Note: This is a guest post from Walter Adena of LionSlinger.com

Anxiety is a fact of life. Being part of our psychological makeup, this response is automatic when we are faced with situations threatening our sense of well-being. Since this propensity is genetically embedded on our brains, we have no way of preventing its manifestation. However, we can influence our response if we have sufficient awareness and discipline to counter its unhealthy encroachment.

Allowing anxiety to dominate our thoughts can result in stress and depression. Little do we know that most of the fears we cater are unfounded; our minds have taken the habit of conjuring a scenario wherein feared situations arise. Left uncontrolled, these illusory fears will be incorporated unto our reality, thus stifling our view of the truth. If we are to take control of our anxieties, we must stop feeding our thoughts with negative imaginings. Instead, we should put our focus more on the clear facts surrounding us and deduce therein our real worries and concern. This will then reduce the gravity of our anxiety.

Still the question arises: How can we deal with anxiety?

To be honest, dealing with anxiety is not an easy task. Our genetic makeup makes it hard to resist this automatic brain response. However, through practice and willingness, we can change our approach in dealing with anxiety.

First and foremost, we have to understand the nature of our fears. We need to find where it’s coming from and why are we experiencing such feeling. Without this understanding we cannot affect an appropriate response should anxiety dominate our thoughts.

Gaining an understanding of the nature of our anxieties will bring forth clarity on our part. This important factor is the key to alter the influence of fear on our minds.  Once we become aware of our anxieties we are able to allow our reason to intervene; we are then able to make an analysis with regards to the factual substance of our anxiousness. Still, awareness and understanding are not enough, willingness to let go of our unfounded fear is also a necessity. If we don’t have the will to change our perception of anxiousness, little is our chance to reduce our tension.

Validating the source of our anxieties will take time, discipline and persistence. Every time anxiety enters our thoughts it is imperative to enforce our intervention through awareness, then make some validations as to the reality of the objects of our anxieties. Once we deduce the truth from fiction we have to eliminate the lies by reprogramming our thinking; though it may be hard at first practice makes perfect.

In my experience I have been continually bogged down by my worries. What I’ve learned though is that the huge percentage of all my worries is nothing more than the illusions of my mind. All the time I have continually beleaguered myself of fears that really don’t exist. It took me time to realize how much time and energy I have wasted thinking of my senseless worries. Had I immediately weeded out the facts from farce, I could have made better decision.

Before you drown yourself of anxieties, consider the following approaches:

• Ask yourself: What am I anxious about? Does my fear have any substance?
• Make an analysis of the situation and separate the real from the unreal.
• Focus on finding solution rather than brooding over worries.
• Use your common sense when dissecting the cause of your anxieties. (Most of us worry over preposterous things).
• If senseless anxieties forces its way, counter it by engaging yourself on productive activities.
• Seek the path of self mastery.

We don’t have to punish ourselves over our anxieties. The choice is always ours whether we confine ourselves to our self-made fear or seek understanding about the true nature of our worries. There’s a lot more to life than being anxious.

Walter Adena Cabelis is a deep thinking blogger. To learn more about his thoughts, visit him on www.lionslinger.com.

Photo by Roberto Bouza

The more I observe brilliant people, the more I notice that one distinguishing characteristic they have is immense curiosity. I’m reminded of this quality when I read two articles by Bill Gates where he listed his favorite Teaching Company courses. There are two things I notice:

1. He watches a lot of courses in addition to reading a lot of books.
2. He watches courses on diverse topics, ranging from economy to chemistry to linguistics to medicine.

Another good example is Nathan Myhrvold (whom I wrote about in my post about polymaths). Just watch his talk at TED and you will see that his interests range from cooking to photography to nuclear technology to archeology and more. I can give you other examples but I think the point is clear: immense curiosity is a distinguishing characteristic of brilliant people.

Why Curiosity Is Important

How does curiosity contribute to someone’s brilliance? Why is it important? There are two reasons I can think of:

1. It gives you a fresh perspective. Most people have just one or two lenses to see a problem through, but curious people have many different lenses. As a result, they can see something that many other people can’t. That’s what happened in Nathan Myhrvold’s company when someone found something that had eluded experts in the field:

Wood was a physicist, not a doctor, but that wasn’t necessarily a liability, at this stage. “People in biology and medicine don’t do arithmetic,” he said. He wasn’t being critical of biologists and physicians: this was, after all, a man who read medical journals for fun. He meant that the traditions of medicine encouraged qualitative observation and interpretation. But what physicists do—out of sheer force of habit and training—is measure things and compare measurements, and do the math to put measurements in context. At that moment, while reading The New England Journal, Wood had the advantages of someone looking at a familiar fact with a fresh perspective.

A physicist who “read medical journals for fun” is definitely a curious person. And he had the advantage of a fresh perspective.

2. It gives you fresh ideas. Using the term from The Medici Effect, curiosity gives you Intersection experience where concepts from different fields collide with one another and produce fresh ideas. Since curious people get more Intersection experience, they consequently get more fresh ideas.

Seven Ways to Develop Your Curiosity

Now that we’ve seen how important curiosity is, how can we develop it? Here are several things you can do:

1. Don’t label something as boring. This is the first thing you should do. Whenever you’re about to label something as boring, stop yourself. Why? Because doing that will close one more door of opportunities. What might seem boring at the surface may actually be interesting if you just dig a little bit deeper.

2. Expect things to be fun. Rather than expecting things to be boring, expect them to be fun. This small change in your mindset can make a big difference. Once you do it, it will be much easier for you to find the fun side of practically anything.

3. Absorb other people’s enthusiasm. Often something seems boring because it’s delivered poorly. That’s perhaps one thing that makes great teachers great: they can connect their students to the fun side of what they’re teaching. So one way to develop your curiosity is to watch the talks of those who are enthusiastic about their fields. Don’t just absorb their knowledge; absorb their energy too. One good place to start is TED.

4. Question relentlessly. Whenever you deal with a topic, have questions in your mind. Find their answers and raise new questions. Questions keep your mind engaged. They can change your learning process from something dull to a treasure hunt.

5. Create a challenge. By creating a challenge, you will want to prove to yourself (and perhaps to others) that you can make it. One good way to do that is by creating a project: build something real out of what you learn. Another way is to create a contest with your friends to find out who can do something faster or better.

6. Connect to what you already know. Things will be more exciting if you can connect what you’re learning to what you already know. Why? Because that improves your understanding of the world and allows you to see new possibilities you’ve never realized before.

7. Diversify. Avoid boredom and find new possibilities by exploring new topics. Read books in new genres. Meet people with different professions. Add variety to your life.

The core is simple, actually. All the advice above can be summarized to just one: make things fun.

Photo by fdecomite

Note: This is a guest post from Scott Young of Learning on Steroids

We’ve been taught how to study, but not how to learn.

That’s the only conclusion I can draw when I watch otherwise intelligent people spend hours cramming for exams, while failing to understand the material being taught.

Studying tends to focus on repetition. If you study a formula enough times, it will magically glue itself in your head. The more you repeat, the better you remember.

Learning isn’t just about repetition, it’s about making connections. Simply staring at the same formula a dozen times isn’t learning, even though we’ve been told it qualifies as studying. Learning a formula means understand what its components are, reviewing the proof or relating it to similar formulas.

Instead of trying to memorize by rote, you should be learning by connections.

Learning Hacks to Allow You to “Get” Any Subject

I’ve aced tests without studying for them. Over four years of university, my GPA has always sat between an A and an A+. I even placed first in a regional academic competition, without having taken the course being tested.

But in the grand scheme of things, my accomplishments are relatively modest. I know polyglots who can speak 8 languages, students who graduated from competitive programs with triple the normal courseload and learners who went from C to A+ averages while studying less than before.

The underlying trend in all of these learners is their ability to learn by making connections. Instead of relying on memorizing material repeatedly, they weave any new information into their existing knowledge.

During the years since I’ve been writing about this idea, I’ve managed to identify some of the main tactics these learners use to connect ideas together. Here are seven:

#1 – Analogies and Metaphors

Whenever you learn a fact, ask yourself what the idea is similar to. You can learn abstract processes by creating metaphors for more common events. Variables in computer programming become jars. Derivatives become the speedometer and odometer on your car.

#2 – Mental Pictures

Have you ever tried to visualize a mathematical formula?

It’s not as ridiculous as it sounds. If you break apart a complex formula into components, you can try to imagine what it would like as a graph or how each component influences each other.

I used this to remember how to calculate the determinant of a matrix. Instead of just memorizing rules, I created a mental picture of my hands scooping through the diagonals, adding and removing the numbers.

#3 – Dig a Foundation

Do you ever get surprised how easy early subjects appear, once you advance in them. Arithmetic looks easy once you start with algebra, which seems trivial once you go onto calculus. Going a bit further in the progression means you still struggle with the furthest ideas, but the earlier ones become easier.

What if you applied this in reverse: did a bit of extra research on your most difficult topics. You might not understand the further research perfectly, but it would make understanding your testable material much easier.

#4 – Become the Teacher

Try switching roles: how would you explain what you’re learning to someone else? The act of explanation creates connections. Teaching also forces you to simplify and break down complex ideas, another good step to foster learning.

#5 – Stop Taking Rigid Notes

Are you trying to learn, or create a courtroom transcript of the lecture? My suggestion is to free yourself from rigid notes, and instead write down ideas in branches and connections. Add your own thoughts, diagrams and arrows linking ideas so you have a web of information.

#6 – Diagram

Remember when your teacher told you to stop doodling in class? Well recent research suggests that drawing can actually increase your concentration.

I’d guess that if you were actually drawing out information related to the class, that might improve your concentration even more. I don’t know if a picture is actually worth a thousand words, but it can often be worth many connections towards a greater understanding.

#7 – Pegging

Mental magicians actually use this tactic to memorize any number. The tactic is a bit complicated for a brief article, but the basic idea is to attach each digit to a specific consonant. So 1 = s, 2 = k and 6 = r.

The next step is to put these consonants together. So 16578 becomes s, r, d, l, p. You can then insert any vowels within these letters to create nouns. So srdlp becomes sword and loop. You then string the nouns together in a story: “The sword cut through the loop before Jonathan…”

Then, even to remember hundreds of numbers, you only need to remember the story and letters key.

Scott Young is the author of Learn More, Study Less. He runs a program designed to teach rapid learning tactics. The program is currently sold out, but you can go here to get on the announcement list for when it reopens.

Photo by Hermés

Note: This is a guest post from Mark Harrison of Effortless Abundance

First – a sweeping statement. Everyone wants success and happiness. We might not agree about what this means – each of us defines ‘success’ and ‘happiness’ in a different way – but everyone aspires to these things. Yet for so many people, happiness and success are elusive, and we can spend a great deal of time looking for the answers.

For many years I was an avid collector of ‘self improvement’ books – I have several hundred in my collection – and yet, however many I read and enjoyed, I never seemed to get closer to finding what I was looking for. I was looking in the wrong place, of course. I was looking outside when the key was within me all along.

There is nothing wrong with self-help books: they can be entertaining, inspiring and challenging. But they cannot change you. What changes you is the realization that you are in control.

What you control is your mind. What we focus our attention on grows and becomes a more important part of our experience. Many – perhaps most – people tend to focus a lot on negative things. We fret about the past, about missed opportunities, mistakes and failures, we fear the future with all its uncertainty; we worry about our relationships, our investments, and our security. We compare ourselves to others in an unfavorable light, and we fear that we are inadequate. These negative thoughts continually arise and, with attention, they grow and persist.

This kind of thinking is poison: it is corrosive, toxic, destructive, and we need to purge ourselves of it. To attract more positive experiences into our life – to become truly happy and successful – we need to eliminate the negative thinking which, for many of us, has become such an integral part of our life. It’s not so much that we need to ‘think positively’ so much as that we need to drop the habitual, negative thoughts that swirl around our head and make up so much of the background noise in our lives. I am convinced that our natural, ‘default’ state is peace and happiness, and that success comes easily if we have nothing blocking the way.

Dropping negative thinking is, in a sense, very simple. Just don’t do it any more. Take your hand off the stove. And yet we are so used to inflicting this kind of pain on ourselves that just ‘letting go’ can be extraordinarily difficult.

One of the most important and useful things to remember is that your mind is a tool. You are its master, not its servant, so you should take control. Remember that thoughts are not reality. Although we often seem to think that our thoughts are reflections of the way things are out there in the world, the reality is that our thoughts shape the way we experience things. We could say that the world we experience is an echo of our thoughts, our inner reality.

Be vigilant and be diligent in being aware of your thoughts. When you spot a negative thought, just drop it. Just stop thinking about it. Switch your attention to something else if you have to. At first, it might be difficult but, as with everything else in life, gentle persistence will bring results. With practice, you will be able to uproot the old, harmful thought patterns and catch negative thinking before it takes hold.

One of the most wonderful books I have ever read is Awareness by Anthony de Mello. The message is simply that being aware of our negative thinking will change it. Instead of identifying with the negative thoughts in our head, we can be the silent observer, watching the thoughts and deciding, consciously, what to do with them. The only sensible option is to drop them. Why let them dictate how we feel? Why let them determine our happiness?

It is possible to be at peace, to be relaxed and happy and to enjoy every situation in life. It is possible to be successful easily and naturally. It’s all about maintaining the right mental attitude and knowing how to deal with the thoughts that come into our mind. So why waste another moment on negative thinking?

Mark writes for a number of sites around the web. Check out his site and his new book, Thity Days to Change Your Life.

Photo by Kevin Tiqui