Five Ways to Stand Out from the CrowdWritten by Terry Mitchell
Some people are content to just to be another face in crowd. By assuming this attitude, they are saying, in effect, to rest of world, "I'm just average; there's nothing special about me." For those of us who would rather stand out from crowd, there are some relatively easy ways in which we can accomplish this mission. None of them require a whole lot of skill or money. They do, however, require a little bit of commitment on our part. The first way to stand out from crowd is to take time to do little things right. The old saying goes that "if it were easy, everyone would be doing it." Well, that's not necessarily true, as there are some easy things most people don't do because they just don't think those things are worthwhile. Here are two examples. The next time you go to grocery store, notice how many people actually take time to carry carts back to cart-return. You will probably notice that only a very few of them do. Most will leave them between parking spaces, in handicapped spaces, or they'll simply turn them loose, allowing them to roll freely through parking lot. By default, they are saying to world, "I don't have time to do things right" or "everyone else is doing it that way and I am no different." If you always take time to take yours back to cart-return, you will stand out as positive example. The other example has to do with making proper turns while driving, including using your turn signal. Remember how you were taught in driving school or driver's education class to make turns? You are supposed to make sharp rights and wide lefts. Amazingly, many drivers will do just opposite! Make turns way you are supposed to and always use your turn signal. These are just a couple of examples, but taking time to do little things right will make you will stand out for right reasons. The second way to stand out from crowd is to find alternatives to profanity. A person who relies on profanity in his or her speech patterns comes off as someone who is boorish and has a limited vocabulary. There are plenty of ways to tell someone exactly what you think about him or her without being profane. Even a person who is not all that intelligent seems a lot smarter when he or she avoids use of profanity. At a minimum, that person seems more high class than people who just can't help themselves from using profanity. The third way to stand out from crowd is to memorize things that most other people commonly forget. Most people have short memories when it comes to subjects like politics and world events. For example, I'd wager that 90% of citizens of my home state cannot name losing candidate in last gubernatorial election. Ten years from now, majority of Americans will not be able to name John Kerry as loser of this year's presidential election! Too many people are just so caught up in their own little worlds that they don't bother to retain certain things that don't directly affect them. You don't need a photographic memory to memorize stuff. Anyone who doesn't have some type of memory-affecting brain disease can do it. All you have to do is practice. Write things down. Repeat them to yourself over and over. If you can commonly remember things that others have long forgotten, you'll really stand out. The fourth way to stand out from crowd is to live below your means. This is probably toughest item on my list to follow as our culture dictates that we mortgage ourselves to hilt. We are taught to keep up with Joneses. We are taught to buy everything banks and our credit cards will allow us to buy, whether we can afford it or not. However, we should strive to leave as big of a gap as possible between our income and our bills. I know there are people out there who have large families and/or limited incomes and are struggling to make ends meet. I know that not everyone can have as big of a pad as I have between my income and my bills. However, it hasn't always been that way for me. I grew up in a very poor family. We lived in housing projects from time I was six until time I was 18. However, we were always able to pay our bills on time because my parents didn't buy things they couldn't afford.
| | The Doomsday Device ... The physical brain in action.Written by Edward B. Toupin, Ph.D.
Our physical brains quickly and easily handle mundane sequences of operations, or "processes" without question. It repeats processes like a machine: A»B»C»...»Z». Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines word "process" to mean "a series of actions, operations, or motions involved in accomplishment of an end". Heartbeat, breathing, and digestion are processes that occur without a single thought about "what comes next". But, in many cases, our movement has become so consistent, that life itself becomes one of mechanistic processes of physical brain. Although, life is supposed to be dynamic, brain only handles what it knows---what it has learned and what is sequenced.Just as life is a process of physical brain, so is "mind". We can touch, feel, or see a brain, but we can’t touch a mind because it is a sequence of operations that occur to accomplish one or more tasks. The mind is our dynamic structure that takes in information, pushes it through rules of our belief systems and stored knowledge, and devises a solution. The brain has many processes that interact with each other. The brain’s mind process has two lesser processes of interest: an ability to analyze and another to react. Where do we develop dynamic solutions if our brains are so rigid? First of all, when brain encounters a sequence of events many times, it stores that information so that it knows how to automatically react and what to expect---a new process. It is a way that we handle those daily tasks that we know must be done and don't have to think about it. Taking out garbage, saying "hi" to our mates, and some tasks at work become so ingrained that they are processed quickly and easily without thought or emotion. Call it physical body's way of "making our lives more efficient". Is it really an efficient method? In some ways, yes. We can simply go through life "without thinking" and allow our physical brains to issue commands to ensure that tasks are completed. "Going through life without thinking" is key point here! We "can" set our physical brain's mechanisms in motion to process life and then phase-out to let it run its path. In general, a consistent and repetitive motion in life, without thought, is called a "rut". This is where we run into trouble. Is going through life without thought a positive move? It all depends on what you want out of life. We can "let it ride" or "actively participate". It is in active participation that we begin to acquire dynamic solutions and processes in our physical brains. But, all dynamic processing and information occurs within an area known as "virtual mind". The thoughts and dynamic ideas in this mind are intercepted and processed by physical mind and turned into new or altered mechanistic enhancements---call it "retooling". However, we have to be open to new information and understand what it is before we can truly make beneficial use of it. Some of unique ideas that are intercepted become colored by our own mind to fit within our experiences and belief systems through "analytic overlay". Analytic overlay, taken from remote viewing, is mixing of signals. It is our need to take incoming information and apply our own assumptions, views, and beliefs to make it fit within our realm. With this regard, it is our taking of information arriving externally, and modifying it to fit our understanding and systems. In this way we become more comfortable with new information; however, we tend to obscure information that could provide us with new and intriguing insight. --- Virtual Mind --- The virtual mind is higher self. Some call it subconscious, other soul. It is that part of us that exists among and communicates with other entities across Universe. It allows us to move about freely from our physical realm, investigate new ideas, communicate with others, and acquire information that is seen as a "flash of genius".
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