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Learning How The Mind Works Can Work For You

By Jack H. Sousa


When we hear the term "mind" we often think of the brain, but the mind is much more than the brain. The brain is the hardware while the mind is the software it runs. When you are dead, your brain will still be there (for a while), but your mind will not.So just what is the mind? If we are going to get any use out of the mind, we need a definition that is useful. Although the word "mind" leads us to believe the mind is a thing, it is not. The mind is label we have given to an active and dynamic process of thinking, perceiving and experiencing. The term "mind" refers to a never-ending flow of information processing. The mind is never static. It is a constant stream of sensory input, thoughts, ideas and perceptions. It's a continuous dance of information, a ceaseless stream of awareness in which almost anything can be swept up.

What exactly goes on in this stream of awareness? From moment to moment you receive vast amounts of information from the outside world through your senses. Your awareness jumps from point to point in your external experience, sorting for what is important to you as your minds engages in the process of interpreting and evaluating the incoming data. External information is filtered through beliefs, attitudes and memories and associations are activated. Emotions arise and generate responses; speech, actions and behavior.On the screen of your mind you flash images, snapshots and run movies. You hear sounds and voices and often narrate the film with your own voice. The pictures and sounds of your mind occur all in sequence, one after the other, which results in an ever changing flux of experience which changes from moment to moment.

Your right brain works with emotions, pictures, wholes and how all the parts all relate together, putting stuff together (that AH-HA moment), and simultaneous/holistic thinking. This side of the brain doesn't wear a watch like the left side does, and in fact can lose track of time. And like the left side of your brain, the right side governs/runs the left side of your body.

Brain functions can be broken down even further into what does each side of the brain to task wise. So let's take a look at what the left side does.The left side of your brain deals with tasks like being logical, sequential, analytical, objective, focus and details, and numbers. So if you happen to be bad in math, blame the left side of your brain - or the right for not governing the numbers part of you. The right side of your brain deals with tasks like being intuitive. Trust your hunches. They're usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level. It also deals with colors, rhythm, and the overall picture, pictures and is random.

For hundreds of years the field of psychology tried to find a way to change emotions and behavior. The methods devised made great theories, but never really resulted in much change. Some of the theories made a lot of sense, but practice didn't seem to yield any results. The advocates of different psychological theories over the past hundred years spent more time arguing over theories than trying to find something that really worked. It took up until the late 1970s before a model that was actually useful and practical was devised.

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

OK now you have a pretty fair idea of how the mind works. Let's go just one more step further. You already know about the language of the brain being pictures, sounds, feelings, tastes, and smells - in other words input from your senses that is your imagination when it is processed. Your brain can only work with positive information that it receives from your five senses. Your brain can't work with inputs you haven't experienced or otherwise called negative information.Here is a very important point to remember when thinking about your customers. They can't reflect and act at the same time. They need to be focused on one thing or another (reading your website copy, email etc) and thinking about it or taking action and buying something. Trick is to be able to switch them from one to the other quickly and effortlessly. Good thing you know about Neuro Linguistic Programming and how the mind works.

You now know the brain is divided into two hemispheres and that each specializes in different functions, processes different kinds of information and deals with different problems. Left works with logic and analysis, the right with emotions and imagination.Let's put that into perspective when thinking about customers.

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




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