Thursday, November 25, 2004

How To Program Your Mind For Wealth

I have just finished a seven lesson e-course designed specifically to help you learn to use the power of your mind to attract money into your life. The course is called "Mind Over Money: Program Your Mind For Wealth," and is based on the teachings in my e-book "Money Making Secrets of Mind Power Masters."

This course draws on the wisdom of the world's greatest mind power experts who teach you precisely how to think in order to attract wealth easily and effortlessly.

"Mind Over Money: Program Your Mind For Wealth" is specifically designed for newbies to the field of Mind Power, but if you've already studied my e-book, this brief course will be a great reminder of the most important principles for attracting wealth.

You can sign up for this absolutely free course at http://www.secretmindpower.com/MindOverMoney.htm

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

While I'm Away

I will be in Asia for a few weeks and I may or may not have time to update the blog. In the meantime, you can get tons of great information by checking out past issues of Mind Power News at http://www.mindpowernews.com/archives.htm


Monday, November 08, 2004

Ancient Warrior Secrets for the Modern Entrepreneur

By Hirini Reedy Print Version
www.maori-secrets.com

The words you see onscreen trigger subconscious responses. Dark images penetrate your mind. Your heartbeat increases slightly. Your muscles tighten. Like a warrior advancing to combat, you prepare to engage with your market. Ready, aim, fire. You send an email! Everyday, military metaphors are projected across our computer screens. Guerrilla marketing. Market penetration. Global domination. Competitive intelligence and more. How do you approach your marketing, your business? At the end of the day, do you feel like you have been in battle? Suffering battle fatigue.

War is just metaphor for the application of force. By understanding the nature of war, you can apply this understanding to business. You can apply the principles of war with elegance or with crudeness. It is like knowing the difference between a charging gladiator and a meditating warrior-monk.

Here are some warrior secrets that have been derived from traditional Maori martial arts and modern military tactics. Adapt and apply some of these principles into your life and business.

1.
The Power of Oneness. When tracking and observing, you need to become one with your environment. The trees, the insects, the wildlife become your eyes and ears. The forest becomes part of your body. In order to reach this level of feeling, you need to become one with yourself. This power of oneness begins with the point of stillness. You need to slow down your thinking and relax into yourself. Slow down your thoughts so that you can sense your own body. Tense muscles. Nervous responses. Stressed breathing. Just slow down and take time out from your busy work environment. Spend an hour of slow thinking each day. Do nothing during this hour then move when you are ready. The modern entrepreneur is like a scout, silently observing then moving with swift, efficient actions.

2.
Know Yourself. Know your strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes it takes honesty to admit your own weaknesses. Your partner, your children or close friends can all be good mirrors. They reflect back both your good and ugly features. The ego of a mighty entrepreneur can be easily pricked by the honest opinion of his 4-year old daughter. Your results are also another good indication. What results are you getting? Look around you for 360 degree feedback. Put yourself in uncomfortable positions so that you can stretch and grow.

3.
Know Your Enemy. I said know your enemy, not kill your enemy. Sometimes your worst enemy can be yourself. Sometimes your enemy is called your competitor. Try this. Look at your competitors as potential allies. Study them. Think like them. Talk to them. Understand them. They very much want the same things in life as you do. Yet be like an iron fist wrapped in a velvet glove. Negotiate and operate from a position of strength and honour rather than weakness and deceit. The energy of your values and beliefs radiate out from you like a force-field. What energy are you sending out?

4.
Think 3 Times Beyond Your Current Capability. Some warrior races such as the Maori of New Zealand used to train so that one warrior was equal to three or more opponents. Their smallness in numbers was compensated for by the quality of the warriors. Find a way to leverage your current capability so that you achieve a 300 percent improvement in your results. You could be three times faster in delivering your product to the customer. Or your product could be three times more reliable. Why stop at a ratio of three? Perhaps you could achieve a 10, 20 times improvement ratio on your current capability.

5.
Focussed Relaxation in High Stress Situations. Stress is the number one cause of reduced work efficiency. When teaching martial arts I encourage people to consciously laugh when in high stress situations. This relaxes the body and allows natural reflexes to emerge. Imagine a bloodstained maniac running at you with an axe. Your body starts to tense up. Your mind panics. Now imagine the same axe maniac running straight into an invisible concrete wall three metres in front of you. He is completely knocked unconscious and thrown backwards onto the floor. You laugh. Now slow this moving image down, frame-by-frame. Bring the invisible concrete wall a little closer each time. Laugh as the maniac gets knocked out. Now speed up the frame sequence. Charging axe maniac. Bang! Knock out! Hahaha! Repeat several times. The concrete wall becomes a metaphor for the power of your focussed mind. The next stage is to learn and apply defensive shock-actions so that you have the equivalent physical impact of an invisible concrete wall. Use this same mind process when encountering negative or hostile customers. Put up an invisible barrier to block their negative energy. Use laughter to disarm the tension. Be in control of your own mind and space.

Find ways to activate the warrior energy within you. Use it as a force for good. This is the challenge for the modern entrepreneur. To serve the common good while creating several successful businesses.

Friday, November 05, 2004

Brain Cells in Petrie Dish Fly Fighter Plane

By Celeste Biever
New Scientist

An array of rat brain cells has successfully flown a virtual F-22 fighter jet. The cells could one day become a more sophisticated replacement for the computers that control uncrewed aerial vehicles or, in the nearer future, form a test-bed for drugs against brain diseases such as epilepsy.

Enzymes were used to extract neurons from the motor cortex of mature rat embryos and cells were then seeded onto a grid of gold electrodes patterned on a glass Petri dish. The cells grew microscopic interconnections, turning them into a “live computation device”, explains Thomas DeMarse, a biomedical engineer at the University of Florida in Gainesville, US, who carried out the research.

“This is novel work,” says Mandayam Srinivasan of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who used electrodes implanted in a monkey’s brain to move a robotic arm. He says that in future living systems could be combined with traditional computers to solve problems more efficiently.

“There are certainly things that biological systems can accomplish that we haven’t been able to do with electronics,” he says. For example animals have no problem recognising different textures or telling the difference between two different pieces of furniture, whereas computers find this very difficult.

This is probably because the way neurons process information and interconnect is much more complex than in modern electronics, says Srinivasan. Billions of neurons - rather than the millions of transistors on a computer chip - make a biological system “fail safe”, he adds.

With this in mind, Steven Potter, a biomedical engineer at the University of Georgia, US, and DeMarse’s former supervisor, created in 2002 the Hybrot - or “hybrid robot” - a cup-sized robot controlled by an array of rat neurons grafted to silicon electrodes. The robot moves around in response to infrared signals that it converts into movement using a combination of its sensors and its “living” brain.

But until now, no one had written algorithms that harnessed neuronal responses to fly a plane. The ultimate aim is to put arrays of neurons into unmanned planes - or other dangerous situations - where only living brain cells can be relied upon to make the right decisions.

DeMarse’s array of 25,000 interconnected neurons were able to convert signals that indicated whether the simulated plane is experiencing stable conditions or hurricanes into a measurement of whether the plane is flying straight or tilted and then correct the flight path by transmitting signals to the airplane’s controls.

But a brain in a dish that can fly a real plane is a long way off, warns Potter. Instead he says: “The clear advantage is that you can put these things under a microscope and hold them still while you take a picture.” It is a unique opportunity to monitor neurons in a Petri dish while they are actually performing calculations.

For example, the neurons in a brain undergoing an epileptic seizure all fire in synchrony, and this pattern is commonly replicated by neurons grown in a Petri dish. So strategies for preventing epileptic fits could be tested on these in vitro neuron arrays, says Potter.

Although the work may sound spooky, Potter says that the array of cells is far from resembling a real brain, as it lacks the complex structure and contains only thousands, rather than billions, of neurons.

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Thursday, November 04, 2004

Optimism May Help You Live Longer

Having an Optimistic Outlook May Lower the Risk of Heart Disease, Other Risks of Death

By Jennifer Warner
WebMD Medical News

Seeing the glass as half full rather than half empty may pay off in terms of a longer, healthier life, according to new research.

The study shows that older people who described themselves as highly optimistic have a lower risk of heart disease or death from any cause over nearly 10 years compared with people who are very pessimistic.

Researchers say depression has long been known to increase the risk of death due to heart disease, but less is known about the effects of an optimistic attitude.

The results of the study appear in the November issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry.

Optimism Prolongs Life

In the study researchers surveyed about 1,000 men and women aged 65-85 about their health, morale, optimism, self-respect, and relationships. Based on the participants' answers about optimism, researchers divided them into four groups according to their level of optimism.

After nearly 10 years of follow-up, researchers found that compared with people who reported a high level of pessimism, those who were very optimistic had a 55% lower risk of death from all causes and a 23% lower risk of heart-related death.

The study also showed that optimism's protective effect was stronger in men than in women for reducing the risk of death due to any cause except heart-related death.

Researchers say there are several factors that may explain the link between optimism and longer life. For example:

* Optimism is associated with more physical activity, moderate alcohol use in women, and less smoking.

* Optimism is associated with better health in general. People in poor health tend to report more pessimism.

* Optimists may cope with stress differently and more effectively than pessimists do.

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Wednesday, November 03, 2004

Scientists Scan Brains for Political Clues

Associated Press

Applying some of the same brain-scan technology used to understand Alzheimer's and autism, scientists are trying to learn what makes a Republican's mind different from a Democrat's.

Brain scanning is moving rapidly beyond diseases to measuring how we react to religious experiences, racial prejudice, even Coke versus Pepsi. This election season, some scientists are trying to find out whether the technology can help political consultants get inside voters' heads more effectively than focus groups or polls.

Already, the scientists are predicting that brain scanning -- known as functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI -- will be a campaign staple four years from now, despite ethical concerns about "neuromarketing."

Brain scans measure blood flow. When brain cells start firing in a part of the brain that governs a particular emotion or activity, they need more oxygen, which is carried by the blood. During an fMRI, active regions of the brain can be seen lighting up on a computer monitor.

Last month, Drs. Joshua Freedman and Marco Iacoboni of the University of California at Los Angeles finished scanning the brains of 10 Republicans and 10 Democrats. Each viewed images of President Bush, John Kerry and Ralph Nader.

When viewing their favorite candidate, all showed increased activity in the region implicated in empathy. And when viewing the opposition, all had increased blood flow in the region where humans consciously assert control over emotions -- suggesting the volunteers were actively attempting to dislike the opposition.

Nonetheless, some differences appeared between the brain activity of Democrats and Republicans. Take empathy: One Democrat's brain lit up at an image of Kerry "with a profound sense of connection, like a beautiful sunset," Freedman said. Brain activity in a Republican shown an image of Bush was "more interpersonal, such as if you smiled at someone and they smiled back."

And when voters were shown a Bush ad that included images of the September 11 attacks, the amygdala region of the brain -- which lights up for most of us when we see snakes -- illuminated more for Democrats than Republicans. The researchers' conclusion: At a subconscious level, Republicans were apparently not as bothered by what Democrats found alarming.

"People make tons of decisions and often they don't know why," Iacoboni said. "A lot of decision-making is unconscious, and brain imaging will be used in the near future to perceive and decide about politicians."

Freedman came to political brain scanning through his brother Tom, who served as a consultant to President Clinton. Tom Freedman asked his neuroscientist brother if the technology could improve on how campaigns woo voters.

"No one had done fMRI with politics," Dr. Freedman said. "So we decided to see what we could find."

The UCLA researchers said they have not been contacted by any political consultants other than Freedman's brother and a collaborator, though they expect that to change after the election.

Already, some companies are dabbling in neuromarketing.

DaimlerChrysler used MRIs to gauge interest in different makes of cars. Researchers at the California Institute of Technology are scanning brains for reaction to movie trailers. Baylor University scientists just published brain scans suggesting preference for Coke or Pepsi is culturally influenced, and not just a matter of taste.

"This is a story of the corruption of medical research," warned Gary Ruskin, who runs a Portland, Oregon, nonprofit organization called Commercial Alert. "It's a technology that should be used to ease human suffering, not make political propaganda more effective."

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Tuesday, November 02, 2004

Electric Currents Boost Brain Power

By Jim Giles
www.Nature.com

Connecting a battery across the front of the head can boost verbal skills, says a team from the US National Institutes of Health.

A current of two thousandths of an ampere (a fraction of that needed to power a digital watch) applied for 20 minutes is enough to produce a significant improvement, according to data presented this week at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, held in San Diego. And apart from an itchy sensation around the scalp electrode, subjects in the trials reported no side-effects.

Meenakshi Iyer of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland, ran the current through 103 initially nervous volunteers. "I had to explain it in detail to the first one or two subjects," she says. But once she had convinced them that the current was harmless, Iyer says, recruitment was not a problem.

The volunteers were asked to name as many words as possible beginning with a particular letter. Given around 90 seconds, most people get around 20 words. But when Iyer administered the current, her volunteers were able to name around 20% more words than controls, who had the electrodes attached but no current delivered. A smaller current of one thousandth of an amp had no effect.

Iyer says more work needs to be done to explain the effect, but she speculates that the current changes the electrical properties of brain cells in the prefrontal cortex, the brain region through which it passes. She believes that the cells fire off signals more easily after the current has gone by. That would make the brain area, a region involved in word generation, generally more active, she suggests.

Iyer's group, which is led by Eric Wassermann, was prompted to run the tests after considering problems facing researchers who were studying the effect of magnetic fields on the brain. Some neuroscientists hope that magnetic fields could have a therapeutic effect, perhaps by boosting activity in areas of the brain that have suffered cell loss owing to dementia. But magnetic fields can cause seizures and also require bulky equipment to generate them.

Iyer hopes that low electric currents will offer a safer and more portable alternative. After running further safety tests, she plans to test the effect of the current on patients with frontal temporal dementia, a brain disease that causes speech problems. "This won't be a cure," Iyer cautions. "But it could be used in addition to drugs."

The idea of using electrical current to boost brain activity dates back to experiments on animals in the 1950s. The early work showed some potential, but fell from favour because of a perceived link to electroconvulsive therapy, a controversial technique in which patients with depression are treated by having short but intense pulses of electricity applied to the brain.

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Monday, November 01, 2004

Intent to Have Children Increases Men's Testosterone

BBC

Wanting to be a dad can be enough to help conception, researchers say.

They found testosterone levels surged when men were trying for a baby.

The research in New Scientist magazine looked to see if there was any link between men's testosterone levels and their sexual behaviour.

Scientists at the Institute of Applied Psychology in Lisbon, Portugal, led by Katherine Hirschenhauser, asked 27 men to measure the testosterone in their saliva every morning for 90 days.

The men were also asked to record their sex lives in intimate detail, including the "intensity" of each encounter, whether or not it was with their regular partner.

In all the men tested, researchers saw peaks and troughs in testosterone levels.

But in those men who were trying for a baby, peaks in testosterone levels coincided far more often with periods of intense sexual activity.

This makes biological sense, as rises in testosterone also trigger hormonal changes which increase the production of sperm, making conception more likely.

Katherine Hirschenhauser, an expert in sex hormones, suggests men can subconsciously influence their hormone levels.

"Males can be responsive to their partners, but only if they want to be."

But it may not simply be that men who want to become fathers have sex when their testosterone levels are high.

Other researchers say the explanation could be connected with the previous findings that women are more receptive to sex around the time of ovulation - and that women who live together have their periods at the same time - thought to be due to pheromones.

Jim Pfaus, an expert in sexual neurobiology at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada suggests men hoping to be fathers respond to their partner's pheromones and synchronise their testosterone levels to the mid point of their partner's cycle, the time when they are most likely to conceive.

The research has also been published in the journal Hormones and Behaviour.