what we're touching now the idea of consciousness will appear a lot of times throughout the e because when we're talking about the human mind and we're talking about the brain one of the most crucial elements to know what's going on and to have more control over your brain is through consciousness and mental awareness. Now going back to the Dutch consciousness about what we're touching and of e what we're feeling. When was the last time you took a shower and you actually pause for a second to see how it feels how the water feels on your body. Well you might do it but a lot of people don't. But another question would be how many times do you do it and why not every time. Even if you're taking a quick shower for two minutes you can put shampoo on your head and feel how the shampoo is rinsing your hair. You can stand under water and clean yourself up while feeling how the water feels

like. And second thing is developing sensory recognition patterns. People who are blind and they use sensory recognition patterns they have an entirely different alphabet rules and text than only they can read through their sense of touch and through experience and consistency they become so good at sensory recognition patterns that their ability to do it will overcome the average ability of a person who does it use it as much. Of e people will say that it's because of the experience but because there is the experience there is neuroplasticity what's really going on is that it's becoming hard wired in his brain and this is what's giving him this huge advantage over the others. When you wake up at night and it's dark but you know exactly where your phone is and you put your hand and you touch your phone. This is sensory recognition. Now the more you rely on your sense of touch to recognize and identify stuff the better the link and the stronger the link will be with the mind. And if you still don't really understand how the sense of touch can have this dramatic change on you the next time you feel sad or upset get a small feather and let somebody pass it slowly between your two lads right on the spine. Let somebody just take it from the top and drag it all the way down slowly and when it's done let me know how you feel but I can assure you that worst case scenario you will at least smile. And this is a start. Now we move to our sense of vision and the way it works is actually fascinating. Vision involves this process where it converts light signals every single thing that you look around you and you see is emitting lights and then your eye would receive this light and then it's focused to the retina where photo receptors that are called rods and cones convert this information to electrical impulses that can be interpreted by the nervous system and the brain. So every single time you're looking around there is constant brain stimulation that's coming from your sense of vision. And if we want to talk about experiences we all know that the sense of vision is one of the most important factors when it comes to experiences. You identify danger when you see it and you know that it's danger because of past experiences and those past experiences were interpreted as danger primarily through your vision. And that's exactly why when you see it your sense of vision perceives it and sends it to the brain and then the brain will be able to translate what it's seeing into a message saying to the brain there is danger. I will also add an article for a vision. I will add an article for each and every sensation. So you guys can just go there and check it out if you want to know any more information. But all the information that I'm going to tell you throughout this e is what you need to be able to go

through all of it. Any extra information I will not included in the e as some people don't like and overflow in information that aren't really relevant and useful but others like to know them just for the sake of knowing them. That's exactly why I'm adding the articles. However now we want to talk about how we can improve our sense of vision and its correlation with the brain as I said when we were talking about it the sense of touch. I said I we're going to mention consciousness lot and it's not just for vision and touch for every single sensation. Consciousness is a must. And I'm going to repeat it every single time to give examples. So you guys can know what you need to do when we're talking about being conscious. So when it comes to vision for example in the book the monk who sold his Ferrari Tibetan monks had this habit. It's called the Rose technique. And every single morning they would get a rose and they would stare at it and watch all the details for about 10 to 15 minutes. And that's exactly what visual consciousness is. You are becoming aware of the details. So you're not just looking you are looking in depth and looking and each and every single detail you can take as much time as you want as long as you see all the details that are on the Rose or whether you're using something else. You need to notice all the details. Take all the time you need to notice these details and be conscious of what you're looking at. And in the example of Dutch we talked about feeling the water when you're taking a shower but moving on. Another technique that you can use for your vision is rapidly observing the details and then observing the whole. So the next time you pass by someone and you feel attracted to them make sure to check out the details. Look at their shoes. Look at the color of their jeans. Look at their top. Look at their face. Look at the details but do it really fast. Start from the bottom and go all the way up and all around in a very very brief time. Be as quick as possible but notice as much details as possible and then look at the big image. So don't focus on one thing but focus on the entire person. Of e you can't do this every single time you see someone just do it at certain periods where you decide that you want to do it. Because these techniques are not things that you need to do on a daily basis. But these are things that the more you repeat the better. If you want to do it every single time. Be my guest. You will be doing a great job. But most people can't because at one point you will just forget about looking at someone and looking at all these details and looking at the whole. So make it a habit to do it every now and then. And of e I'm going to include in the e a lot of resources that can help with that. But for now keeping in mind that these two

techniques are essential for the connection between the vision and the perception that's going on in the brain. Now we're going to talk about our sense of taste and I'm gonna give a very quick example. It's Saturday night and you decide to stay in stay at your place and you feel like you want to eat something you want to eat a big meal filled with calories while you're watching your favorite show for example let's say you got this meal and you started eating it the minute you start tasting it you will have inner joy and you know what I'm talking about when you eat the thing that you've been wanting to eat for a while. You have this dopamine rush inside of you. You feel satisfied and you feel happy and you feel good about yourself. Just remember how many times you saw people eating and moaning how many times you thought people think that they can actually have an orgasm while eating because food has this huge effect on our brain and let's keep one thing straight. It's not our sense of taste. That's actually identifying the taste. It's the brain that is identifying the taste and that is doing all these amazing things when we eat. And it's simply the link between the sensation and the brain. And it doesn't stop there. Our sense of taste is responsible for saving our lives when we want to talk. From an evolutionary point of view people in the past used to identify bad foods and poisoned his food through taste whenever they eat something and they feel that it's bad they would spit it out. So our sense of taste also ensured survival. Now let's take a scenario you lose your sense of touch. Has it ever happened to you where you were a little bit sick and then you can't taste anything anymore. So whatever you eat feels the same whether you ate a burger or you eat a salad or you eat a toast with peanut butter at all taste the same. Why. Well because you can't taste anything and then you go to a one dollar restaurant and you order a chicken for 50 cents. And apparently the chicken died long long time ago. But when you eat it you don't feel like there's anything wrong because well you can't taste and taste and smell are very very similar. But we're going to talk about the sense of smell later now when it comes to tasting we can taste sweet sour salty bitter and savory. Those are the five main flavors that our sense of taste can detect. So the perception of sweet food is different than the perception of sour is different than the perception of salty and bitter and savory each and every one of them has different sensory inputs when it comes to their correlation with the brain each and every one of them. Similarly different neurons in different neural structures and networks inside the brain. And this is where we move to the taste plasticity how to ensure that your sense of taste and its correlation

with the brain are increasing on an exponential basis. And first things first mixing up your diet. As we said there are a lot of different processes when it comes to tasting sweet is processed in a different way and sour in a different way than salty in a different way than savory. So when you mix up your diet and you eat different different kinds of foods you will be stimulating all the possible neural networks that you can actually stimulate. Second thing is to avoid processed food there's not a lot of things that would go into processed food. When it comes to taste plasticity. But processed food can have a bad effect on your brain and it has a lot of other side effects related to cancer that if you can avoid just do it because it's better for your health and also better for your mental health and your brain energy and power. And lastly conscious eating so not just mixing up the diet and eating different tastes and different flavors but also being conscious when you're eating something salty being conscious that it's salty sea. Nowadays most people when they are eating they are usually looking at their phone or they're watching something nobody can just sit down and eat without looking at the phone or moving or watching something or listening to music just try it go cook something. Leave your phone in your room and go cook something and sit down and just eat it every time you have a bite. You close your eyes and you focus on the flavor. And believe me when you first going to try it you're going to feel that there's a certain level of discomfort because you've been using your phone and Netflix and other devices for a long time when you're eating that it just became wired in your brain. But once you start paying attention to a sense of taste you will discover that this sensation can take your places when you really focus on on what you're eating and what you're tasting. People usually devour food especially when they're hungry. They would eat food very very fast without without pausing to actually feel and taste what's in their mouth. Doing that can increase and strengthen the relationship. The correlation in the link between our sense of taste and our brain and now we're gonna move on to our sense of hearing. And just like all the other sensations there will be small article that talks details about how the process of hearing works. But for now explaining briefly how hearing works. Basically our ears work to transform all the acoustic stimulus that's coming from around us. It troubles down our ear canals into a type of neural code our brain can recognize this code process it and understand it and make sense out of it the vibration of the eardrum that happens transmits those vibrations to the cochlear and then the fluid in the latter would start to move and then the combination of the

vibration and the moving fluid would be transmitted into the brain where it's going to be interpreted and analyzed by the brain to make sense out of it. And of e going back to previous examples where we talked about how our sensations are related to neuroplasticity there's a lot of things that you identify through your sense of hearing when you hear a gunshot you know that you need to move and that there's something going on when you hear music you want to dance when you hear somebody calling you you want to answer when you hear somebody saying some erotic words in your ear whispering it to you you will get aroused and all of this is coming from your sense of hearing. Now of e a big part of it is the brain's interpretation to what's going on. If somebody's saying some erotic things for you and you understand them you won't get aroused. But let's take a different scenario. You only speak English and you meet a girl that speaks only French and then she whispers some sexual erotic stuff in your ear but you don't understand what she's saying. Then you will not be aroused. But when the girl was speaking in French You heard her. And when the girl was speaking in English you also heard her. But the difference is your mind can translate and interpret English but not French. So when you heard the words in English your mind interpreted the situation as a situation where you can reproduce of e as a basic instinct of mine. And that's why you got aroused. So hearing is also essential. And each and every one of our experiences all of our sensations are important. And I don't want to say one is more important than the other. They are all eventually complementary. So now the question is how to increase your hearing plasticity. Well first something that each and every person does every single day. I think I listen to music listening to music was found to enhance your sense of hearing the more music you listen to the more developed your sense of hearing the connection between it and your brain will be but careful to not listen to music on a really high volume because these vibrations can sometimes be too intense on the ears that they actually mess up the hearing sensations and you don't want that. Second thing is to have a certain kind of variety. People tend to listen to the same music every single time. I had this problem and I still sometimes have it. I listen to the same song over and over and over and over again. There is a song by Pink Floyd that I listened to for two years straight every single day. And this is not good. Variety is always good. Mixing up your playlist adding different stuff to your playlist. Different genres different music different artists and bands is always good because each and every one each and every song that

you're hearing will make you feel different and when you feel different there is of e different brain stimulation that's going on which is eventually the goal right. And lastly consciousness again focusing on listening try this following scenario. If you have a song that you really like and you that you've listened to a few times but it again but this time close your eyes block everything all the notifications on your phone and just focus on the song but the earbuds and just listen to it in details and try to take each and every sound that's happening by itself so try to listen to the guitar playing by itself try to listen to the voice by itself to the Bass by itself to the keyboard and drums by themselves. Try to make each and every sound that you're hearing stand outs and I can assure you that this will increase and strengthen the link between your sense of hearing and your brain a lot. And lastly when we're going to talk about the sensory integration we are going to be talking about our sense of smell. Imagine the following scenario You'rewalking back from work you're hungry you that an idiot and you're really like McDonald's and then you pass by McDonald's and you smell the food. Then there will be an automatic response in your mind that will say Hey I'm hungry I want to eat. And of e you might think about why you shouldn't eat McDonald's. No I'm on a diet. No I don't want to pay for this like it's not time to pay for this I need to save the money. But most of the times your sense of smell would be too powerful for you to just say let it go. I'm just not going to get anything. Hunger which is a physical function can be affected by our sensory system and in particular our sense of smell. When you smell something good in terms of food you will get hungry. Has it ever happened to you where you went with people to a restaurant or someplace and they asked you if you wanted to eat anything but you just eight 10 minutes ago and just say no I ate 10 minutes ago I'm good and then the food is on the table you smell it and you're like you know what. I'm actually hungry. I can actually eat a little bit right. And the reason why this happens is because of our smell plasticity. So two quick exercises that you can implement on a daily basis to improve it. First and foremost attentive smelling are smelling with a sense of consciousness being aware of what you're smelling the next time you put shampoo on your head. You're not just feeling yourself rinsing your hair but also smell the shampoo and smell the body wash. When you're making food smell the food before you eat it. Another thing would be wearing perfume and changing it when you wear perfume. You're going to smell it. There's no way out but when you don't put perfume you don't smell a lot of things.

That's why when you're walking in the street and somebody who passes by is wearing a lot of perfume it will hit you in the face. You will smell it so well and it will cause stimulation in your brain just opening a bottle of perfume and smelling it would give you a certain tingling sensation in your head that is caused by the perception of this sensation. Now imagine being able to have this constant stimulation when you wear perfume you are having this constant stimulation just like the case where we talked about the person passing by you who is wearing perfume. But now you are wearing perfume and it's not enough to just wear perfume but changing it every now and then because different smells have different brain stimulations and different brain functions and vice versa. And now we're going to move on to our motor skills. Remember the last time there was a coin on the table and the table is kind of slippery. There is glass on it and you try to pick up the coin but it's stuck. So you have to move it all the way to the edge of the table so it falls in the palm of your hand. Now let's get back to the part where you were trying to pick up the coin off the table. This part where you were using the tip of your fingers and a little bit of your nails to try to take the coin off the table. This is you using your motor skills. Now we'll take another example. You are playing volleyball. You throw the ball to the center. He sets it to you. You take two steps. You put your hands and your arms behind you then you put them all the way up in the air and you jump and then you hit the ball these are also motor skills. But what is the difference between both of them. Well we have gross motor skills and fine motor skills as we talked about in the beginning of the e gross motor skills are large movements you make with your arms with your legs with your head. Generally speaking with your body it can include running crawling jumping punching everything that everything that includes large movements and that includes your arms legs head and your body can be considered as gross motor skills and now fine motor skills are smaller actions. Finger and thumb actions wiggling your toes tapping on a computer using the tongue to taste and feel objects while you're controlling your tongue. So eating ice cream for example moving your tongue around the ice cream to make sure that you feel that you feel the taste as much as possible. This is what we know as fine motor skills. Now when we talked about the cortical not before we said that each and every part of the brain is connected to our cortical map which is basically the entire nervous system the nervous network that is in the central nervous system and how it's connected to our entire body. So each and every motor skill that you do will stimulate a certain

part of your brain will stimulate a certain group of neurons and neural networks and systems and neuroplasticity works on these skills. We'll take an example to explain how neuroplasticity can work when it comes to motor skills. First example is you have two people same height and same weight same body composition. One of them can dunk. And one of them can't. And the question is why well when one of them works on his gross motor skills he works on his legs and improves his jumping he does a lot of pull your metric exercises to increase his vertical jumping and the other one doesn't. What's happening with the first person let's call the first person person a who can dunk in Person B you can dunk person a through the repetition of the legs exercises through repetition of volumetric exercises through practicing dunking over and over and over again. He developed these gross motor skills to be able to dunk but Mr. B unfortunately can't dunk. Why. Well because he did not develop his gross motor skills. Now Mr. Eig will be able to dunk easily and you will get to a point where when he's playing a game he can run jump and dunk without even thinking about oh I want to dunk right now it becomes automatic and becomes a lifestyle it becomes hard wired in his brain. Now we'll give another example as well. You have a magician sitting right in front of you. They give you the deck of cards and they say shuffle it. You take the cards and you can barely shuffle them. And then he takes the cards and he shuffles them with a lot of different tricks with the tip of his hands. He does tricks where he shuffles the cards in a way that you've never seen before. Now why can he do it and you can't. Some of you might say well he knows how to do it. Well try to open youtube and watch a video on how to do a certain shuffle. And let me know if you can do it right away. Of e you're gonna say not right away but I'm gonna need some practice. And of e that's what you need. Consistency is the way for motor skills to become hardwired in the brain. So the first phase was learning when you learn you have this new experience. This experience turns into behaviour and through repetition the behaviour turns into habit. Now this habit if it was rewarding. If when you did this shuffling through somebody they liked it. They felt astonished. You felt the sense of accomplishment. Then you get a reward. And then it becomes wired. This process of learning experiences behaviour habit reward. Memory is a system that you need to understand by heart. The more we progress through the e you will learn more and more about each and every one of these. But the goal is to be able to understand all of them and mixing mix them all together in a way that makes sense. By the end of this e. So

generally speaking there are some things that you can do to work on your motor skills whether they're cross or they're fine motor skills. Keeping in mind that you get to choose whatever skills you want whatever fine motor skill you want to work on. You can apply the rules on it and whatever whatever gross motor skill you want to work on. You can also include the rules and work accordingly. First and foremost repetition. We talked about this before and we're going to talk about it again. Repetition repetition repetition. The more you practice the more likely it is for the connection and the link between neurons to form ensuring neuroplasticity. And second is consistency. When you have a new behaviour that you're trying to turn into something that is wired into your brain you do this habit or this behaviour for a week and then you stop for two days then you do it for three days and then you stop for four days. You're not ensuring consistency and we talked about this before you will fail to get the link between the neurons and eventually firmly forming the neural network. Third is variety switching up and changing the pace of things. A lot of times especially if you work out you would know that if you do the same exercises for a while your muscles will stop developing. It gets to a point where if you do the same exercise routine you're just not going to progress anymore your muscles are not going to grow anymore and personal trainers tend to change the nature of exercises and what you're doing and the reps and the sets a lot to have this muscle impact because if your muscles get accustomed to a certain type of exercise through neuroplasticity it will become way easier to do these exercises but then you will not see any muscle improvements. Same thing goes for basketball. The example that we gave if you keep jumping in the same way and not challenging challenging yourself and putting more weights. You will not jump higher. So ensuring a variety of actions related to this certain behaviour is always a plus focus and mindfulness. We already talked about them. There is an entire section about focus but mindfulness and meditation as well. There are going to be guided meditations at the end of the e that you can use and that you will use according to the calendar and the planner that we had set up for the e. These the added meditations will will guide you through the process of mindfulness for you to be to be really aware and conscious of what's going on in your mind your thoughts and of e your external environment that can give you bad vibes and eventually bad thoughts. Lastly one of the most important rules getting out of the comfort zone. Try tried the following scenario try to tap one hand on your chest and try to rotate the other hand

moving the other hand in a in a rotation kind of movement on the tip of your heads. At first you will not be able to do it unless you have really good motor skills. You will not be able to do it because you don't feel comfortable doing it. You've been used your entire life to move your muscles in a certain way in a certain correlation in accordance. So when you want to move your muscles in a way that they're not used to it they will feel like there is something wrong you will feel discomfort. A lot of people would go to the gym consistently but there are some exercises even though they are very useful. They would never do them because they don't feel comfortable doing them when they lift the weight. They feel that they just feel discomfort and then they just drop it instead of learning and making it hard wired in their brain and making it just like any other exercise. They would just drop it when in fact all it needs is for you to try it and make sure you're doing it right. And then you got out of your comfort zone and you started building this neural pathway in this neural network and structure by connecting the different neurons. Coming from this action where you went out of your comfort zone to do it and getting out of the comfort zone did not just help you create a meeting this new habit or exercise but challenging your comfort zone also have huge positive impacts on the human brain. So in short any action that involves grass or fine motor skills with the ideas mentioned before you would improve the overall plasticity through motor skills and integration and of e. Same thing goes for sensory integration when you want to work on certain senses more you would do that you should pick the senses that you want to focus on if not all of them and of e you need to pick the motor skills that you want to work on and improve and you follow the steps that we mentioned before comfort zone focus in my fullness variety consistency and repetition. And when you do that with consistency you will start building this neural network caused by all the different neurons connecting together and firing up together. When you're doing of e a certain action that stimulates this area of the brain and as a result you will improve your overall brain plasticity of e and you will ensure that there is a very very good correlation between all your senses between your perception between your motor skills your cortical map and your overall nervous system.

LEARNING STRATEGIES

In this lecture we're gonna be talking about learning abilities how to enhance them and how to improve them. As we were talking about neuroplasticity it is very obvious and by now I'm pretty sure that all of you know that learning is one of the biggest parts of neuroplasticity. One of the things that influence our brains plasticity the most is the learning strategies that we go through and learning strategies is a really big word. We can be talking about things we're actually learning or we can be talking about learning mechanisms. Some people learn faster when they hear stuff. Some people learn faster when they see stuff. Some people are good or good with math. Some people are not. Some people are good with art. Some people are not. The next time you go to a classroom the next time you're sitting in a place where somebody is giving some information and there is a group of people who are learning stuff you can be sure that at the exact same moment that their brain is physically growing and changing physically and chemically. There is one particular trait to neuroplasticity when it comes to learning is that it is selective. When

somebody says something it's up to you to decide if that's if what they said is true or what they said is not true. And if what they said is true and you're convinced and you like that and you want to apply it then neuroplasticity is going to be very effective in that case. But even when you think that it's false and you refuse to believe it you're also going through the concept of neuroplasticity. There are neural structures forming that will tell you eventually that this concept is false for you of e according to your own personal opinion and in learning you can actually see neuroplasticity happening and the way you can do it is just try the following get a small paragraph or point and try to memorize it memorize it once memorize it twice. Keep on reading it again and again and again and every time you read it try to say it. Try to see how much you would remember of this phone and you will notice of e out of common sense that when you repeat it 20 times you're going to be able to recall way more than you were able to recall after repeating it five times. You can. You can even take it up a notch. Get two poems read one for five times and then see how much you would recall out of it and recorded or write it down and then take another poem the exact same if you want. Length poem has to be three four or five lines not more than that. Read it 20 times and see how much you recall out of this poem. Now after two days sit down again and see how much you would remember from each and every poem and you will obviously remember the second poem way more than the first one. And the reason why is because it is wired in your brain neurons that fire together wire together. And this is exactly what happened with you as you were repeating the information over and over again. There's been a neural structure a neural network that was formed inside your brain because cells that fire together wire together all of all of these cells and neurons that were firing together as you were repeating the poem over and over again got wires together. And of e we know in neuroplasticity that the consistency would increase this connection between neural structures. So practice makes eventually can even make it permanent. There are some things that you will never forget in your life because you practiced it so many times the more times the network is stimulated the stronger and more efficient it becomes repeating an activity retrieving a memory referring all of this material in a variety of ways can help you build your memory can help you build this neural structure between all the different neurons and neural structures involved in this learning process. So a very easy way to understand learning process and neuroplasticity is to look at it as weightlifting

weightlifting and physical exercise can build your muscle when you're learning the nerve cells in your brain or growing with all these mental exercising that you're doing with all the learning that you're receiving. And these neurons are developing through connections and through links for neural structures and single neurons itself that are linking together for the first time. Now we know that neurons will process and transmit information through electrical and chemical signals throughout the entire brain. And there are billions of neurons in the human brain and all these new thoughts and new skills and new things that you're learning or crave out new pathways inside your brain. Now through repetition and practice these pathways will become stronger and stronger and on the other hand the old ways would get weaker and weaker until they disappear. Which brings us to the misconceptions that people have around the idea of learning and neuroplasticity and the first misconception is your intelligence and brain capacity is limited in fact through studies and research. It was found that neuroplasticity will give you the ability to become more intelligent will increase your brain capacity and therefore your intelligence and brain capacity are not limited. A person's IQ can increase or decrease throughout time because of of e things he's learning he's or she's learning experiencing through memories and through a lot of different daily experiences even stimulants can affect that a lot. A lot of people who use stimulants for ADHD for example are found to have higher IQ. After years of using this medication because of e the process of neuroplasticity and people who smoke weed for example were found that their IQ between the ages of 18 to 35 their IQ would decrease by six points on average. And all of this is happening because of neuroplasticity and the second misconception is that a lot of people think that for example they're not good at math they're not good at writing something. Some people feel like they cannot handle numbers at all. Some people feel like they cannot write essays. It's just not their thing and they become accustomed to that. And people grow up becoming engineers or English literature students and every single time they talk to someone they just say I can't do this or I can't do that my mind doesn't function here and my mind doesn't function there. In fact the fact that they are saying this is the reason why they are where they are. They are the reason why their brain is wired in a certain way while their brain is wired. In this particular way people who are not good at math are not good at math because their brain was wired accordingly. If at a young age they kept practicing math over and over again

and they grew up liking math and thinking that they're really good at it even if they weren't even if at a young age you weren't good at math but you keep thinking that you're good or you're getting better and that you like math you would have improved a lot. And by now you would have thought yourself that you're good at math but as math is not a very easy subject. Most people during school when they're young. They get bad grades and of e bad grades equals bad emotions. And when people experience these unpleasant and uncomfortable emotions or state they want to get away from it they want to move away from it and therefore they move away from math. But as math is something that you can't avoid and you're gonna keep seeing it throughout your entire schooling until you graduate and you go to university and then you decide where you want to do people keep struggling and they keep hating it more and more and they barely pass the class until they get to university and they just want to move away from math they want nothing to do with math. Of e there are some people who are born with this unique ability to be able to solve these problems more easily. They were born with a logical side of their brain that is way more improved than others and it's all related to their genes. There was a mutation that happened that made it possible for them to solve these equations and these problems in a different way than others would solve them and therefore you can improve all the learning mechanisms in your brain whether it's math whether it's writing whether it's your ability to memorize stuff you can developed any learning mechanism you want through neuroplasticity and we're going to talk about it a bit more later on how to use neuroplasticity to develop all the learning mechanisms that you want. But this brings us to last misconception. People grow up with a certain ideology. They grow up with parents who always say to them you are really good at art you're really good at drawing you're really good at this you're really good at that. Ever since you were young you were so good with the computer you knew how to use it really really well and these people grew up thinking that they are prodigies when it comes to computers. They continue learning more in university about computers and then they get to the actual world the real world where they have to actually work with computers and that's when they realize they absolutely hate it. I have a friend who spent five years at university until he finished his masters in computer science to realize that he hates computers. He hates sitting down in front of a computer and doing stuff. He's more of an artistic person who likes to go to parks be out in a park and draw and do videographer and photography and in a second.

His entire self-image was shattered. He grew up his entire life thinking that computer is the way and he's going to be a software developer and he's going to do computer science and work on computers for the rest of his life and then only to realize that he actually hates it and don't get me wrong. He was good with computers. He was top of his class and he was doing really well. He was performing really really well. But the only reason he did it is because he was good at it not because he liked it not because he loved it just because he was good at it. We as humans we have a tendency to always do stuff we're good at stuff where we feel comfortable stuff where we feel like we have a certain competitive edge over other people. If you are good at basketball you're probably going to play it more and more and more for a simple reason which is the human's ego. When somebody is good at something and they can show off they're going to do it more and more they're going to keep repeating and when they're not good at something and they're not getting any better they want to move away from it. Hence the math example we gave before but this is a good example. My friend grew up thinking that he's good with computers and he became good with computers. The only issue was that he did not really like what he was doing and the misconceptions someone's opinion of you does not have to become a reality in this particular example. We can talk about a very negative situation where one of my favorite public speakers Leslie Brown he talked about an example where he was identified as mentally retarded in school and he was put back from one class to another because of that and he because of this opinion he worked accordingly. He became slower he became less intelligent and he thought that this is his reality. Until one day he met a teacher his name was Leroy Washington if I'm not mistaken and he wanted him to go on the board and write something but he said I can because I'm mentally retarded and the teacher said someone's opinion of you does not have to become your reality. And less Brown emphasized this idea on how a certain person's opinion can become another person's reality when somebody gives their opinion about you. You have a tendency to take their opinion as something very very important or in fact you should. The only opinion that should really matter to you is your own personal opinion. There are exceptions of e but at the end of the day you need to keep in mind that your brain is being wired through all the learning that you're getting. And when we say learning we say hearing and when we say hearing we say opinions when you hear people's opinions and you believe then you are learning something new you are learning something new about

yourself that came through other people. And once you start believing it and you start reinforcing this idea inside your mind over and over and over again it's going to become wired neuroplasticity is not going to work with you. It's going to work against you. Now something that you also need to know is that learning is not just the process of hearing new information and saying that this is true or this is false and wiring it inside your brain. One of the biggest factors that is involved in learning is emotions. Emotions is the system that tells you how important something is. Attention focuses us on the important and away from the unimportant things cognition tells us what to do about it and Congress of skills or whatever it takes to do these things. All of this combination works towards neuroplasticity of e. When you professor in class said pay attention because what I'm about to say is going to be in your final you dropped everything and you were focused right away and whatever he said you made sure to write it down and review it over and over again. Why. Because it's linked to an emotional state. When the professor said this is going to be in the final whatever your brain thought about is final equals grades equals good grades equals whatever you want to get to. And that made the moment emotionally charged and that's why you remembered what the professor said when he was talking about something that's going to show up in the exams but you don't remember the other three hours that he was talking and learning goes hand in hand with memory there is there are three lectures about memory that you need to go through and really understand them before being able to understand learning and they are complementary. If you have good memory you have good memory skills and you know how memory and neuroplasticity work and then you know how learning and neuroplasticity work by linking both concepts together. You can see a huge improvement at the end of the day learning and memories are related. When you learn something if you want to apply it you need to remember it now because emotions are linked to learning. When you experience certain emotions like stress and anger you will perform more poorly. If you're ever in a lecture or you're ever listening to a boss talking or if you're ever in a job interview doing whatever learning something and you're stressed or you're angry or you're sad. The learning mechanisms are not going to be as good. These emotions will make you lose focus. You will not be able to concentrate well you will not be able to really memorize and recall the information that you're getting you're not going to be able to actually differentiate between what you actually need to store in your brain and what you don't have to what's

important and what's not because all what you can think about is this one thing that's making you stressed out or angry and that's exactly why in other lectures we said that if you ever have a problem that's making you stressed do not continue learning or doing what you're doing before solving the problem stop. Solve the problem and then go back to whatever you were doing. This is the best way to do it. Otherwise you will be losing your time and getting yourself into an even worse emotional state because you're putting more pressure on yourself. You're saying to yourself I need to focus I need to learn I need to finish when in fact your brain cannot focus because of the release of stress hormones I know there are a lot of motivational speakers that would go against that and say no whatever is happening you need to focus but you cannot pause psychology a lot of people did but you cannot pass biology stress hormones will disrupt and they will. There will be a lot of disturbance in your mental state. This will affect you in a negative way. This will affect your cognitive state in a negative way and therefore solving the problem and moving the stress away would be way better and more beneficial for your cognitive state. And lastly one more thing that you need to keep in mind that can also be detrimental for the cognitive and learning process when it comes to neuroplasticity is uncertainty. When you learn something new and you didn't really understand it well you might understand it in a way and then the next day you would think about it and then understand it in another way and then you become confused between two or three or four different analysis that you made in your mind. What this will do is that it won't let any neural structure or neural network a neural link get formed that is strong enough for this information to be wired in your brain and what's going to happen is every single time you think about another situation or another analysis of the situation. Is another that there's another neural structure firming more neural links forming together and therefore the other links that you formed before are getting weaker. So when you learn something and you're not sure if it's right or wrong you're not sure what the right answer is. Make sure to do whatever you can to know the right answer in order for you to learn it effectively and to learn exactly what the answer is. Remove the uncertainty be certain about the answer follow it and let it get wired in your brain.

YOU CAN MASTER ANY SKILL But let's pause for a moment if nearly any skill can be learned through intentionally guided practice. What does that say about the concept of talent? content contrary to public opinion, deliberate practice, and not talent is the key to becoming extraordinary. Now we know that highly specialized skills can be developed through diligent practice, but are not some abilities the result of sheer genius or a sort of talent bestowed by a higher power. Many people tend to think this is the case, believing that outstanding performers owe their skills to innate talents, especially in cases where landmark performances are inexplicably accomplished yearly in a performance life. What other explanation could there be for such as Unusual, extraordinary abilities? Many of Mozart's biographers, for example, have pointed to the fact that he began composing at the age of six, and that he wrote a symphony just two years later, in the talent seems like a convenient catch-all to explain how a small child could accomplish so much in such a short time. Yet there is no evidence that innate talent exists. Rather, the incredible abilities of top performers, even a genius like Mozart seems to be the result of deliberate practice. Mozart might not have accomplished that much when he was young. Evidence now suggests that the first compositions ascribed to him when he was eight years old to match the handwriting of his father loquat Mozart's a composer who trained his son from a young age while Mozart went To become a legendary musical figure, he did not write any significant musical pieces until his teenage years, after nearly a decade of honing his skills to deliberate practice. The same holds for many other performers. talent, people do not take shortcuts.

EXAGGERATION Up next is exaggeration. Compared to an ordinary horse, you are more likely to remember at giants bright pink horse wearing a tux, right? Forget logic. It's all about making funny, fantastical images. And lastly, energize a horse galloping at full speed into the sunset is far more entertaining than wants standing still in a stable, adding a bit of action will make the information you're trying to retain a lot more with it's the key to remembering information, then is to use your imagination to bring it to life.

INFORMATION LONG TERM MEMORY Now that you have discovered how to create memorable images, it's important to learn how to organize them in your minds. The best way to do this is to use local methods, also known also known as the root method, which is the practice of combining new information with something already familiar. He will start Experts that remembering specific rates or places, so most memory systems already make us of loci. It works by putting the items to be remembered at specific locations along the route that is already events, and familiar in our minds. Here's how we can put the local method to work. Say you're trying to memorize bits of a speech you have to give, you will imagine walking around your house along a particular route. The idea here is to create a string of locations to visit as you go. So in each room, you you imaginarily ventured to pick three specific locations in the room and put them in a specific order. In this way, as you go around your house, you combine each part of the speech with the locations you have picked. Let's say you start in the kitchen and the first low key is your favorite pink breakfast bowl. You will think of the horse in a pink tuxedo from the same method in the previous lesson, and remember that the word horse is in the first paragraph of the speech. To make it even more memorable, you will imagine spinning the pink breakfast bowl on its hat. Next, let's say the following paragraph in your speech includes the words summer camp, which you remember by imagining your family pictures on the refrigerator. This method is effective, because it will vary with any structure location that you know well. When it is your car, your body or a museum, you can use your route to record your list. If your route is intentionally structured to hold, say five objects per room, then you will remember both the list and its exact order. The loci method has been around more than 2500 years.

SYSTEMS TO ENSURE PROPER LEARNING So now that you have a clear idea about learning ability and neuroplasticity how to use it for enhancement and improvement you are aware of the misconceptions and the confusions that people might meet. Now you need to learn what you have to do what you need to apply and how to apply these principles. And starting off with the first principle which is to total immersion putting your all into it when you're doing something when you're learning something you need to put all your learning abilities into it and not just start. You need to make sure that you have proper focus and concentration. You need to make sure that there are no distractions around you that might make your focus shift elsewhere. You need to make sure that you are totally immersed in the task or whatever you're doing. The more you put into it the more you'll get out of it the more you'll be able to use your brain's plasticity to get a better learning mechanism that works every single time for you not against you. You need to make sure that when you say I understand the chapter Well it's you saying it honestly and not you just tricking yourself so you can procrastinate. And that's what happens with most people. They just have this optimistic look on things and they expect that even if they didn't study well they know the material and hopefully they'll get an easy exam and they'll be able to just power through it. And most of the times it doesn't really work that way when you need to say I'm done. I finished study. You need to make sure that you actually did. And by using the total immersion principle you'll be also making sure that you're being honest with yourself not tricking yourself into anything and you'll make sure that you're putting your all into the learning mechanism that's taking place at the moment which will help with the neuroplasticity of e. And the second principle is linking and connecting linking ideas and thoughts. That's where the creative side of you needs to actually come out. You need to first understand the difference between ideas and thoughts ideas are things that actually have a meaning.

Thoughts are usually meaningless but not in the sense of neuroplasticity. What we're talking about about right here is that when you say I have an idea it means that you have something solid concrete. When you say I'm having thoughts it means that you're having something that is uncertain something that is flexible something that isn't really stable yet. But the truth of the matter is every idea was before a stream of thoughts it was a chain of flexible thoughts that got transformed into an idea after you got a bit of sense and logic around it. And even though you connected all the different pieces of the puzzle through logic you used creativity at first to be able to actually find these solutions. He's logical solutions. So the way learning works when you're linking and connecting ideas and thoughts is going to be really really different when you have an idea and you start having thoughts about it. Your mind is usually asking you questions so you can be able to actually comprehend the idea very well when you have some questions and doubts about a certain idea that you avoid. This is something that you need to start avoiding itself. You need to know how to link your ideas and your thoughts. You need to know how to use your thoughts to your advantage when you become aware of your thoughts. When you have a concrete idea and you have thoughts around it then you'll really link the thoughts to the ideas you'll be helping yourself through the learning through the learning mechanism right there and you'll be also saving a lot of time because these thoughts are meant to make you perfect the concrete system of the idea. Only when you have no thoughts around a certain topic will you be able to actually mastery as long as there are things that you don't know thoughts that are going through your mind about a certain topic that you're trying to learn. You need to keep linking and connecting. If you also want to take it up a notch. One of the most important principles when it comes to learning ability is to actually teach it to someone when you can teach it you'll understand it. Sometimes the thoughts that are going around an idea are not enough. You need yourself. You have one concrete source of wisdom and conscious and thoughts which is your human brain. And it's intangible. Another person would have another source. Another intangible source of thoughts each and every one of these intangible sources is unique and it has its own ideas its old thought patterns and everything and each chunk of intangible thoughts will analyze and ask questions differently. When you teach it to someone you mix your thoughts with their thoughts as well. So out of two intangible sources of thoughts he created a third intangible source of thoughts that is these two intangible

sources combined together and therefore you are making the learning mechanisms work even faster. And the fact that you're learning all of these details is ensuring proper neuroplasticity. All of this learning is gonna eventually help you'll learn more faster and easier. And lastly the chunking technique. Cut it down and then link it up. You probably cannot finish an entire math chapter in one day. But what you're able to do is to spend one day understanding the theories and the formula spending the other day memorizing the theories and the formulas and how to apply them spending the third day and the fourth day solving exercises and spending the fifth day working on the loopholes or the problems that you went through making sure that you don't go through the same mistake again. Now this is possible. The reason why this is possible and why it's way more effective. It's because you're using the chunking technique you're cutting down. What do you have to learn. And then you're learning it bit by bit. You'll be able to absorb the information faster and it'll be way clearer for you and as neuroplasticity is working its magic you begin to have bigger chunks of work every single time leading you to eventually become more productive manage your time better and be able to handle it handle your tasks and manage your time when it comes to these tasks in a very effective way. So using these four techniques to begin with can boost your learning ability a lot. There are also a lot of exercises in the e to enhance your logical side of the brain the creative side your critical thinking your creativity your productivity. There are a lot of principles that you also need to follow but I'm going to also add a few techniques that you can use that can also help a lot with the learning strategies. Even if you don't have somebody to actually teach just pretend to be teaching when you pretend to be teaching and you take this standpoint of a student receiving this information which can be different from your own personal perception you might be getting more thoughts around an idea so you can even understand it better. Also sleeping between learning sessions if you're studying for four hours and then you want to take a break for an hour make sure that 25 minutes of this break can be a short not because when you sleep your mind retains information. So sleeping between two learning sessions for example can greatly improve your retention and also you can use a three dimensional mechanism and taking notes which means when you want to take notes. Don't just say I'm going to listen to the lecture or don't just say I'm going to write everything the Professor says no matter what I'm hearing. You need to take notes with your ears your eyes and with your

hands. Meaning you need to see and know what you need to write what information you need to write. You need to be able to hear the explanations and know what details you need to pick out and you need to make sure that you're not overloading yourself with information writing them down that you can't actually keep up with what the professors seek. One of the best ways to take notes using the three dimensional mechanism is to use mind maps. There is a whole section about my mapping in this e so check it out and make sure to understand how my mapping works. So you can apply it on when you're taking notes in class. It be as easy as having the subject as the core and then branching out all the different ideas and then some branching all the different arguments and some arguments but you'll understand it more when you get to the mind mapping section and the last technique principle or thing that you can apply and I think is one of the most essential and important is using your emotions to your advantage. A lot of times when we're working on things we are always complaining. We're in a bad mood for an a bad mental state. We hate what we're doing and this will not help with neuroplasticity at all. You will link learning and memorizing and subjects to back pathways in the neural structure which is bad which will affect the learning abilities. And learning strategies and mechanisms in a negative way. And you don't want that. So make sure to always find a reason to love what you're doing. Even if you hate it tried to find one reason that can make you be a bit more positive about it and keep this one reason in your mind. Otherwise you will be hurting all the learning mechanisms that you have. Cognitive cognitive.

SPEED READING

In this lecture we're going to be talking about a new concept called speed reading speed reading is as I said a new concept. It was introduced recently by a number of different apps that claim that they can help you with speed reading. It came with a number of facts that gets so point where a person can read supposedly twelve hundred words in a minute where the average person reads between 200 to two to three hundred words per minute reading twelve hundred words per minute can be out of the squirrels and of e just imagine yourself being able to read 12000 words in one minute. It doesn't stop there. Some people claimed that they can read 17000 words per minutes after applying a lot of different speed reading techniques and mechanisms and there isn't one system to follow when it comes to speech reading. There are a lot of different systems and different methods that you can use for speed reading. They were introduced through research and of e when we talk about speed reading we were not talking about a speed where you're just going

through words rapidly with ZERO COMPREHENSION. We're talking about speed reading when it comes to method that can ensure you reading and comprehending and analyzing information faster. Want to go through scientific and practical approaches to make sure that you hit the nail on the head. Speed reading is nowadays widely used over the world and it's one of the most controversial topics that are taking place in the entrepreneurial world. Warren Buffett says the more you learn the more you earn. And of e reading is one of the most essential parts when it comes to learning when you're developing your reading mechanisms. You are developing your learning mechanisms automatically. But just briefly we're going to talk about how reading actually works because reading is a very complex process from light hitting the retina the processing the linking analyzing concluding thinking answering recalling sharing saving. Reading is a complex process. As soon as you're looking at a text the light is hitting the retina of your eye and through this reflection of light that is hitting your retina. The neural analysis is happening on the retina level. The processing is happening then inside your brain happens the linking between what you're thinking and your memories and your thoughts. It also gets linked with the logical side of your brain with the creative side of your brain depending on the issue or what you're trying to process. Then comes the analyzing the applying of the logical side with the creative side of you or your memories or your thoughts and then you have a conclusion you're going to know what's going on then you're going to start thinking or you start having some ideas and doubts around this main idea and then you're going to start looking for answers. You're going to try to use recalling you're going to recall a lot of information that you didn't recall before you might even share this information and pass it on to somebody else. After reading something you can explain it to someone or you can just save it in your system and keep it in your brain where you might actually later. Reading is a complex process. That's exactly why we're not going to go in-depth into the science of how reading works scientifically psychologically biologically how it works because it will not help you at all in attaining the goal which is being able to speed read and it will just waste your time. So we're gonna skip it but it is essential to understand that reading is indeed a very complex process and people who just expect to wake up one day and start reading 50 pages a day it's more likely that this is not going to happen. It's not that easy to just say I'm going to start reading and I'm going to start reading a thousand words a minute. Reading is a complex process that

needs a lot of training a lot of practice to be able to get to mastery level. Some people start off by reading one chapter a day and they get to a point where they're reading one book a day. There's an entrepreneur called Tai Lopez. Some of you might be familiar with him. He's a very well known for his for his parody where he was. He had a video in his garage showing his Lamborghini and the books and seeing words like knowledge and stuff and people made fun of him. But he I don't know if it's true or not. He claimed that he reads one book a day and he even made a TED talk about it that you guys can go and watch it. He says if you can wake up every single morning and meditate while having Dali Lama as your mentor and then go the gym and have Arnold Schwarzenegger as your personal trainer and then go do some investing and having Warren Buffett as your invest as your ask or mentor for investment how better would your life be. And then he continues to say that when you read one book a day the more you read and the more you read and keep on reading all of these people's thoughts can become your thoughts and therefore you can use them as mentorship. And that's why he said that he reads one book a day. He says this is how he was able to acquire all the knowledge that he needs and to for his entrepreneurial journey to get to where he wants to get. And again I'm not sure if he actually does read one book today or not but if you look him up there are a lot of people who are going to say that he was a scammer he scammed people into buying the program that he had the 70 whatever Six Steps program and a lot of people did buy it and he made a lot of money off of it and a lot of other people say that no he is not lying. He is an actual entrepreneur and he did all of that. He does read one book a day and it shows in his all the information that he has. But at this point what we care about is just realizing that reading is not easy and you're going to have if you're if you don't read a lot if you haven't had the habit of reading you need to start developing as a habit to be able to get to the fullest potential when it comes to reading. See when we're speed reading we're in the process of rapidly recognizing and getting in and absorbing all the different phrases and words and sentences that you see on the page in front of you rather than just looking at word by word kind of texts and you will notice that the more you practice speed reading the more you'll be able to read the more you'll be able to process words the numbers will start to grow you'll be able to process these words and phrases and texts in a shorter amount of time while ensuring way better comprehension overall. And as we've said before most people read out an average of two hundred and fifty

200 to 300 words per minute. What would be ideal is for you to set a timer for one minute and see how much words can you how many words can you read in one minute and then work from there work your way through from there every single week you go back to the same exercise and you see how many words were you able to read. Now in one minute but it can get kind of complicated because as we said speed reading is not about reading individual words but you'll see what I mean in in a few. And lastly as I said before it's not just about reading words. It's also about retaining and comprehending the words and what makes speed reading more complicated is that you need to keep in mind these two factors you need to keep in mind that even though your speed reading your comprehension and your retention can be affected the faster you read the less you'll be able to comprehend information and retain information so hard to balance it out. That's a big question right there but of e this revolution this major revolution information that is taken over the world where all the information that you need are easily accessible. It makes the speed reading process way easier if you want to know how lotion can affect your skin in a positive way. You can just google it and read an article. But back in the day they had to go to the library and look for books. And then in the books look for the chapter and then look for the exact paragraph or section that is talking about this topic. And that was a big hurdle for first speed reading. But nowadays it's way way easier because the information is way more accessible and way easier to understand. And when people have access to the web and they have access to all these information when they do buy a book they become a bit hesitant and a lot of times they just drop the book as soon as they see that there is a lot of boring detail that has nothing to do with the subject. If you've done a lot of reading before in your life you would know that at one point you bought a book and you were really excited for it and then you started reading it to realize that it is the most boring text you've ever read and it doesn't have any rich information that you were looking for and you just closed the book and drop it. It stays on the shelves for four years and nobody would ever touch the book again because your impression is that the book is boring and maybe it is. And having the information on the Web having the internet to be able to access all the information that you need would make it easier for you to just let go of this book. And that's where speed reading steps in speed reading when you have these kind of books you'll be able to go through the information faster he'll be able to comprehend the information that are actually crucial and let go of the

information or the boring details that you don't need. And if you go from reading 200 words a minute to reading a thousand words minute this is you reading at five times the pace you were reading before. So if it would take you five days to finish one chapter No it would take you one day. So if it would take you two months to finish a book made out of twelve chapters after mastering the speed reading techniques it would take you about 12 to 15 days. Speed reading will allow you to read more material in the same time that you spent reading now. So it gives you more time to read the material that you want to and keep in mind that you're more the more you're training and the more your practicing your speed reading you are improving your focus your concentration your comprehension and your retention which will have a positive effect on the reading material that you have in front of you.

SPEED READING LIMITATIONS In this lecture we're gonna be talking a little bit more about the limitations when it comes to speed reading and how it's connected to neuroplasticity. Before moving on to the actual techniques doc can help you when we talk about limitations why we can't read an incredible speed. We have cognitive processing limitations sensory output limitations and comprehension and retention limitations. We need to keep in mind several different factors. One of the biggest factors is our lack of concentration nowadays where the average concentrations fan is no more than eight seconds and I will say this in several lectures that it would take you up to 25 minutes to reach the pinnacle of your focus and concentration. Having our smartphones around and having distractions all around us it is very easy to have this lack of concentration and when you have lack of concentration. This is going to affect the speed reading process. You can not expect to know how to speed read when you have absolutely no sense of discipline and concentration if you can't concentrate you can't speed read period and a lot of people think that the slower you read the better you'll be able to comprehend information and retain information which is wrong. Scientifically speaking this is not true. The correlation between reading and comprehending has nothing to do with how fast or how slow you're reading but it has everything to do with your cognitive abilities when it comes to this specific learning mechanism which is reading and what happens a lot of times is that people don't really evaluate what they're reading properly they read the entire book as if it's all at all contains equal important information. Books have little important information and a lot of details. So being able to know how to evaluate what you're reading properly to know what's important and what's not as important and what's just some boring details that you don't need is essential to be able to read better if you're slow reading the entire book. Going through all of these details that that has nothing to do with the idea that's just a random story that has nothing to do with anything you are putting your concentration your mental energy cognitive energy your memory your focus on this piece

of material on these reading material that you have on this paragraph or on this chapter when in fact it is not relevant. If you're just doing reading for the sake of enjoyment you should not be doing speed reading. You should be reading at your own pace and forgetting about all the techniques that you're about to learn. But if you want to read in a way that you can retain and comprehend a lot more information and less time then you're doing the right thing. But as we go through it you will be able to identify the important material when it comes to books. You'll be able to identify what's important and what to focus on and what not to focus on. And there are also a lot of factors linked to our senses when it comes to our vocalization. When it comes to our eye movement through our hearing and mostly to our attention and in the part where we're talking about focus concentration and attention you guys are going to know that there is a difference between the three concepts. Focus is not the same as concentration is not the same as attention and speed reading is not just affected by our lack of concentration but also by our focus and our attention our limited attention as one of the reasons why we keep reading words over and over and over again because we weren't paying attention. And this is why we read out a very slow rate reading word by word because we don't want to miss any of the information. And if there was ever a small risk of us missing something even if it's not of any value even if it has nothing to do with what you're reading in something that is that is just adding information and adding boring information to it you will feel like you want to reread the material to make sure that you didn't miss anything. Otherwise you won't be able to understand the rest of the book which is wrong. So keeping in mind these limitations is not just to know these limitations is to also know that you need to work on these limitations cognitive processing limitation means that there is a certain level where reading and comprehension will not go along anymore. You'll be reading too fast that your comprehension will drop dramatically and you won't be able to comprehend anything while other people when you read at the same speed they can comprehend way more than you. And this is all linked to cognitive processing limitation. People who had the habit of reading books ever since they were six years old and now they're 22 and they're reading books every single day they have a higher cognitive processing abilities when it comes to the reading learning mechanisms than you do. And if you for example read let's say one chapter a week. You also have a bigger advantage over people who read one chapter a month over people who read one book a year. Practice develops neuroplasticity which

develops your cognitive processing and gets you out of the limitation. And another thing as we said is sensory output limitation. When we read we use a lot of our senses we sometimes read and you can hear yourself reading. So what you're doing is you're actually pronouncing every single word you're reading you're hearing the word and you're reading at the same time. That's how a lot of people read. Some people cannot read without making noise. A lot of people can't read without actually reading. They can't read it in their mind's eye. They need to read it and hear the word in their ear to be able to comprehend it better. So when they're in a situation where they are in a library and you can't really be loud there are people around you then they have to read with the sensory output limitation which has them reading without actually vocalizing. And for them it will be an obstacle they won't be able to comprehend the way they want to comprehend. And this is all due to sensory output limitation which we will also work on. And lastly comprehension and retention limitation. And this is different from cognitive processing limitation. Here we're talking about the correlation between comprehension and retention. It is one thing to read the book and understand it but it's another thing to retain information and get something get some knowledge out of the book. If you read the entire book in one day and you understood it fully but the next day you did not remember anything from it you just wasted your time. We want to read because we want to keep this information stored in our brains. We don't just want to read to read and then just let go of information. Now as much as speed reading is influenced by neuroplasticity is not as related to neuroplasticity as learning for example even though speed reading is a learning mechanism. Speed reading is a bit more specific than learning mechanisms as a big major topic. Speed reading usually doesn't involve emotions and by now you know that emotions are one of the biggest factors when it comes to neuroplasticity. So 80 percent of the speed reading mechanisms are related to neuroplasticity but 20 percent are related to the techniques themselves are related to the extra external work that you're doing not just the internal work that is taking place without you realizing that it's going as you use these 20 percent these techniques the 80 percent will unfold by itself. The reason why when you practice these techniques for the next six months you get to a point where even without without even thinking about these techniques you'll be able to speed read amazingly and comprehend and retain the information is because of neuroplasticity and of e it develops with time. The more you use these

techniques the more it will have a positive influence on the neuroplasticity a mechanism that is taking place at the same time. So now without any further ado we'll get to the techniques of speed reading.

NEUROPLASTICITY SPEED READING SYSTEMS Now moving on to the speed reading techniques. We're going to talk about some fundamental techniques to begin with and then we're going to go through them explain them and give some bonus methods. So you guys can master speed reading so we have the scanning motion training timing so vocalizing using a pointer rereading and print reading. Limit distractions and skimming main points starting off with the scanning motion training or the scanning motion training is all about is you training your eye movement working on proper eye movement for speech reading. The goal is to train your peripheral vision. You need to be able to move from reading one word at a time to reading one line at a time. And it basically involves looking at the center of the line and using your peripheral vision to read the rest of the line. So if you do the entire page like that you just use your peripheral vision on every single line. You'll find out that you've finished the page really quickly while understanding everything on it. The goal is for you to eventually develop this peripheral vision to be able to read phrases instead of words. And this will make the process of e faster. It will also help with the third fundamental technique that we're going against get to which is to vocalizing. But we'll get to it in a few. I don't want to talk about timing and we didn't mentioned that before one of the best methods to develop speed reading is to time it put a timer for one minute and see how many words can you read every single week do it once and track the progress. This will ensure positive self pressure on yourself which can push you to new boundaries and help you in your journey to be able to develop these speed reading mechanisms. And there's gonna be a lot of different exercises throughout the e that can help you with the speed reading. So don't worry if I go through any of the fundamental techniques without mentioning exercises that you can do to work on it because they're going to be included in the e. So for the scanning motion training there will be a lecture about vision peripheral vision training. So no

worries. All the different points that we have there are going to be practice examples for them for you to be able to master them properly. Some of them will not have exercising material simple for example like timing you don't need exercises you just need to make sure that you're doing your timing right time it for one minute how many words can you read and keep repeating every single week. So for those that have exercises their will they will be included for those that don't have exercises. It will be enough to follow the instructions and the information that I'm giving while talking about it. Now we move to some vocalization. It is basically you repeating what you're reading inside it's an inner monologue you're talking to yourself. And this is extremely common among readers. You speak the words as you are reading them whether you're speaking them out loud or you're speaking them inside your head. And this is one of the biggest obstacles when it comes to speed reading. Now what's really interesting is that the average reading speed that a person has is almost the same as the talking speed. So if you can read 300 words per minute you can probably just say 300 words per minute. And this is where one of the limitations would come in and you'll be able to notice it really quickly when you're reading. You will notice that you have a voice inside your head most of times repeating what you're reading. And unless you're Eminem singing the verse in Rap God that is extremely fast EV all the time you will not be able to read in the speed that you desire until you overcome some vocalization and the inner monologue. How fast can you speak and to make sense and comprehension out of what you're saying. And this is usually similar to your reading speed. Now when you're reading speed gets better you're talking speed doesn't get any better. Because what we're doing is we're limiting the inner monologue we're limiting the sub vocalization and we're focusing on reading without vocalizing. This is a habit that trace back to school when teachers used to read texts or somebody used to read something and we would follow the text while they're reading it. This is what had the bad impact on it. This is what had this habit established in our minds. And now whenever you want to read something rethink that it is essential to sub vocalize. Otherwise we can't really comprehend it. And what you basically need is something to block this inner voice in your head that is repeating every single thing you're reading. And the best way to do so from my personal experience and from many different references is using music but not any type of music you don't want to listen to heavy metal or R.M. B where there's lot of raw politics. You need to listen to music. Instrumental

music binaural beats are also a suggestion for those of you who don't know binaural beats are like auditory brainstem responses that would originate in inside the brain's hemisphere. There are different auditory impulses that comes out of them. And when you listen to by neural beats or you listen to classical music instrumentals that will keep your mind busy that would keep your mind between the ears from thinking and analyzing and some vocalizing everything you're reading you will be able to of e to a certain extent control the soul vocalizing system and then you'll find yourself reading faster and faster and faster. And once you know how to avoid some vocalizing you'll not be reading every single words you might read and some vocalize words that are new words that are new to your vocabulary that you haven't heard about or read before. And this is normal this is fair reading words that you see every single day like and but more normal again against words that you're really familiar with. You'll be able to read them without some vocalizing but you might encounter some words that are that are formed by a lot of different letters or some words that are new to your vocabulary and you might want to stop and so vocalize it to be able to comprehend it properly when you do so vocalize it you. And of e you need to understand it. You can add this to your vocabulary. One day you might use this word and I'm not saying if you do this you'll memorize every single word but you will be able to memorize and get some more out of your vocabulary. Moving on there is also one of the fundamental techniques which is using a pointer when looking at a page that is white with words written in black lines piled up one on top of the other. And a lot of the times you're going to have pages where there's not a lot of space there's not a lot of different paragraphs sometimes you might have two or three paragraphs one after the other spread over 10 15 pages and it's very easy to lose where you're at whether you're using your peripheral vision and you're reading one line at a time or you're not and you're moving your eyes you have this eye movement that's going from the beginning of the phrase to the end of it and going down and up again sometimes you might not know where you are exactly especially if there was something that caught your attention for one second something that made you lose concentration for one second it will slow you down and most people by the time they find where they were before they need to read a bit before to be able to follow the idea and link it all together properly. So using a pointer would help you avoid this problem again even if you're using your peripheral vision at first when you're still not at that level you might be reading with with regular eye movement.

He used a pointer going with you from the left to the right down and then all the way up when you get to the second page you make sure that the pointer is following you not as you are sub vocalizing. And this is really crucial. You don't want to use the pointer to some vocalize it's not that. Once the pointer is at this word I need to read this word. The pointer needs to just be something that is swiftly that has this swift pace of moving around while you're reading the words in your mind's eye without some vocalizing. And once you use the pointer and you have music instrumental music that you're listening to you'll be automatically helping yourself in avoiding some vocalizing especially when you start moving the pointer at the speeds that your eyes can follow and not your brain. And when I say brain I'm not talking about comprehension. I am talking about sub vocalizing because the comprehension of the thoughts is coming from a different source. It's coming from these information emitting light hitting your retina and then the analysis is happening through your vision and not through your brain. The primary source of analysis that's taking place is going through with the nervous system through the retina through your eyes. What you're reading. So when you move the pointer in the piece where you don't have the time to sub vocalize and adding to that the instrumental music or whatever you're listening to you will be helping yourself a lot of people. They don't feel comfortable listening to any kind of music while they are reading. And in that case using a pointer can also help a lot. When it comes to some vocalizing because if the pen is moving or of e any pointer you want doesn't have to be pen. If the pointer is moving at such a speed that your mind cannot sub vocalize what's going on what's going right in front of the pointer but your eyes can keep up and therefore your mind your analysis that's going on in your mind. New nervous system can take place so vocalizing will be limited and it will be put aside until you face something that you're not familiar with or something that is complex and complicated. If you are using some study material not just like a regular book you're reading and math theory for example and then you get to the formula. You can probably read through the theory very easily because it's made up out of words that you are familiar with but then you get to the formula and then you might notice that your sub vocalizing E equals M.C. Square. Maybe when you read the explanation of the formula you read it while using the speed reading mechanisms but then you get to the formula and you start so vocalizing because E equals empty square your mind is analyzing the formula. This simple formula has an entire text behind it so don't freak out

and don't start to sweat over so vocalizing some things because sometimes it is essential and crucial when the material is fresh when the material is complex so vocalizing can help a lot. So I would recommend that you do use the speed reading mechanisms and methods. Most of the times but when you have something complex like physics or math you don't want to speed read. You need to know what you're doing speed reading would help you avoid details and books that are unnecessary. If you're reading a book about finance or you're reading a book about personal development but if you're going through physical theories and math formulas and equations that needs a lot of thinking and a lot of mental and cognitive energy it's better to avoid or limit the speed reading mechanism. Now a lot of people when they do use the point or method they can't help it but read every word they are pointing out. It might even get to a point where they are sub vocalizing and reading out a very very high speed that they're not actually so vocalizing they're barely still vocalizing the words. And the reason why this is happening is because they are used to it. It's a habit. Ever since we were kids teachers in school would point out at a word and we would say it. We would pronounce it. They would point out at something they want to read or they point out something they want us to read when they write something when they write a long paragraph or a phrase on the on the board. They would usually follow it through with a pointer while they're reading it. Or point at it with their hand and point out it while they're reading it basically and through neuroplasticity. What became wired in our brain is when we're pointing out a word when we're pointing at stuff we're reading. We're not just reading in our mind's eye we're sub vocalizing. Most kids are not aware of this at their young age of e but when a teacher writes a phrase on the board and they're pointing at it and they're reading it while they are pointing at it even though the students are not reading it with him or her you are so vocalizing it with him or her and it becomes a habit. And when it does when it does become a habit through neuroplasticity it's gonna become something that you can't easily avoid. And the last thing that using a pointer can help you with is what's coming next is to avoid rereading and ensure pre reading a lot of people have this habit of re reading phrases even paragraph that's because they thought that they didn't really understand it well or they got distracted for a couple seconds and then they just need to figure out the link again. But people reread a lot. There aren't any stable and fixed statistics about it but most people the majority of people would admit to rereading at least once every time they're trying to

read a book. And this especially happens to people who are reading on a regular basis. People who read every now and then how this tendency have this difference actually when you read every single day. The purpose is to get more information in. You want to learn faster you want to read faster. And because it's a habit sometimes it kind of becomes automatic and you just lose focus for a second. And that's when you need to go back to concentration in fact sub vocalizing is is very much installs in a proper way in our system that even if you're not comprehending or focusing or concentrating on anything you sometimes find yourself while reading thinking about something entirely different. But you notice that you just read five lines five phrases and you have no idea what they talk about but you are aware that you read them you are aware that you sub vocalize them don't try to do it consciously. You can not do it consciously when we're talking on a conscious level. We can only do one thing at a time. We can only focus on one thing at a time. If I asked you right now to think about an orange and while thinking about the orange keeping the orange in mind thinking also about something completely different it is biologically impossible the human brain can focus on one thing at a time and I'm not talking about multitasking. I'm talking more in a sense that if I ask you to close your eyes and focus on your breathing and at the same time you're focusing on your breathing. I want you to pinch yourself in the leg and feel the pain. Be conscious of the pain and be conscious of the breathing at the same time you will not be able to do it. So how come people are able to think about something else completely different and be conscious and deeply thinking about something while they are running through the paragraphs running through the lines and the words and the book and so vocalizing everything they're reading. Well it's because of neuroplasticity of e sub vocalizing became the habit that is installed and wired in your brain and every time you read so vocalizing would happen automatically. And when a behaviour transforms into an automatic behaviour which means habit you will see when we get to the section that we're we're talking about habits that becomes automatic. In a sense that your brain would stop working. You're not conscious about how you're driving anymore. After two years of driving you just do it. You don't think about it. It becomes natural it becomes subconscious. You're not conscious about it anymore. It's automatic. And that's exactly what's happening was with some vocalizing it is happening on a subconscious level. That's why consciously you don't remember any of them any of the information. You don't recall or memorize any of the information

you have no idea what it's about but subconsciously you're still able to sort vocalize all of this and read it even if you're not understanding anything out of it. So use a pointer to avoid rereading. But of e you need to keep some kind of logic to it if you're using the pointer to go super fast that you're able to follow all the information with your eyes but your comprehension is not that good and you're using the pointer method to also avoid rereading. Yeah you might end up finishing the book in two to three days but you'll probably not understand anything or comprehend or memorize anything from it. You want to use the pointer at a speed where you don't need rereading because you already got the information you need rereading because the pointer is helping you stay focused and that's the last advantage of using a pointer so that when you're following the pointer you're focusing more on the text because there is something pointing at it and you are deliberately following this pointer when you're just when just have the book open and you're holding it with both of your hands with no pointers whatsoever and just following it with your eyes if your eyes got distracted for any reason you will lose your focus and concentration. But when you're pointing it'll be easier for you to keep the concentration flow going. Now another thing that can help you when it comes to rereading is prayer reading when you want to read a new book. You don't just want to pick it up read the title and start reading it. People avoid the introduction. People don't read the summary on the back. People don't read the author's biography. They don't read what other people said what's what's basically on the book. These things that you avoid and you just get straight to the book it's good you are you're not wasting your time but in fact you're there's a huge difference between reading a book that you only know the title of and reading a book that you know the title. You know what the book is about the big image you know the summary. You know who the author is. What's his background and what's his ideology. You'll be able to understand and and no more because of what people said. When people say they are a lot of personal experiences that help line then you know that personal experiences in the book are actually important. They taught people a lot and also freer reading chapters and the index. It's one thing to open a page and read the chapter. Let's say an introduction to or not neurology and just reading the entire chapter to realize that Chapter 2 talks about the link between neurology and biology and then get to Chapter 3 where they talk about the link between neurology biology and neuroplasticity. But if in another hypothetical case you read the chapters and you saw that first we're

going to talk about neurology then we're going to talk about biology and or algae and then we're going to link them up in the third chapter with neuroplasticity to then be able to explain all the different situations and different mechanisms that are involved in the process of neuroplasticity. So instead of starting the book knowing nothing but the title you will actually have a lot more information in your head before starting which will make the process way easier. It will help you especially with comprehension and retention. You will know what is important and when you knows that something is important you will most probably link it to another pathway in the brain that says this information is more important than the others and therefore you'll be able to memorize it more quickly more effectively. Now another thing that happens is that a lot of people they start reading a book only to realize that they don't really like it. A lot of people they buy books a lot of them and they never read them because they don't find them as actually interesting. And nobody just gets to the page 150 to realize that the book is boring. Usually they realize that the book is boring after reading 10 20 30 pages even less and you'll be able to tell if the book is interesting or not. Reading the five first pages of the book you'll be able to instantly tell if this is something that you would read and follow through or not. People waste a lot of times reading books that they don't like only to stop after reading 30 to 40 pages and they just drop it. And this could have been time invested in reading and analyzing and comprehending something that you actually want to learn something that you actually want to read. So whether you went to the bookstore and bought a book make sure to read the title the summary some information whatever is on the covers and the index the chapters and also try to read the first three to four or five pages maybe if everything was good then this is probably a book that you would love to read. Otherwise if you read the summary and you're like this is not really what I was expecting out of the book or you read the first four pages and you're like wow this is really boring. The guys way in writing is just not me. I can't read it. I find it boring. I find it unpleasant even though this is not a speed reading technique. This is something that would help you in the reading process when you avoid wasting time. You are gaining time and therefore your speed reading and I'll give a I'll give a really quick example about a book related to neuroplasticity. The book is called The Brain That Changes Itself. Now let's say you are somebody who knew nothing about neuroplasticity. You know we heard about it before and you read the title The Brain That Changes Itself. You will

think about a lot of different things you can never be sure what this book is actually about. And most of the times titles on books are made to sell and not to actually give you the information and give you the purpose behind the book. The Four Hour Work Week For example the title for our work week is not just to explain that in the book the author will teach you how to and what mechanisms and processes and systems to use to save up a lot of times in the week but to also get your attention to actually buy the book because you're doing the work of the week in four hours. Now is it a hundred percent accurate. No it's not. It's not accurate. Of e it's not. It depends on each and every person. But the title is there to sell. So the brain that changes itself. Okay then you read more New York Times bestseller. Norman Doidge M.D. as featured on PBS the brains fitness program. Now you know that the author has a lot of credibility which will give you more confidence in the author and his information. And then you read stories of personal triumph from the front trip frontiers of brain science. Now you know that the author is going to put a lot of personal experiences and mixed them up to make you understand brain science and you now understand that the brain that changes itself. We'll talk about these personal experiences and the brain science to change the brain. And then there's a comment by The New York Times the power of fathers positive thinking finally gained scientific credibility mind bending miracle making reality busting stuff straddles the gap between science and self-help. Now you also understand that one of the main things that the book is going to focus on is positive thinking backed up by science. You carry on to read the back of the book. And for those of you who are wondering where I'm reading this I have the book myself and you can also find it online and read what I'm reading. This is one of the books that I first read that opened my eyes on the concept of neuroplasticity. But I read a lot more books because this was not enough to make this e. This e is actually a mix of a lot of different books articles blogs videos lectures and even es. I took a school but this book itself is the brain that changes itself is one of the most fascinating I've read. But moving on on the back cover Oliver Sacks wrote fascinating Deutsche book is a remarkable and hopeful portrait of the endless adaptability of the human brain. And then the text on the cover the discovery that our thoughts can change the structure and function of our brains even into old age is the most important breakthrough in neuroscience in four centuries. In this revolutionary look at the brain. Bestselling author psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Norman Doidge and d introduces both the brilliant scientists

champions this new science of neuroplasticity and the astonishing progress of the people whose lives they've transformed. Introducing principles we can all use as well as a reviling collection of case histories stroke patients cured a woman with half a brain that had rewired itself to work as a whole learning and emotional disorder overcome IQ raised an aging brains rejuvenated that brain that changed itself has implications for all human beings not to mention human culture human learning and human history. This was said by the New York Times and then the Washington Post said readers will want to read entire sections allowed and pass the book onto someone who can benefit from it. Links scientific experimentation with personal triumph in a way that inspires this. The Chicago Tribune said lucid and absolutely fascinating Deutsch explained with clarity Grace and vividness and satisfies in equal measure the mind and the heart. And lastly phantoms in the brain probing the mysteries of human mind. The author of the book said superb brilliant. I devoured it so if you pause for a second and we reflect the difference between just reading the title The Brain That Changes Itself and not understanding anything and then reading and understanding that the book is about personal experience mixed with brain science that can explain how our brain physical and chemical structure can change through the power of our thoughts and that we will see principles. We will see past experiences and examples and scientifically based and proven methods and principles and examples that can help us change the brain itself. Whether it's a physical or chemical structure and adopt a lot of different things including positive thinking that was mentioned on the cover. So now we know that it is a self-help book with some scientific explanations and experimentations into it. And by the way even if you're getting the books online. If you're saying I can't go to the bookstore and buy a book because I want to buy online. First off the front and the back cover are usually included when you want to buy the book online and more than that. Websites like Amazon for example can give you a look inside the book on Amazon. You can actually read through the book. You can read some pages the first few pages or the last pages and you can make sure that this is the right book for you and this is something that you would want to read. Now moving on to the next fundamental technique limiting distractions there is nothing that can help you with speed reading as much as limiting distractions. One of the main things that would waste our time the most while we're speed reading and make us slow is distractions. And one of the mains sources of distractions that we have is our cell phones smartphones.

The majority of people would get distracted by their smartphones while they are reading whether your notifications are on or not. When you're reading with your eyes and you have your phone on your right or on your left hand you have the book in your hand as soon as you get a notification and your phone flashes your eye will switch from the book to the phone. And even if you gather the willpower to not look at the phone what's what's the purpose. If you're not going to look at the phone why. But the temptation right next to you where it will be used to drain your willpower and limit your your levels of concentration and focus if you're expecting something important an important phone call that you're getting don't read because if it's that important that you have to keep your phone next to you every single time you get a notification on your phone you are going to look at your phone to know if it's that thing you're waiting for or not. And it doesn't need an expert to tell you how many random notifications you'll get every hour. That has nothing to do with the phone call or whatever you're waiting for. You gotta limit distractions to be able to focus on the reading properly especially if you want to do speed reading. If you're speed reading you need your concentration you need your focus you need your attention. You can not be distracted. So the next time you sit down you're reading try to figure out what are the things that are distracting you and make sure to eliminate these. One of the best ways to do it is to create and make a corner just for you for your reading. Pick a spot at your house or in your room where you can sit down away from your computer and your phone. You put everything on silent mode and you sit in this corner and you read it don't get distracted. You limit all the distractions. There is nothing next to you that can distract you and you just read with full concentration and focus. And lastly skimming main points. This is a bit similar to pre reading but it's a bit more proficient skimming happens as you're reading not before you're reading. The best way to do skimming is to every single time you finish a chapter and you start a new one. You can use your skimming technique. You are basically going to be reading a text quickly to get a general idea of meaning around it. Sometimes chapters titles would not really tell you what the chapter is about How to Win Friends and Influence People has a chapter entitled How to make people hate you if I'm not mistaken. Something similar. While you understand to the chapters talking about some things that if you do make people hate you but you don't really understand what's going on and if you do skimming you'll be able to understand a bit more would the chapter is about which will

eventually ensure more comprehension and retention. When you are speed reading so take some time to read. Overall the main points read the table contents read the subtitles read the chapters the index what. And to understand what every chapter is about and then do the skimming for each and every chapter as well for each and every section. Skimming should not take more than two three to five minutes depending on how big the chapter is. It is not a long process. It's a short and easy process. The goal is to just understand what the chapter is about to get the general idea using all of these different techniques can help you with the speed reading process. So to recap quickly for speed reading you need to first focus on the scanning motion training and there are gonna be exercises in the e about how to enhance your peripheral vision and how to train your scanning motion. The goal is to develop proper eye movement for proper speed reading. You also need to make sure that you always got your timing that you're always making sure and keeping track of the progress that's taking place. Understanding some vocalizing and learning how to avoid it using a pointer a pointer as we said can be stick can be pen. Or it can be for example a card when you get to a point where your peripheral vision is developed. You might not want to be using a pointer to follow all of the entire line. You might just be using a card and just going down down down down down down and then up on the next page you're pointing at phrases entire phrases instead of groups of words and to get to a point where you overcome so some vocalizing and you can actually use your peripheral vision to read the entire phrase using a card as a pointer can be really helpful because it's going to enhance the motor and sensory output system and ensure of e that the neuroplasticity is working effectively because you are using the total immersion method that we talked about in the learning strategies. You are blocking the possibility of sort of sub vocalizing whether it's by using this method or by using all the other methods that we talked about using a pointer and following the phrase using music and all the other techniques that we talked about. These are these are basically there to block sub vocalizing. Also rereading and how should we should avoid it pre reading and how it's encouraged how to limit the distractions and just avoid everything that can let you lose your focus your attention and your concentration and finally ensure proper skimming after finishing the lecture. You might go and try reading and you're going to realize that the methods the fundamental methods are not as easy as you think they are even if you're using the methods to avoid some vocalizing you will find yourself every

known then sub vocalizing even on non complex phrases and whereas in paragraphs and sections because you need time Your brain is wired in a certain way and it needs time to be rewired in a way that ensures speed reading so don't get frustrated and keep in mind that neuroplasticity is all about repetition. Neurons that fire together wire together and the more you use them the better the link between the neurons and the better the neural structure and as this lecture is coming to an end there are two bonus methods that I. From personal experience will include in this e. These are methods that I found them to be very very effective specially when you're first starting off for the first technique and for the use in school and when it comes to learning for the second technique. The first one is the audio visual complementary assistive reading most of the books have audio books. And if you don't want to buy and pay and buy the audio book because sometimes it's expensive to buy both the book and the audio book It's usually available online whether on YouTubeor on other websites. A lot of online resources. Most of the times you can find the book in an audio form. So the way this helps is you put your headphones and you put the audio book but doubled the speed so you are blocking all the sub vocalizing because you are hearing what the person is saying but you are reading with your eyes at the same time. This will not only help you to voice of vocalizing in the long run but this can ensure very high levels of comprehension and retention because more senses are involved in the process and the bonus part is that it's faster if you are increasing your comprehension you are increasing your retention and in the same time you are increasing your speed in the reading process so try to put the audio book on double the speed keep the pointer with you and move along as the person is speaking. Move along and read with your eyes without some vocalizing and the last method is the mind mapping speed reading technique later on in this e you will understand the concept of mind mapping properly and how it works and how to apply it. We talked about it before and you're going to see a lot more about it later. But just to understand the basics of it my mapping is usually starts with a core idea and then you have branches which are details and then sub branches which are details of the details you can use mind mapping for speed reading to ensure comprehension in school and we'll give neuroplasticity as a subject that is taught to you in school as an example to explain how the mind mapping speed reading technique would work starting with the core it's the main idea which is neuroplasticity. So you're right that in the middle. And as I said you're going to learn more about how to do it

effectively. Later on the e and once you do learn it go back to this lecture and hear this lecture again and you'll understand the mind mapping process better. After circling the main idea which is neuroplasticity you start branching so as you're learning you realize that neuroplasticity has an impact and an effect on different things. And this is where you start branching out the details neuroplasticity is the middle and then you have all the lines going up and other circles for some ideas detailed ideas concerning the main idea and you can add learning you can add emotions you can experience you can add memories all the things that are involved in the process of neuroplasticity what neuroplasticity would would affect or would work on neurology can be one neuron structures can be one trauma phobias can be one psychology can be one. So now you have the main idea in the middle which is neuroplasticity and you have the sub ideas around it and now you do the same process for the sub ideas. So now every sub idea is a main idea and you need some ideas for this sub main idea. So for emotions you will have positive emotions negative emotions control emotions effect of emotions for memories. You might have erased memory you might have overcome memory change memory for learning you might have different systems. Total immersion linking and connecting teach it chunking technique. So the more you're reading through the book or through the content of whatever you're reading you are mind mapping along. The book is about neuroplasticity. There are different chapters about emotions and learning and memory. And when you're reading the emotions chapter you put all the sub sub details which are the details of the sub detail that came from the core which is neuroplasticity. I know right now this might be a bit complicated and you might think that you're not really understanding what's going on but you will understand it way better as soon as you get to the mind mapping section.

USE SOUNDS TO REMEMBER NUMBERS AND DATES It's always remarkable when a person can easily recall complex mathematical facts or historical dates at the drop of a hat. If you want to be able to do the same, here's a simple way to remember numbers that only requires two steps. The idea is to transform numbers into images that will stick in your mind. First, you will need to learn a system that changes numbers into letters or alters had those letters set. Take the number zero, which can be represented by the letters as Zed and see, though to remember, think about the hissing wheel. After all, zero looks like it will anyway. Each number from zero to nine can be assigned to a group of similar sounding consonants. For instance, the number six can be represented by the sounds j or a soft G. You can also use the shape of the numbers when you assign a sense To make them easier to remember, for instance, if you flip the numbers two, and three on the sides, they look like there's n and m respectively. And if you flip the number nine horizontally or vertically, it looks like a P or a B. While some left out for now, but coming to use later. The next step in remembering a date or number is to write down the letters that represent them and makeup of arts. So you want to remember the year 1969 when humans first walked on the moon, most memorable baits happened in the last millennia, so you only need to remember the 969 bits. Therefore, the sounds P and P should come to minds. Together they can be used to make the word bishop. The last stage is to make a picture for you to remember using the see principle, take the word you have created and you're choosing data number For the above ambitious dancing on the moon with Neil Armstrong, she'll do the trick. Now that you know how the system can transform numbers into verbs, it should be simple to create memorable images that you can use to recall particular numbers or dates.

STOP YOURSELF FROM FORGETTING INFORMATION BY REVIEWING IT Without reviewing the new learned information, your memory will forget most of what you have plans. To put it simply without the reviewing process. You cannot take new learned information in your memory. But what's the most effective way to do this? The German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus was one of the first to study forgetting processes and to plot a curve that reveals the relationship between forgetting and time based on this and related findings and learning technique called Spaced Repetition was developed in which increasing intervals of time are used between subsequent reviews. This maximizes this the time spent studying difficult material and minimizes the time spent reviewing things you already know. According to many renowned scientists, this technique has proved to be highly reliable for memorizing facts. A practical application of this technique has been developed by Sebastian Laettner, a German scientist who wrote a book on learning and memory, popularizing a new method of studying flashcards. In his study system, flashcards are sorted into boxes according to how well they're known. If cards contents cannot be recalled, the flashcard is promoted to a higher box because box sizes increase ascetically and a card in a higher box is only retested. When the box is filled. Increasing time lags in between learning repetitions are created. If at any time counts. It cannot be recalled. The flashcard is demoted to box one again. This flashcard system can help improve time and memory management's tiny cards and Anki are software programs for learning based upon scientifically derived techniques, and the work of a because and lighter, as well as others. We'll talk about these programs in the next lesson. Therefore, to really make sure your brain never forgets what you have learned, you should gradually more time between one review and the next. Another point to remember is that when you're going

through the process of reviewing, take advantage of the memory techniques you have learned. The see principle should have provided you with clear, vivid images to bring your information to life has the bishops the good moves on the moon. Make sure to use the tools you have cards, otherwise you will lose what you're trying to retain. It's always a good idea to stay focused on your main goal too. If you're learning In language, booking a trip to that country could be the motivation, you need to study extra hearts. When it comes to memorizing what you have already learned. The key is reviewing what you have done to prevent yourself from losing your newfound knowledge. To make information memorable, you need to bring it to life. And the best way to do this is to connect what you learn with what you already know. Use your imagination to form memorable images and engage your senses. Finally, by reviewing what you have stored in your mind, you will make sure it's never forgotten.

MNEMONICS But now MCs are simple methods that ensure excellent memory divert phenomics is derived from the name of Greek memory goddess, Minh mo sin. One way you can significantly improve your memory is by using memory techniques, often referred to as phenomics. So what's the idea behind this weird words phenomics to refer to any technique designed to help you remember fangs. phenomics can be very useful and effective tools to recall all kinds of information, including lists and sequences of events. When the average person takes a memory test, they usually score somewhere between 20 and 60 persons trade memorizers In contrast, achieved between 95 to 100% accuracy, impressive, these results scale as well. In fact, experiments have shown that once you learn them, once you learn phenomics and are able to remember something, say nine out of 10 items, there is a high likelihood that you will also be able to remember 90 out of 100 900 out of 1000 and so on. So what makes phenomics so powerful? The secret lies in the fact that is that this technique activates both the left and the right context of the brain, thus unlocking your memories full potential various Your left brain helps you remember things through logic, sequencing, numbering and lists. Your right brain operates through creative associations. These associations can create using rhythm, color, dimensions, daydreaming, spatial awareness, and Gish starts the whole picture. by stimulating both sides of the brain when trying to store information in your memory banks, you will not only improve your ability to recall information, it will boost your creative potential as well. For example, if you learn how to play an instrument while also spending lots of time studying math, both your musical and math skills will improve more than if you were only learning one thing at a time. Similarly, you can become a better dancer if you learn a free language at the same time. By this point, you're probably ready to start your phenomics training to improve your memory.

USE SENSES AND EMOTIONS TO RECALL INFORMATION Learning genomics is really easy. In fact, you're probably familiar with some of these techniques already. phenomics comprise a wide range of exercises, but we're only going to focus on the four essential attributes for any menarik exercise. These attributes are key, as they engage both our literal brain and the visual brain. The first is synesthesia, or the blending of the senses. In developing better memory, it's important to sensitize and regularly train all your senses, including vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch, adductor stasia. Here awareness of position and movement in space. So for example, if you want to be sure you pick up some toothpaste after work, you could engage a variety of senses by vividly imagining yourself squeezing the toothpaste onto the brush, filling your fingers touch the brush and in imagining the tasters, smells and sounds of brushing your teeth. Movement adds another means for your brain to link information. Staying with our toothpaste example, when you imagine the toothpaste to make the images three dimensional really try to imagine the rhythmic sensation of the toothbrush against your gums. Next up are positive images. The brain naturally wants to recall pleasant memories. So do your best attach positive or inspiring associations to the things you want to remember. In the toothpaste example, you might have vividly imagine yourself in front of a mirror admiring your beautiful pearly white teeth. The final attribute is exaggeration. Interestingly, our brains store exit rates, stories, images, and so on with the highest success rates. Imagine that your trade home is a massive tube of toothpaste, then you won't need to work To remember, if you use this phenomics you can remember anything you will ever need to. And you won't need any more reminders from your dentist either.

THE LINK SYSTEM The link system will help you remember short list of items. Imagine how nice it will be to never worry about forgetting your shopping list again. With the link system, this could be become your reality. The link system creates associations in the mind that link individual items in a list in such a way that makes them easier to recall. As learned in the previous lesson, the best way to remember things is to fill your memory with with details. Thus, it is important to make these links as exciting as possible. The transitions between the items on the list should also activate all your senses. And the more unexpected and abstract the links, the better you will remember them. As an example, say you need to remember to get scarcer. Roses, washing powder, apples or leaf shampoo. Brad's a coffee maker, Acts, napkins and then two flows from the store. Imagine it's a cold day. so cold that this this key series in your hand have frozen stuck against your skin. When you rip them away, your palm is a wiper on threats. The color of the roof says you want to bright he wants to buy from Mrs. To lip. When you enter her flower shop, the fresh smell reminds you of getting the washing powder. Imagine that vivid contrast between reds and whites are the last two items. So you head to the pharmacy and on your way you see an organic shop a beautiful display of apples. You pop in and grab two kilos. at the store. They also have very ripe olives. Imagine them as clips in your hair completing the association with shampoo On your way home, you pass a coffee shop that smells of freshly roasted beans. You so you stop in to get a new coffee maker since their old one is broken. You think of how wonderful it will be to eat freshly baked breads with poached eggs tomorrow morning. Along with a freshly brewed Cup of Joe. You can see your breakfast served on a black plate with a bright red napkin next to it. It was delicious. Now it's time to floss

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