The Only Thing You're Probably Not Doing To Achieve Your Dreams

If you listen carefully to what successful people say about accomplishing goals, you’ll find a consistent common thread: They envision their goals in detail. If you’re like me, you’ve heard this many times in interviews or read it in biographies, and completely ignored it.

I ignored it because I am “not a visual person.” I didn’t think I was very good at visualizing. But visualization is a learnable skill. You get better with practice.

I can’t believe what a difference this simple practice has made. It sometimes seems like magic. I try to stay skeptical and explain things using verifiable evidence. I know how easy it is to come to false conclusions, so I’ve explained the stunning results to myself by noting that when I envision my goals clearly, it focuses my mind and increases my motivation, which it does.

It also produces a reverse engineering effect; when I envision my goals clearly, I automatically start thinking about “how it happened.” And that gets me to thinking about what I’m doing now.

For example, one of my goals is a million subscribers for my blog. As I imagined looking at the statistics for my subscribers and seeing a million subscribers, I thought about some possible ways this could happen. I wasn’t trying to think this way; it just happened naturally while visualizing the goal.

One of the things I thought of is the possibility that someone famous, like Oprah, would mention it on their show, causing a huge number of new visitors, many of whom really liked the blog and subscribed to it. And they shared the articles with their friends, causing even more people to subscribe, etc.

But then it occurred to me if Oprah was going to mention it and all these new people were going to look at the blog, it better be really good. I realized it would be embarrassing if all these people showed up on a day when the front page article was only so-so. Up to that time I was kind of casual about what I posted because I only had 400 subscribers.

So you see what happened? By simply envisioning the goal, I automatically started thinking backwards — back in time to the present — and it altered what I was doing in the present in such a way that the goal was more likely to happen. This kind of thinking comes about without trying. All I do is visualize my goal. The reverse engineering happens all by itself.

Another practical result of clearly visualizing a goal is the production of great ideas. Somehow the process of visualizing your goal stimulates your creativity. Surprising new ideas will start popping into your head spontaneously.

Because you have such a clear picture of your future, you will see your present differently. When you regularly envision your goals, you will find that you constructively reframe “negative events.” You start seeing setbacks more as useful information and less as a cause for demoralization.

These are some of the explainable results of envisioning goals. Something else happens too. It seems almost supernatural. Maybe at least part of it is the involvement of your reticular activator. But however we explain it, envisioning goals produces a whole host of positive effects.

How to Envision Your Goals

Visualizing a goal is a pretty straightforward task. But here are a few tips to make it more effective:

1. Relax first. Use the Silva Method or self-hypnosis or any method you already know how to use, as long as it makes you deeply relaxed without putting you to sleep. It’s important to be relaxed. When you try to visualize your goal without relaxing first, negative or anxious thoughts are more likely to worm their way into your visualizations.

2. See your goal in detail. The first thing to envision is the moment you realize you have achieved your goal. If you have a goal of publishing your book, you’ll know it’s published when you’re holding the printed copy of your book in your hands. It will be sent to you by mail. So envision getting the package in the mail, and with trembling fingers opening it with your spouse, pulling out the book, and holding it in your hands. Envision it in every sensory detail. Where are you? What do you feel? What does the book smell like? What time of day is it? What expression do you see on your spouse’s face? What thoughts are running through your mind?

Every time you relax and envision your goal, try to see new details you haven’t imagined before. Make it as real and vivid as possible.

And allow yourself to imagine past that point. What will you do next? What will happen afterwards? Imagine the consequences of your achievement a week later, a month later, a year later.

3. Sit up. Don’t lie down. When you lie down, your images tend to drift more randomly and you’re more likely to fall asleep. Sitting up gives you better control of your images.

4. Do it several times a week. Spend some time on it. Ten to twenty minutes at a time is good.

5. Don’t force positivity. If something negative appears in your visualizations and keeps popping up, consider it a message from your unconscious mind or the mute right hemisphere of your brain, or your inner wisdom. Consider it a message, and seek to discover the lesson. What is it telling you that will help you achieve the goal? And then visualize yourself resolving that problem and successfully accomplishing your purpose.

6. Remember a success. It helps to first remember a goal you’ve successfully achieved in the past. And then, in the same sitting, imagine your new goal. Remembering past successes emotionally enhances your visualizations of the future, and strengthens your confidence in your ability to achieve your goals.

You have big goals. You work hard. If your goal has seemed frustratingly elusive up until now, you might have been missing this one vital ingredient: Clearly envisioning your goal.

If you have clearly envisioned your goal but it still seems elusive, a belief about yourself may be preventing you from realizing your goal. Read this to learn more about the barriers to goal achievement. And use this to change your limiting beliefs.

Adam Khan is the author of Cultivating Fire: How to Keep Your Motivation White Hot, Principles For Personal Growth, and Slotralogy: How to Change Your Habits of Thought.

Imagine a Single Celebration That Includes Everybody

In the northern hemisphere, the summer solstice marks the longest day of the year and on that day until the winter solstice, the days get progressively shorter. The winter solstice is the moment when the days begin to get longer again. Just the reverse is true in the southern hemisphere, but the two solstices themselves occur at exactly the same moment for everyone on earth.

The origin of the word "solstice" is the Latin solstitium from "sol" meaning sun and "-stitium" meaning a stoppage. Observing the sun over time, you can see the sun rising further and further to the south until the winter solstice, when it slows and stops and then reverses.

The winter solstice in the northern hemisphere is close to the same time as Christmas, and many of our Christmas traditions originated from the days before Christianity, when the solstice was celebrated. Traditions for celebrating the end of shorter days and the beginning of longer days (winter solstice) have been practiced around the world for many thousands of years.

At Stonehenge on the British Isles, for example, the huge stones are arranged in such a way that they frame the setting sun on the day of winter solstice. The ancient Brits had a tradition of tying apples to the branches of oak trees in the dead of winter to affirm that summer would come again. The Celts put mistletoe on their altars. The ancient Romans celebrated the winter solstice by giving gifts. And they feasted for a week. Servants traded places with their masters — the masters serving their servants during the feast. They also had a tradition during winter solstice of bringing evergreens indoors.

In Scandinavian countries, the sun disappears in the dead of winter. In the far north, it disappears for as long as 35 days. The ancient people of the far north had a tradition of feasting when the dark days were over and the sun once again shone on the horizon. They celebrated with what they called a Yuletide festival. They feasted in a long hall while a Yule log burned in the fireplace. They thought of mistletoe as sacred. Kissing under mistletoe was a fertility ritual. Holly berries were considered to be the food of the gods.

The solstice celebrations were officially replaced with Christian ceremonies during Roman times as a way of overtaking the ancient traditions, even though Jesus probably wasn't born in December. December 25th used to be the solstice with the old calendar. It usually happens on December 21st with the modern calendar.

But the Christian usurping of the celebration was a long time ago. It's water under the bridge and really at this point, who cares? We could start fresh and celebrate the solstice instead of (or in addition to) our other celebrations. We could celebrate the turning of the season. We could celebrate longer and warmer days ahead.

We could keep our celebrations, but change the date, and that way more people could celebrate together. In other words, if you normally drink eggnog and trim a tree and open presents for Christmas, you could do exactly the same things, except do them on the Solstice. Or people with different customs could celebrate their customs and traditions (for Christmas, Hanukkah, etc.) on their designated days, but also celebrate the solstice with everyone.

The solstice has nothing to do with religion, race, or nationality. Every one of us relies on the sun for our warmth, our sunlight, and our food. We rely on the sun for life. The time and date of the solstice can be accurately determined and it occurs at the same moment everywhere on earth.

The solstice might some day become an international holiday. This could be the beginning of something wonderful — a point of unification, an aligning event, a universal tradition.

You can begin this year by celebrating the solstice in even a small way. Take any of the traditions normally associated with the holiday season and do some part of it on the solstice. Give a gift. Eat a feast. Be kinder to your fellow human beings. Invite people of all faiths to your home to celebrate the end of the longest night and the beginning of longer days. The celebration of the solstice in your own home could actually and concretely work for peace on earth and goodwill toward all women and men.

I wish you a Merry Solstice.

P.S. A solstice celebration can connect us to our larger place. We are suspended in space, moving through a vast universe, embedded in a great mystery.

Celebration of the solstice can let you take a moment to let it sink in that we are on the surface of a planet. The dramas we have here can be seen in a broader perspective. The planet is spinning on its axis, and spinning around the sun. The solstice can remind us all that this is happening right now. And our solar system is spinning around the center of the Milky Way galaxy, which is a giant black hole. The galaxy itself is moving through space, and is one of two trillion other galaxies. 

And whether this universe was brought forth by a creator or suddenly burst into existence with the big bang, it's undeniably amazing that anything even exists. The solstice is a great time to stop for a moment and feel the miracle of it all.

Adam Khan is the author of Self-Reliance, Translated, and co-author with Klassy Evans of How to Change the Way You Look at Things (in Plain English). Subscribe to his blog here. You can email him here.

If Alzheimer's Could Be Reversed, You Would Have Heard About It, Right?

When I tell people about reversing Alzheimer's, the first reaction people have is something like, "If this was legit, it would be front page news. Everybody would know about it." This specter that everyone fears, this nightmare that millions of people are going through right now, none of this has to happen? Somebody has discovered a way out? This is monumental news! This is shout-from-the-rooftops, create-a-national-holiday kind of news. If it was true, we all would have heard about it for sure! Right?

But Alzheimer's has been reversed by Dale Bredesen, MD, in hundreds of people for over twelve years now. Almost everyone who has tried it has been able to reverse their cognitive decline, and yet hardly anybody has heard about it. How can that be?

If you need a little background on this before you go on, read this: The Ruthless Progression of Alzheimer's Can Be Reversed. You'll find out how it is being done.

But this kind of public reaction is really nothing new. The same thing happened a few decades ago with heart disease. Doctors were quite certain that heart disease was progressive. If you had a heart attack, you would definitely have another one and it was probably what would kill you, and with enough effort and money you might be able to do something to slow down the progression, but it couldn't be reversed. That was a long-established "fact."

And then Dean Ornish proved it could be reversed. Was it front page news? Did doctors suddenly change the way they spoke to their patients with heart disease? No, they didn't. It took years — decades before the status quo changed. And in the meantime, many in the medical establishment were hostile and dismissive of Ornish's work. Sure. Right. You can unclog arteries with a vegetarian diet, yoga and communication skills. Ridiculous. And all the while, Ornish's clinic was doing it every day.

This doesn't prove Bredesen has actually found a way to reverse Alzheimer's, of course, but it does explain why if you went to a doctor right now and were diagnosed with Alzheimer's, the doctor would probably tell you Alzheimer's is fatal and incurable, and it's a progressive disease, but with enough money and effort, its progression might be slowed, but it certainly can't be reversed.

There's a quote by Machiavelli that seems fitting here. He wrote, "It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new one." 

But you don't have to wait for the medical establishment to get up to speed. You can look into it right now and start reversing your cognitive decline yourself. Follow the link above to find books, interviews, a TED talk, and Bredesen's website to get started.

Adam Khan is the author of Antivirus For Your Mind: How to Strengthen Your Persistence and Determination and Feel Good More Often and co-author with Klassy Evans of How to Change the Way You Look at Things (in Plain English). Subscribe to his blog here. You can email him here.

The Bredesen Seven

Dale Bredesen has developed a way to reverse Alzheimer's disease. You can read more about it here. The Bredesen protocol employs seven general pathways to recovery:

1. Nutrition: If your brain doesn't have enough nutrition, it downsizes. It tries to protect whatever memories it thinks it needs, and lets the rest go, letting synapses disintegrate. A healthy diet is vital for brain recovery. Enough protein, plus lots of colorful, organic vegetables. Low sugar, low starch, lots of good quality fats like nuts and olive oil.

Most people have come to rely on carbohydrates for fuel. But that ultimately causes, at least for many of us, insulin insensitivity. The cells of your body and brain become oversaturated with sugar, and start to resist insulin's command that they take in more sugar. But that means whenever you go without carbohydrates and you become hungry, your brain cells can literally starve.

Bredesen recommends you become flex fuel. That is, helping your brain become capable of burning fat or sugar interchangeably. In order to make that happen, you need to fast regularly. It stimulates your cells to develop the capacity to efficiently burn whatever fuel is available at the moment. Then your brain cells will always have enough fuel.

2. Exercise: This does your brain a lot of good. Not only do you get blood flow through your brain (more oxygen and nutrients), but it improves your body's ability to fuel itself. It helps you sleep and reduces stress. Start going for a walk nearly every day. Walk for at least thirty minutes, ideally forty-five minutes. Move your body more throughout the day. Avoid long periods of sitting. Build your muscles with some strength training or physically strenuous work. Probably the best exercise for your brain is dancing.

3. Sleep: Getting good sleep every night is extremely important for reversing Alzheimer's. The brain does its cleaning and repair while you sleep. It recovers from stresses while you sleep. It reduces inflammation. You need enough sleep (7-8 hours a night), and it needs to be good quality sleep. If you don't sleep well, there are ways to fix that. You can get tested for sleep apnea, you can make your bedroom darker and quieter, you can avoid looking at a screen close to bedtime, etc.

4. Stress reduction: Stress is normal, and it's even healthy, but not if it's chronic. If you feel stressed often, it is bad for your brain. You need to take it seriously, and do what you can to have less stress in your life. It's important. The number of ways you can reduce stress are enormous. Pick one (meditation, yoga, breathing exercises, reframing, using to-do lists to organize yourself better, forest bathing, avoiding overscheduling yourself, getting good sleep, exercising more, etc.) and start doing it regularly. Find a way that works for you to feel calmer and more relaxed more often.

5. Brain training: Anything that challenges you mentally helps you form new connections in your brain, and even more brain cells. You want your brain to be in a state of growing, not declining. Not shrinking. Expanding. 

There are websites and apps specifically designed to challenge your mental abilities. And normal life presents many opportunities to push yourself a little bit. If you've been putting off getting a new phone because you don't want to have to deal with the learning curve, change your attitude about it, and think of it as a way to grow new connections in your brain. Push yourself. Not to the point where it becomes stressful, but definitely to the point where it becomes challenging. Somewhat difficult, but not overwhelming. Stretch yourself gently.

Also, more socializing and more determined, purposeful activity, taking classes, helping others — these all challenge and stimulate your brain to grow. 

6. Detoxification: There are many possible toxins that could be causing your brain to try to protect itself. Alzheimer's is a protective response to an assault or a deficiency. And one of those assaults is toxins. If you have black mold in your house, for example, it can be more of an ongoing assault than your brain can handle, and could be contributing to the progression of Alzheimer's. Removing that source of toxins, then, becomes an important key to reversing your cognitive decline.

We are all exposed to lots of toxins. Air pollution, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides in our food, mercury in our fillings, chemicals in cleaning products and in cosmetics, etc. Your body is capable of handling a certain amount of toxins, but if you're getting too much too often, the system is overwhelmed and creates an emergency response, part of which manifests as Alzheimer's. Remove the source of the toxins so you're no longer regularly exposed, and then help your body remove the toxins from your system with exercise, regular saunas, detoxifying herbs, and fasting.

7. Targeted supplements: Nutritional deficiencies can contribute to the progression of Alzheimer's. Blood tests can reveal whether you are low on vitamin D, vitamin B1, vitamin B12, iron, zinc, etc. You can change your diet to make sure you get enough, or you can take supplements.

To find out more, read The Ruthless Progression of Alzheimer's Can Be Reversed.

Adam Khan is the author of Antivirus For Your Mind: How to Strengthen Your Persistence and Determination and Feel Good More Often and co-author with Klassy Evans of How to Change the Way You Look at Things (in Plain English). Subscribe to his blog here. You can email him here.

An Easy Way to Reverse Some Cognitive Decline

Researchers had volunteers smell a pleasant odor for two hours every night while they slept, a different odor every night. After six months, in tests of learning and memory, their cognitive abilities improved significantly. The people in the matched control group didn't improve. In fact, their cognitive abilities got a little worse.

Why would smelling something improve learning and memory? In the paper they wrote about the experiment, they explained why they did the study in the first place, as researchers often do. For a long time, medical scientists have recorded their observations that often, right before the loss of cognitive function or the impairment or decline of mental abilities, people lose olfactory abilities. In Parkinson's, Covid, dementia, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's — people often lose their sense of smell before they show signs of mental decline. In their paper, the researchers said they found about 70 neurological and psychiatric disorders that are often accompanied by olfactory loss.

So previous researchers figured maybe if you stimulated or challenged or exercised someone's sense of smell, it might prevent or reverse their mental decline. So they tried it on animals and then on humans, and it worked. But why?

It turns out the olfactory nerves and the olfactory bulb are intimately connected to parts of the brain responsible for memory. So when the olfactory bulb is stimulated, it also stimulates those connected parts of the brain too, and can restore function there. And the stronger the smell, the more people recover their cognitive abilities. The longer the exposure, the more recovery they make. And maybe most importantly, increasing the number of different smells (not all at once, but sequentially), caused more recovery.

One of the previous studies the researchers mentioned in their paper was of wine sommeliers going through a sommelier training. They did an MRI scan of the students' brains before and after their eighteen months of training, which constantly challenged them to make olfactory distinctions. At the end of it, the entorhinal cortex of their brains had become thicker (that's the part of the brain responsible for mediating information coming from, and going to, the hippocampus). Other studies have shown that olfactory stimulation increases gray matter in the hippocampus and the thalamus. Stimulation of the olfactory system increases the activity of brain regions related to memory.

In still other studies, olfactory enrichment improved subjects' ability to do Sudoku puzzles and verbal fluency tests, and decreased depression.

And just when you thought it couldn't get any better, previous studies have also shown that olfactory stimulation while someone sleeps makes their slow-wave sleep deeper. Slow-wave sleep has been found to be the most restful part of the sleep cycle. A different study found that people reported feeling more vigorous the next day after they had olfactory stimulation while they slept.

Given all that, the researchers decided on the protocol for this study. Volunteers used the infuser for two hours every night. The essential oils they used were: sweet orange, eucalyptus, lemon, rose, peppermint, rosemary, and lavender. The diffuser they used is from Diffuser World and they got the essential oils from The Essential Oil Company in Portland, Oregon.

They gave each person a diffuser and told them to start it when they went to bed and set the timer so it turns off after two hours. They used a different essential oil each night, rotating through the seven oils.

A control group also got a diffuser and went through the same ritual, but there was so little essential oil that it didn't smell like much. They tested everybody on learning and memory before they started, and then tested them again after six months. They also gave them fMRI scans before it started and again after six months. The results were very positive, especially for such an easy thing to do. This is how the researchers put it: "Minimal olfactory enrichment administered at night produces improvements in both cognitive and neural functioning."

Read the original study here: Overnight olfactory enrichment using an odorant diffuser improves memory and modifies the uncinate fasciculus in older adults.

Adam Khan is the author of Principles For Personal Growth, Slotralogy, Antivirus For Your Mind, and co-author with Klassy Evans of How to Change the Way You Look at Things (in Plain English). Subscribe to his blog here. You can email him here.

The Ruthless Progression of Alzheimer's Can Be Reversed

A researcher has discovered ways to reverse Alzheimer's. This is not theoretical. It has already been done with hundreds of people — not just slowing the mental decline, but reversing it.

The methods he uses are so far outside normal medical procedure that you have probably never heard of it, even though he's been doing it for years and it is monumental news. The researcher, Dale Bredesen, MD, is more than a researcher. He's also a neurologist with serious credentials.

His understanding of the way Alzheimer's works is almost the opposite of the point of view of the conventional medical establishment. The key markers of Alzheimer's — which you may be familiar with: amyloid plaques and tau tangles — are actually the brain's protective response against inflammation, assaults and deficiencies. In its effort to survive, it ditches brain cells and brain connections like a crew on board a sinking ship might toss valuables overboard to try to stay afloat. Remembering what you had for breakfast is an unnecessary luxury to a brain fighting desperately for its physical survival.

Bredesen has discovered at least 37 pathways to the Alzheimer's response. Through testing, the pathways affecting a particular person are discovered and then remedied. The brain is in either a growing mode or a shrinking mode, and various discoverable factors can tip the scale in one direction or the other.

For example, if the protective response of Alzheimer's is being caused by mycotoxins (toxins from fungi like black mold), the black mold exposure can be eliminated, which stops the protective response, and the scale is tipped in the other direction, and if that's the only thing causing the Alzheimer's, the person's mental abilities start to come back.

There are many kinds of toxins that can cause the brain to respond with Alzheimer's symptoms — mercury from fillings in teeth, chemical exposures at work, pollutants in drinking water, etc. These can be discovered by testing. You can then eliminate or reduce the toxic load you're exposed to, and when you do, your brain begins to recover. There are also many ways to improve your body's ability to eliminate toxins, which can also move the balance to the other side.

Sometimes the Alzheimer's response is being caused by a deficiency, like B1 or vitamin D. Again, testing can show what the person is lacking, and the deficiency can be resolved with a change in diet or supplements, and the brain recovers.

Another source of assault to the brain is inflammation. There are a lot of ways to develop a systemic inflammation, and when one of those ways is discovered through testing, it can be ameliorated, and when it is, the brain stops shrinking and starts growing again.

Another pathway to Alzheimer's is insulin resistance. This can also lead to adult-onset diabetes, weight gain, and heart disease. You can easily test your insulin sensitivity, and there's plenty you can do to improve it.

Yes, all of this is inconvenient. Difficult. And it will cost some money. But so will having Alzheimer's. Or taking care of someone with Alzheimer's. But with Bredesen's protocol, things get better rather than getting worse. It's uplifting rather than depressing. The sooner you start, the better.

And there's a lot you can do on your own even before any testing. Read about that here.

Bredesen's protocol is called ReCODE which stands for REversal of COgnitive DEcline. He did a nine and a half minute TED talk that gives a good overview of his discoveries here: A precision approach to end Alzheimer's Disease. You can also watch a documentary about Bredesen's work here: Memories For Life: Reversing Alzheimer's.

Here's a list of the basic principles of the ReCODE protocol: The Bredesen Seven.

Learn more about all this in depth with Bredesen's books. His first book was: The End of Alzheimer's.

He's got two other books. One of them is The End of Alzheimer's Program, which goes into detail about exactly what the method entails. He gives enough of the specifics that you could do the program on your own. You can also get personally coached by people who know Bredesen's protocol well (and can answer any question you have about it) at Apollo Health.

Bredesen's third book is a collection of stories written by some of his ReCODE patients themselves — what they went through, how they first noticed they had Alzheimer's, how they found Bredesen, and what happened after they started applying the ReCODE protocol. Some of them describe what happened when they relapsed (when they stopped doing the protocol and their cognitive decline returned) and then they got back on the program and their Alzheimer's went away again. It's called The First Survivors of Alzheimer's.

Here's a video of Dale Bredesen on a Zoom call with four people who have been following his protocol and have experienced their cognitive abilities return: Introducing the first survivors of Alzheimer's.

Read the transcript of a Conversation with Dale Bredesen, MD.

At the National Institute of Health website, there's a paper about Bredesen's program: ReCODE: A Personalized, Targeted, Multi-Factorial Therapeutic Program for Reversal of Cognitive Decline.

If this all seems too good to be true, read this: If Alzheimer's Could Be Reversed, You Would Have Heard About It, Right?

This is a one-hour presentation by Bredesen. It's a good overview of his body of work: Cutting Edge: Women and Alzheimer's is on the Rise! Hope is Here!

One of the people who now works with Bredesen is known as Julie G, who started a website for those with the Alzheimer’s gene (APOE4). The gene causes the body to use fats differently, as well as other important differences. The website is a forum where people with the gene share what they’ve learned about how to prevent Alzheimer’s from developing, or how to reverse it when it does, using lifestyle interventions. Check it out: APOE4.info.

If you are worried about getting Alzheimer's, you should look into this. The earlier you do something about it, the easier it is to prevent it from happening. And if you know anyone who has Alzheimer's, or if you know a caregiver of an Alzheimer's patient, please share this article with them (here's an easy way to share it). A diagnosis of Alzheimer's doesn't have to turn into the nightmare we all fear. We can do something about it now.

Adam Khan is the author of Principles For Personal Growth, Slotralogy, Antivirus For Your Mind, and co-author with Klassy Evans of How to Change the Way You Look at Things (in Plain English). Subscribe to his blog here. You can email him here.

Is Praise Good For Your Child?

It might not be. Check out these articles about it:

Parental praise and children’s exploration: a virtual reality experiment

The effects of praise: 7 evidence-based tips for using praise wisely

Parenting: Don't Praise Your Children!

Are You Overpraising Your Child?

The Role of Descriptive and Non-Specific Outcome-Oriented Praise in Child Self-Esteem: A Multiphase, Multimethod Investigation

Parent praise to toddlers predicts fourth grade academic achievement via children’s incremental mindsets

Direct Your Mind: Could I Just Do Part Of It For Now?

The time-management expert, Alan Lakein, called this the "Swiss Cheese" method. You poke a hole in your project. After you poke enough holes in a project, there isn't much left. A large project becomes easier and easier to tackle the more holes you poke in it. Also, when you don’t have the time or motivation to tackle your project, you can do some small thing that moves it forward, even a little, and that will do two things: It will improve your mood, and it will make the project a little less intimidating.

The question, "Could I just do part of it for now?" keeps you moving. It keeps you making progress.

One of Lakein's techniques was to set a timer for five minutes, and work on your project until the time is up. Because it is so brief, you are not at all intimidated. Five minutes. You can stand just about anything for five measly minutes.

Often you'll find that once your five minutes are up, you don't really want to stop. But by giving yourself such a small task to begin with, you are able to get something done. Without that technique, you might have gotten nothing done on that project.

And working on your project for even five minutes gets you thinking about it, which is usually a good thing.

We tend to think about projects as a whole. This question gets us thinking about doing smaller parts of the whole. Do you have a large project you've been putting off because it is such a large project and you don't want to get started? Ponder this question. Can you do something on it for five minutes? Can you do a small part of it for now?

Adam Khan is the author of Principles For Personal Growth, Slotralogy, Antivirus For Your Mind, and co-author with Klassy Evans of How to Change the Way You Look at Things (in Plain English). Follow his podcast, The Adam Bomb. 

The Old Switcheroo

We all have times when we think about something negative we can’t do anything about: Something in the news, something that happened yesterday, one of our fellow workers who made us mad, a company policy. The time spent ruminating on that stuff is wasted. It’s worse than wasted, because it makes our bodies produce stress hormones, which circulate in the bloodstream and aren’t good for our health.

When you find yourself thinking about something negative and you want to stop, I’d like to give you a technique...but I can’t. The mind doesn’t work that way. It’s like a river that just keeps flowing, and even when you try to dam it up, it just overflows the dam and keeps on flowing. A river must flow. You can’t stop it.

But you can redirect it.

The same is true for your mind. It keeps flowing; it keeps thinking. You can’t stop it. But you can redirect it.

When you are thinking about something negative you can’t do anything about, redirect your mind. There are a million things you could direct your mind to, but let’s choose a good one now rather than wait until we’re bothered by something. Here’s an extremely useful area to redirect your mind to: Complimenting other people.

You and I know we take things for granted and it would be good to appreciate what people do for us, but we don’t, at least not as often as we’d like. Why? Because we need to think about it. When we compliment someone without giving it any thought, it comes out shallow, general, or phony. To do it well requires thought.

But we don’t have the spare time to think about it — we’re too busy thinking about negative things we can’t do anything about (wink).

So from this point on, use the occurrence of needless negative rumination as a trigger — something that reminds you to think about complimenting someone. Use it as an opportunity to switch your mind, to turn it in a new direction. What specifically has someone done that you think was cool? Big or small, it doesn’t matter. Next time you see that person, let them know you appreciate it. The fact that you acknowledge it some time after it happens shows it was important enough for you to think about later, which adds more impact to the compliment. Give more sincere and well-thought-out compliments and your relationships will be better, your life will be better, the world will be better. And one way to give more compliments is to use the old switcheroo.

Adam Khan is the author of Principles For Personal Growth, Slotralogy, Antivirus For Your Mind, and co-author with Klassy Evans of How to Change the Way You Look at Things (in Plain English). Follow his podcasts, The Adam Bomb and Talk to Klassy. You can email him here.

Using Your Strengths to Become Happier

One good way to become lastingly happier is to know your "signature strengths" and exercise them.

A signature strength is a characteristic that you are not only naturally good at, but that makes you feel good when you exercise it. For example, my top signature strength is Love Of Learning. I am naturally curious and I am good at learning, and it actually makes me happy to learn new things.

Anyway, The Chief Happiness Officer had a great little mission for his readers: A seven-step process to discover your signature strengths and exercise them at work in order to be happier while you're on the job. A worthy mission! Here's a link to the article and one of the seven steps:

Monday Tip: Use your strengths at work: "What strengths do you rarely or never use at work? These represent untapped potential for you and your workplace. Is there any way you could get to use them more often?"

Adam Khan is the author of Principles For Personal Growth, Slotralogy, Antivirus For Your Mind, and co-author with Klassy Evans of How to Change the Way You Look at Things (in Plain English). Follow his podcast, The Adam Bomb.

Could I Just Do Part Of It For Now?

The following is part of a series called Direct Your Mind. Good questions can be used effectively to direct your mind so you're using your mind to work for you rather than against you. Read more here about how to use the technique.

The time-management expert, Alan Lakein, calls this the “Swiss Cheese” method. You poke a hole in your project. After you poke enough holes in a project, there isn’t much left. A large project becomes easier and easier to tackle the more holes you poke in it. Also, when you don’t have the time or motivation to tackle your project, you can do some small thing that moves it forward, even a little, and that will do two things: It’ll improve your mood, and it will make the project a little less intimidating.

This question keeps you moving. It keeps you making progress.

One of Lakein’s techniques is to set a timer for five minutes, and work on your project until the time is up. Because it is so brief, you are not at all intimidated. Five minutes. You can stand just about anything for five measly minutes.

Often you’ll find that once your five minutes are up, you don’t really want to stop. But by giving yourself such a small goal to begin with, you are able to get something done. Without that technique, you would have gotten nothing done on that project.

And working on your project for even five minutes gets you thinking about it, which is usually a good thing.

We tend to think about projects as a whole. This question gets us thinking about doing smaller parts of the whole. Do you have a large project you’ve been putting off because it’s such a large project and you don’t want to get started? Ponder this question. Can you do something on it for five minutes? Can you do a small part of it now?

Adam Khan is the author of Principles For Personal Growth, Slotralogy, Antivirus For Your Mind, and co-author with Klassy Evans of How to Change the Way You Look at Things (in Plain English). Follow his podcasts, The Adam Bomb and Talk to Klassy. You can email him here.

How Can I Look at This as a Good Thing?

The following is part of a series called Direct Your Mind. Good questions can be used effectively to direct your mind so you're using your mind to work for you rather than against you. Read more here about how to use the technique.

On an old radio show, back in the days before television, The Amos and Andy Show was extremely popular. It was a comedy show, but sometimes they said something profound. In one show, Amos asked the Kingfish why he had such good judgment. The Kingfish replied, “Well, good judgment comes from experience.”

“Then,” asked Amos, “where does experience come from?”

“From bad judgment,” answered the Kingfish.

There’s always something to learn from misfortune. And that’s what this article is about: Dealing with adversity and setbacks. Dealing with events you didn’t want to happen.

The Kingfish pointed out one way you can always look at a setback as a good thing: You can learn something from it. At the very least, you can learn how to avoid having the same setback twice. But if you use your imagination, you can do better than that. Before you even see how something turns out, you can find ways of looking at an event that would make you feel good about it, even when it is obviously bad.

I’ll give you some examples in a minute, but I want you to see that if a “bad” thing has already happened, there’s no point in thinking of it as bad. Thinking it’s bad doesn’t help you to correct the problem, if it can be corrected. And if it can’t be corrected, it still doesn’t help you to think of it as a bad thing. People can learn and remember just fine when they feel good. You do not have to feel bad to learn from your mistakes. In fact, people tend to learn better in a positive frame of mind than a negative one.

So there is no good reason to ever hold onto the judgment of a situation or event in your life as bad, awful, terrible, tragic, unfortunate, or lousy. It doesn’t do you any good to consider an event that has already happened to be bad.

You can find a way to look at anything that happens to you as good, and people who are habitually successful and happy do exactly that. You notice I said “anything that happens to you.” If someone you love dies, do not try to see it as good. You probably would not anyway, but this is a disclaimer to let you know I’m not a nutcase. When something terrible happens to someone you care about, this question is probably not appropriate. The question is for events that happen to you personally.

Sometimes you’ll hear someone say, “I’m glad that terrible accident happened to me; it made me aware that my priorities were wrong.” And people who find meaning and value in even “bad” things in their lives are happier and more successful than those who just think it was a terrible misfortune.

And it’s not a matter of chance which way they look at it. It’s up to each person to decide how they will look at their circumstances. We have the choice, and we will live with the feelings that spring out of the choices we make.

If we take the easy way and choose to look at a “bad” thing as bad, we’ll get the results of the easy way: Bad feelings. But if we use our heads with a little more vigor, if we make the effort to actively look for what’s good about it, if we choose to find a way to look at it as a positive thing, we will get the results of that choice too: It’ll be easier to wake up in the morning, we will be nicer to the people we love, we will take advantage of what we have in our lives, and we will feel better in general.

You can ask yourself, How can I look at this as a good thing? Or you can simply assert to yourself, This is good! and then ask yourself why it’s good. Declare it’s good, and then allow your mind to find how you’re right. Either way works well.

Try it right now. Think of something in your life that you consider “bad.” It could be a condition you’ve lived with for some time, or something that happened recently you don’t like and wished hadn’t happened.

I’ll go along with you. I was a little curt with my sister-in-law, and now she’s not talking to me. Obviously that’s bad. Any idiot can see it’s bad. Only a starry-eyed goober would say that’s good. But I’m going to try to see what’s good about it. And come along with me, bringing the thing you think is bad with you. How can you look at it as a good thing?

How can I see it as good that I have this situation with my sister-in-law? Well, I can see right off the bat, I get to use it as an example in this chapter. Not only that, but it may be an opportunity to apply some of the other principles in my toolbox and might give me some good examples for those also.

How else? Hmm. Well, I really haven’t gotten to know my sister-in-law very well as of yet, mainly because we live in different cities. And I know that sometimes in working out a conflict, people get to know each other a lot better, and there’s no reason to think this won’t happen with us. I can see it as good because it is an opportunity for us to get to know each other better, and at a deeper, less superficial level.

How else can I look at it as a good thing?

What about you? Have you found ways to look at yours is a good thing? Be creative. Look at it from outside your own perspective. If a professor of psychology knew about your situation, assume she could see it as good. How would she explain her position to you?

If everything is easy, I have no opportunity to apply what I’ve learned. In applying what I’ve learned, I learn it better. In handling a difficult situation, I can take knowledge and turn it into skill. From this perspective, anything difficult is good. Friedrich Nietzsche said, “That which does not kill me makes me strong.” Although that statement isn’t strictly true, the attitude is a good perspective to adopt when difficulties come your way.

I tell you truthfully, if you make these principles a part of your thinking, you’ll be insuppressible, unstoppable, and you will feel pretty good almost all the time. No kidding. The way you think makes a big difference. And each principle is like another plug in the bottom of your bucket. Less and less of your happiness leaks out as more and more of these principles become a part of your thinking.

I know that some of them are already a part of your thinking, although you probably don’t have them worded exactly this way. I haven’t put in principles like “I can change my own life for the better” because you already think that way or you wouldn’t be reading this book. You already think in a healthier way than many people who wouldn’t bother looking reading this book because they think “I’m just the way I am and I can never change.”

You also already know that even if you’re doing better than most, you can always get better. And each new principle, repeated many times, is a solid step in that direction. This one (How can I look at this as a good thing?) is extremely useful.

This is a principle of thought. And thinking is at its most creative when it is a dialog — specifically, asking and answering questions. That’s how to do your most productive creative thinking: Ask yourself a question and then try to answer it.

For example, Sylvia has just been fired. She’s on her way home from her ex-job. But she asks herself, almost with bitter sarcasm at first, “How can I look at this as a good thing?”

Sometimes when your body is filled with a negative emotion, a question like this won’t have a good effect right away. Don’t give up. Ask it again. And again.

“This isn’t a good thing,” thinks Sylvia, “not a good thing at all. ‘But how can I look at this as a good thing?’” She just needs to keep asking. She needs to awaken the part of her brain that answers questions.

And it is awake! “Maybe I’ll get a better job,” she says to herself without much conviction.

Ask it again! Keep asking the question. Sylvia does, and her mind turns more and more to the question, and it stops mulling her misfortune and stops moaning about how wronged she has been, and turns slowly toward the question. Then her mind kicks in and starts bringing up answers, slowly at first, and then faster and faster.

“There were a lot of things I didn’t like about that job. Now I have an opportunity to start over. It’s a good thing I got fired. I should have moved on from there long ago, but I guess I was just being lazy. This might be the best thing that could have happened to me. Maybe I should sit down and carefully decide what kind of job I want to get, and what kind of company I’d like to work for...”

And so on. Once the mind gets going, it can really come up with some good stuff.

Ask yourself: How can I look at this as a good thing? And keep asking.

Adam Khan is the author of Principles For Personal Growth, Slotralogy, Antivirus For Your Mind, and co-author with Klassy Evans of How to Change the Way You Look at Things (in Plain English). Follow his podcasts, The Adam Bomb and Talk to Klassy. You can email him here.

Nitric Oxide: A Unifying Principle of Health

Nitric oxide is a unifying principle behind so many things we know are good for us, like probiotics and exercising and drinking more water and eating vegetables. What these all have in common is: They increase the amount of nitric oxide in your body.

And nitric oxide has a lot of different, significantly positive effects.

We’ve got all these different diets that have been proven to help people live longer and healthier, like the Mediterranean diet and the DASH diet and vegetarianism. What they have in common is an emphasis on foods that increase the amount of nitric oxide in your blood, in your cells and in your brain.

When the research first started, not many scientists thought nitric oxide was even worth looking at. Only about 40 research papers a year were being published on the subject — most of them coming from a single lab. When that lab’s scientists won the Nobel Prize for its work on nitric oxide, it electrified the scientific community. Five years later, more than 7,500 papers a year were being published about nitric oxide.

The number of things scientists have discovered that improve when you have more nitric oxide in your body is really impressive. People sleep better, they have more energy, they’re in better moods, they have less heart disease, less cancer, and have a better long-term memory. Nitric oxide plays an important role in your immune system — it kills bacteria and viruses and promotes the healing of wounds and injuries. It also helps people lose weight by stimulating the burning of fat. It keeps the veins free of plaque. It can delay or even prevent atherosclerosis. It makes your blood vessels dilate, which lowers your blood pressure. It increases blood flow, increasing endurance and strength.

One of the men who won the Nobel Prize (for discovering the effect nitric oxide has inside the human body) said he believes heart disease can be essentially eliminated by doing things that keep your nitric oxide level high. That’s a big statement from someone with his credentials.

Nitric oxide also functions as a neurotransmitter, helping to process nerve signals as they cross synapses.

The first thing researchers discovered is that nitric oxide dilates blood vessels, which means it relaxes the smooth muscle cells that line arteries, veins and lymphatic channels, allowing blood, nutrients, and oxygen to flow more easily through your body. Nitric oxide also prevents blood clotting, so it reduces the chance of heart attacks and strokes. It can lower your cholesterol level. It also prevents bad cholesterol from oxidizing into even worse artery-clogging forms. It lowers the risk of diabetes.

It also triggers the pituitary gland to release human growth hormone, which stimulates your body to build and repair and heal your muscle, bone and skin.

Nitric oxide is a signaling compound. The body uses it as a communication device. The strange thing is that it's a gas. It is released by your body into your body as a gas. That’s why it was hard to discover — the molecule’s life span is only a second or two.

There are many different pathways for raising the amount of nitric oxide in your body. For example, some foods, like spinach and beets, contain a high amount of nitrite and nitrate, which your body can convert into nitric oxide. Some of that conversion occurs in your mouth by probiotic bacteria in your saliva.

When you drink enough water, it helps the enzymes that convert a particular amino acid (L-Arginine) into nitric oxide do their job more effectively. So by drinking more water, it raises your nitric oxide level.

Some foods (like pumpkin seeds) contain more of that protein, L-Arginine, than others. If you eat more of that protein, you’ll have more of the raw material your body needs to make nitric oxide. Some foods (like watermelon) contain L-citrulline, which helps make the enzyme that your body uses to convert L-Arginine into nitric oxide. Some foods like blueberries and cherries contain anthocyanins, which prevent nitric oxide from being oxidized too quickly, which allows it to have more of a positive effect on your body.

When you exercise moderately, it stimulates your body to produce more nitric oxide. If you exercise too vigorously, it produces too many free radicals, and actually lowers the amount of nitric oxide in your body.

Fasting stimulates your body to produce nitric oxide.

Just about anything known to be good for you probably increases nitric oxide in your body. Turmeric, for example, raises the amount of nitric oxide in your body. Leafy green vegetables contain a high amount of nitrite and nitrate that your body can convert into nitric oxide. Apples contain polyphenols that help your saliva convert those nitrates and nitrites into nitric oxide.

Here’s an interesting tidbit: Since there is bacteria in your saliva that convert nitrate and nitrite into nitric oxide, when you use a mouthwash, it lowers the amount of nitric oxide in your body.

Here’s another one: Caffeine increases your blood vessels’ output of nitric oxide.

Are you as intrigued about this as I am? It all sounds good, of course, but is it safe? Can you have too much nitric oxide?

Louis Ignarro, the man I mentioned above, who won the Nobel Prize (along with two of his colleagues), said: "At extraordinarily high concentrations, nitric oxide is toxic. These levels, however, cannot be reached through the body’s internal mechanisms for producing nitric oxide from either food and supplement intake or from exercise. At relatively low levels within the body — the kind that can be attained through foods, supplements, and exercise — nitric oxide can dramatically influence our health in positive ways."

I mentioned that all the diets known to reduce heart disease and cancer have nitric oxide in common, but not all the foods in those diets are high in nitric oxide. So this discovery allows us to be more precise with our diet. There are other factors in food that are good for you, of course, but a big one has been hidden because it’s a gas, and now that we know about it, we can make even better choices.

It’s worth looking into and Ignarro's book — No More Heart Disease — is a good place to start.

Listen to this article as a podcast by clicking here.

Adam Khan is the author of Principles For Personal Growth, Slotralogy, Antivirus For Your Mind, and co-author with Klassy Evans of How to Change the Way You Look at Things (in Plain English). Follow his podcast, The Adam Bomb.

If I Was Happy About This, What Would I Be Thinking About It?

The following is part of a series called Direct Your Mind. Good questions can be used effectively to direct your mind so you're using your mind to work for you rather than against you. Read more here about how to use the technique.

Sometimes it’s easier to ask this version: “If someone else, more capable and wiser than me was happy about this, what would that person be thinking about it?”

Your car breaks down, it’s pouring rain, and you’re late for an important interview. Of course this is miserable. One possible and perfectly understandable reaction you could have is to throw a fit of rage. To freak out. To cry, scream, curse the gods.

But when you’re all done and you’ve made your phone calls and you’re waiting for the tow truck to arrive, you can explore your mind by imagining this same set of circumstances, but imagine that somehow you are happy about it. What would you have to be thinking to be happy about it?

Have I gone overboard here? Is this pie-in-the-sky positive thinking on steroids? How can anybody be happy in those circumstances? Why would anyone even want to be happy in those circumstances?

The why is easy: You’ll feel better and get more done. It will do you no good at all to feel miserable. What’s done is done. You are in those circumstances, no matter how you feel about them. And negative emotions are generally hard on you. Anytime you can remove unnecessary negative emotions from your life, you’ve benefited your health.

And you will respond to things better, you’ll be more creative at solving problems, and you will treat people you love with more care and respect if you feel better. The way you feel has real consequences.

So that takes care of the why. Let’s look at the how. How could a person feel happy under those circumstances? Broken-down car, rain, late for meeting. You can’t do it by forcing yourself, I can tell you that. You cannot force yourself to feel good. Why? Because forcing yourself doesn’t feel good.

But you could have a different perspective on your situation. You could look at it differently, and thereby feel differently. You could be only mildly upset about it, you could be not bothered at all about it, or you could actually feel happy — you could feel good about your circumstances. All it takes is a little creativity on your part.

Your answers to the question depend on you and your circumstances. If I was in that circumstance, for example (with the rain and late for an appointment, etc.), these are some of the things I would have to be thinking if I was happy about it: “I’m glad this happened to me and not my wife. I’m glad this happened when I was in the slow lane and could get off the road without causing an accident. It will be interesting to find out how the interviewer responds to my missing the meeting (sort of like a test of character), and it might make a good real-life illustration to use on the rescheduled interview. I’m glad this happened because since I’ve been sitting here waiting for the tow truck I’ve had time to reflect on the fact that I was running late already, and perhaps my own greed needs to be curbed — I’m trying to stuff too much into my days and I’m past the point where it is fun. I need to slow the pace and make it more fun. I’m glad this event has given me time to reflect and readjust my priorities.”

And so on. You get the idea. The more you think about it, the more there is to be happy about. It’s also true that the more you think about it, the more things you could think of to be miserable about, but the question is: Which do you choose? Because it really is your choice, and your choice will have consequences one way or the other.

Another alternative way to ask this question is: “What would I like to feel about this?” And then after you get the answer to that one, ask: “What would I have to think about it in order to feel that way?”

I once had an appointment with the dentist for the following day, and I wasn’t looking forward to it. So I asked, “What do I want to feel?” Of course, my answer was, I wanted to be glad I was going to the dentist, or at least no longer feel dread.

My next question was, “What would I have to think that would make me feel good in these circumstances?”

One of my answers was, “I would have to think I was grateful that I live in a time and place that has dentists to take care of my teeth.” I thought about other places and times (all of human history except the very recent) when people got painful cavities, lost their teeth, and suffered tremendous agony because they did not have dentists, because dentistry hadn’t even been invented, or it was only for the rich or whatever, and here I was ungratefully wishing I didn’t have to go.

And the truth is, I didn’t have to go. It was my privilege to be able to go. I felt glad about going, and no longer dreaded it.

And I changed my attitude by beginning with the simple question, “What would I like to feel?” 

Okay, you have a bad feeling, but what would you like to feel? And then go on from there and ponder the question, “What could I think about the situation that would result in that feeling?”

Also note that I changed the way I looked at it and felt better without fooling myself or trying to believe something I didn’t really believe, or trying to force myself to feel any particular way. I felt better honestly and genuinely by looking at the real situation with a broader perspective than I had been using.

It’s important not to do this questioning with a forcing attitude, or in a hurry. Just ponder it like you’re daydreaming. Just wonder about it. Imagine you’re in a hammock drinking a lemonade. Imagine it’s a lazy summer afternoon and you have absolutely nothing to do but enjoy the cool breeze. Imagine you’ve got all day to lie around and daydream. Then ask the question in a relaxed, curious way. Imagine you’re pondering the question for your own amusement and nothing more.

Questions direct your mind. And this question is a great way to generate whole new trains of thought that will lead you to better feelings (and better health): If I was happy about this, what would I be thinking about it?

Adam Khan is the author of Principles For Personal Growth, Slotralogy, Antivirus For Your Mind, and co-author with Klassy Evans of How to Change the Way You Look at Things (in Plain English). Follow his podcasts, The Adam Bomb and Talk to Klassy. You can email him here.