4 Mind 4 Life - New Brain Power Info.

1. Be aware of your breathing: are you breathing properly?

Being aware of your breathing means being fully conscious of your breathing pattern. Though something as simple as breathing in-and-out is an automatic function of our body, being aware of how you are breathing is important. Unfortunately, many people are unaware that there is actually a proper way to breathe. A way of breathing that is optimal for your body and brain.

Proper breathing involves inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your mouth upon every breath. When I first attempted this breathing pattern, I was very skeptical of its effectiveness. However, after being open-minded and giving what has been deemed “proper breathing” a shot, I noticed that I felt better, had a clearer thought process, and actually had more energy. Surprisingly, an automatic process as simple as breathing can actually have a profound impact on the way in which you feel and think. If you are interested in learning how to breathe properly and reaping the benefits that this practice has to offer, then do a Google search for the keywords: How To Breathe Properly and read some of the content that comes up.

Once you are able to breathe properly, you will have a much easier time being consciously aware of your breathing. To be fully conscious of your breathing, you must learn to fully shift your awareness to your breathing pattern. It is not necessary to be fully aware of your breathing at all times, but practicing the exercise has serious potential to boost your conscious brain power. As I have mentioned in previous articles, my favorite way to focus on proper breathing is through meditation. Learning to shift my entire focus to my breathing pattern has not only allowed me to learn proper breathing, it has allowed me to go deeper into meditation.

To begin a breath-awareness type meditation: get yourself into a comfortable position that will allow your body to relax. Next, close your eyes and shift your attention to your breathing cycle. Take note of how you are currently breathing. Make sure that you are inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your mouth. After my body is fully relaxed, I focus completely on my breathing cycle and breath. Initially, I may take deep several deep breaths to get myself even more relaxed. After the deep relaxation has been achieved, I focus on a cycle of air flow: air gets inhaled through my nose, exhaled through my mouth, and cycled back up to my nose. What previously seemed like inhalation and exhalation becomes complete: like a continuously recycling the same air. I then keep my focus on my breathing for as long as I feel necessary. As you come out of meditation, you will probably notice an increased awareness of your breathing pattern.

The process of becoming more aware of my breathing through exercises like meditation and conscious breathing have significantly helped me increase my overall level of focus, emotional stability, and level of consciousness. Though the act of breathing is very simple, to be able to shift your entire focus on it for an extended period of time takes conscious brain power. Do yourself a favor and give proper breathing a 7 day trial to see how quickly your raw, conscious processing power improves!

2. Spend more time with yourself

In the fast-paced lifestyle of the 21st century, it is very common for people to spend time with others, yet never take personal time to spend with themselves and focus on their own life. I realize that it can indeed be fun, and satisfying to spend a lot of time with others, but do you realize how fulfilling it can be to spend time with yourself? The reason that many people are unhappy in life is due to the fact that they do not give themselves any personal time.

If you are an individual who is currently not taking enough time for yourself each day, try starting up a personal routine. Examples of ways that you could spend time with yourself, contributing positively to your own life include: taking time for internal reflection (meditation), letting yourself know how much you love yourself, going on a walk to listen to your own thoughts, giving gratitude for everything that you have in your life, or getting involved in a hobby that inspires you. Simply taking 20 minutes a day for personal fulfillment can really work wonders for conscious improvement. Taking time for yourself teaches you to build awareness to fit your personal needs and development.

There is plenty of time each day for you to at least take some for yourself. Realize that spending time with yourself can actually be more powerful and rewarding than spending time with others. Ultimately, all exercises that help you better understand yourself will lead to greater self-awareness, self-mastery, and conscious growth.

3. Listen more than you speak

In this day in age, it seems as though there is always someone that wants to be the center of attention; conversations easily become viewed as egoistic competitions. While being the center of attention can feel great and can be a rewarding experience, it can become consciously dangerous if motivated by the ego. To counteract the ego getting involved in your personal interactions and relationships, make a conscious effort to listen more often than you speak. While this advice may be very difficult to grasp for highly extroverted people, it will provide greater satisfaction and awareness when involved in relationships.

Listening more often than you speak shows a conscious ability to be compassionate for others and truly helps you remain in full control of your ego. When the time is right to speak, speaking is fine. However, when the constant want to take control of every conversation can guide your consciousness down an unconscious path. By practicing the act of listening more often than you speak, you can train yourself to be more consciously aware of others, while still holding the conscious ability to politely contribute to a conversation. Developing the ability to listen, and actually care about what another person is saying, may take some significant conscious work. With that said, it will be a much more rewarding trait to develop in relationships and will indeed raise your consciousness.

4. Muster up some courage; be courageous

Being highly conscious means doing what you want to do, saying what you want to say, and living how you want to live at every moment. Somewhere along the path towards developing a highly conscious mindset, you will need to be courageous. You may initially have some fear about sharing your decision to be a vegetarian with your family, telling someone how you really feel about them, or explaining your current philosophy in life to a crowd - but these fears need to be overcome. As was already mentioned in a previous installment in the “raising your consciousness series,” it is important to develop and muster up the courage to face your fears.

Having fears does not mean that you have some sort of disorder or disease. It just means that you are afraid of something. Most everyone has a long list of things that they fear or dread. However, most healthy fears need to be faced in order for conscious advancement. Being courageous in all situations is a trait that resembles a highly conscious individual. A great exercise for building your courage is to make a long list of your fears. Then, expose yourself to every single one. Q: Are there any other ways to build up courage? A: No. Exposing yourself to your fears is really the only way to go.

After you are able to successfully learn to consistently muster up courage that’s needed to face the things that you fear most, you allow yourself to truly live life to the fullest. Many people have a motto of: living life to the fullest. Well, if those same people are not facing everything that they fear on their journey in life, are they actually living life to the fullest? No. Developing a sense of courage is an integral step, possibly a phase that may last several years, on your journey to become more conscious.

5. Always act with compassion

Having complete compassion for others is a direct result of becoming more conscious. Unfortunately, there are few people here on Earth that are honestly able to make the claim that they always act with complete compassion for others. Because compassion is such a key ingredient in the process of developing consciousness, it is important to develop compassion. There are many factors that you should take into account when determining your level of compassion. Do you eat animals? - Is eating animals (meat) an action that a person with unshakable compassion would take? Are you respectful of others and their beliefs - Or do you like arguing over why your beliefs and life strategies are better than the next guy? Is that a compassionate action to take?

In my opinion, you should strive to be compassionate in every area of your life. One great way to always keep yourself acting with utmost compassion is to ask yourself questions while completing various tasks throughout your day. Ask yourself if certain actions that you are taking are allowing yourself to express your true compassion. If they are, you may not need to make changes in your level of compassion. If not, you may want to consider re-evaluating / revising your actions and making changes to become more compassionate.

Other ways to get yourself in a compassionate mindset include: making a conscious effort to think compassionate thoughts and through practicing compassion meditation. Compassion meditation involves entering a mental state consisting of only complete love and compassion for others. Consistently practicing compassion meditation is a phenomenal way to boost your overall levels of compassion in your life. Compassion meditation also allows you to learn how to shift your mental focus from any state into one of pure love for others. Entering a completely compassionate state of mind has been studied and is associated with: healthy structural changes in the brain, pleasurable neurotransmitter changes, healthy brainwave pattern changes, and states of complete bliss. As you may have already guessed, practicing compassion can be one of the single most powerful exercises for boosting your level of consciousness.

6. Improve your mental focus; enhance your clarity

Improving our mental focus helps us get a better understanding of reality and provides us with more inner clarity. As we enhance our level of focus and clarity, concepts that had previously seemed very difficult to understand become simple knowledge. We get a better sense of understanding within ourselves and of the world around us. Cultivating a state of mental focus allows us to consciously advance - whereas being distracted, unfocused, or bored, will naturally shift us towards a lesser state of awareness.

There are many qualified methods for boosting your level of mental focus. Several examples include: concentration meditation, self-hypnosis, developing self-discipline, and eating a diet that provides optimal brain functioning. There are even healthy supplements like fish oil that have been proven to increase the ability to focus. As you practice techniques that allow you to increase your focus, you will develop greater mental clarity and a deeper understanding of reality.

As you continue the process of boosting your focus levels, you allow yourself to create a significant amount of positive change in your life. The act of being able to focus helps you better express your emotions, become more productive, and expand your consciousness. As your focus increases, so will your level of consciousness. You will better understand others, your reality, you will be better at retaining knowledge and being able to consciously apply your knowledge in every aspect of your life.

7. Think rationally and logically

Being able to think rationally and logically allows you to positively interact with your reality much easier than being irrational and illogical. In fact, being irrational and illogical will actually lower your current level of awareness. Activities such as: arguing, fighting, hating, etc. are usually extremely irrational and illogical ways to act. For this reason, it is very important to learn to think and behave with rationality.

Allowing yourself to be overcome with unhealthy emotions and throwing a fit of distress will quickly move you to a lower state. Instead, your primary goal should be to act rationally in all situations at all times; even if that means holding back your rage of pent-up negative emotion. Thinking rationally allows yourself to quickly deal with severe forms of stress very quickly. Rational thinking is a byproduct of a high functioning brain, particularly the high activity within your left-prefrontal cortex. One great way to increase your ability to rationalize is to strengthen your brain’s level of functioning by boosting your brain power.

In essence, it will genuinely help to develop your ability to rationalize. While you are experiencing an upsetting, disturbing, or distressing event, your ability to think logically will allow you to detach yourself from all negative emotional aspects of your situation. You will literally be able to think your way out of what may seem like tragedies. A large majority of people negatively react with strong unconscious emotions when they experience a distressing event. Therefore, being able to be rational when faced with distress, will allow you to better develop your awareness. Probably the best exercise for developing and encouraging rational thinking is through concentration meditation. While practicing this type of meditation, bloodflow to your brain increases and your left-prefrontal cortex of the brain heightens with activity. This is the part that has been long associated with logical, rational thinking, and healthy, positive emotional expression. Even if used as your only tool, concentration meditation will definitely get you on the right track towards raising your level of consciousness.

8. Purify your body; detox

One great way to become more conscious is to purify your body. You can help purify your body by going on a specific diet, by cutting certain substances from your diet, by decreasing stress and learning to deeply relax, by cutting certain substances from your diet, by sitting in a sauna to sweat out toxins, etc. There are many methods that you can utilize that will help you to detoxify / purify your system. Do a simple internet search for How To Detox and choose a method that sounds best.

Why would anyone want to detox their body? A great reason to want to detox is to become more conscious. Other smaller reasons that lead to becoming more conscious include: releasing chemical build-ups, clearing toxins from your body, reestablishing a sense of peace within, encouraging an optimal mind-body connection, enhancing your spirituality, etc. The fact is, purifying your body through detoxification will aid in the process of keeping yourself pure. Every system could use a good cleaning now and then. When you allow chemicals, animal hormones, artificial flavoring, processed foods, etc. to build up in your system over an extended period of time, they can have a largely negative impact on your physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing!

While following a detox routine, be conscious of what you are doing to your body. Be fully aware that you should choose a detox routine that has been researched and proven effective in order to avoid risking bodily damage in the process. With that said, choosing to purify or cleanse your body can really work magic for your current level of consciousness.

9. Start a personal journal / blog

Starting a personal journal or blog is a great time investment that will allow yourself to become more conscious of your: thoughts, feelings, actions, philosophies, beliefs, etc. Writing entries in a daily journal or on a personal blog can be extremely helpful in the process of understanding your current state of awareness. What is nice about keeping tabs on yourself is the fact that you can watch your progress as you undertake a conscious journey. At the beginning of your journey, your journal may be filled with entries about certain concepts in life just don’t make sense. As you advance, those same concepts that you initially may have struggled with may seem to become general knowledge.

Starting a personal blog or website allows you to analyze your consciousness from a third person point of view, revisit the past, and consciously observe your growth. Seeing your life from an alternative perspective can provide you with greater self-awareness and understanding. If you haven’t yet started a journal, you should highly consider it! The act of journaling has actually been scientifically studied and linked to increased ability to deal with your emotions, greater personal happiness, and a greater ability to retain past events in your long-term memory.

If you are interested in starting a blog or personal website for journaling, all that’s really necessary is choosing a reliable webhost to help get you started. Sure it will cost around $7 dollars a month for a quality webhost, but the purpose of having your own host is to have personal freedom and full ownership of your material. Freedom to choose your own URL (website address), freedom to own all content published on your website, freedom to put up any advertising that you choose, and many more freedoms that having a blogger-hosted website wouldn’t provide you with.

However, if you don’t care to much about having personal freedom over your website and full ownership over your personal content, you can run a free blogger blog. If you are happy with your decision to run a blogger blog, I am happy with your decision. Blogger blogs don’t require you to pay money and you still can have some freedom with your URL choice (though there will always be a “dot blogspot” in part of it). The downfall is: you will not own full rights to all of your content. With that said, you can still earn money off of advertising and can still operate a free, quick, and easy blog.

Another way to journal is to use a pen and a journaling book. For those of you who are less tech-savvy and would prefer to use a good ole-fashioned, pen-and-paper style journal, go right ahead. Some advantages to keeping a hard-copy journal are: it is easily accessible (no need to boot up the computer to write an entry), you can take it anywhere (easily transportable), and the fact that it looks like an authentic journal. Disadvantages to keeping non-computerized journal include: invasion of privacy (strangers finding it and reading it), you losing it (misplacement), and it being used for a firestarter (maybe a bit extreme)…

You could also use a journaling software by downloading one to your computer. Using a journaling software would allow you to keep saved electronic tabs on your consciousness. Google the keywords “journal software” and you’ll probably find something helpful. And for those of you who are uber-desperate to start a free journal in a short amount of time, open up Microsoft Word or Wordpad and journal til your heart’s content.

In my personal experience with journaling, it has been much easier for me to do it via my computer. I can type much faster than I can write and am much more productive when I type. However, what matters most is not your method of keeping your journal, but the fact that you actually are keeping a journal. No matter your strategy for journaling, understand that keeping tabs on yourself and events in your life is a great way to develop a deeper sense of understanding, knowledge, and conscious awareness.

10. Make others laugh; tell a joke

Being funny and making others laugh is a great way to ease stress and create a more positive outlook in life for yourself and for others. Though you may not be an expert comedian, being able to make others laugh is extremely rewarding and satisfying. It is satisfying to you for making another person laugh, and for the other person who gets the laugh out of your joke; a true win-win situation. Depending on your current state of awareness and perspective on life, certain jokes may be extremely funny to you, while to your children or parents, they may be extremely obnoxious. What matters is that you are always conscious of your joke telling and its side-effects.

What is important when telling a joke is to understand the individuals in which you are telling it to. Telling appropriate jokes at the appropriate time and being conscious of whether or not what you say may offend someone will increase your consciousness. Many times, certain jokes may be very funny to certain individuals, while they may remain tasteless to others. Being conscious of your ability to make others laugh and when to use a certain jokes in appropriate situations will increase your ability to empathize with others and create a sense of happiness and peace.

In my opinion, any remarks that are aimed to insult, degrade, or hurt another individual are definitely not jokes. Making others laugh through the act of an insult will not lead you to greater conscious growth. As you tell jokes, you may also be tempted to get your ego involved. I recommend trying to tell jokes without allowing your ego to get involved. When the ego takes the joke-telling hot-seat, what may have been good, clean jokes, turn into hateful or disgusting words.

If you are able to make others laugh and put a smile on the faces of others, joke telling can prove to be a rewarding trait to develop. Making others laugh and smile shifts all attention away from pain and negative emotions, towards one of pure enjoyment and happiness. Good comedians can make certain people laugh. Great comedians are able to make anybody laugh while suppressing their ego. The act of telling jokes is a great way to improve quality of consciousness by allowing you to look at life from a different perspective.

Can’t get enough laughter and jokes? Want to become a more conscious individual through the act of laughing? Well, believe it or not, there actually is a form of meditation called Laughter Meditation. The process of laughter meditation seems very pleasurable and fun, though I’ve yet to give it a shot. To try laughter meditation, get yourself into a comfortable position and consciously relax your mind. Next, focus vividly on a funny past experience, fully visualizing it within your mind. After you are able to recall a past experience, begin laughing. Try not to start with natural laughter, but if it does not come, fake it til you make it! Allow yourself to consciously laugh as loud as possible - be sure to fake the laughter if you need to. Because eventually, your fake laughter will be converted through your brain into a phase of real laughter. Eventually, you will essentially be able to laugh upon conscious command. To come out of the laughter meditation state, quiet down your laughter until you are no longer laughing, just smiling. Then tell yourself that anytime something feels troubling to you, you can use laughter to look at the situation from a funnier, happier perspective.

Though I haven’t tried laughter meditation in substitute for my current meditation routine, I will eventually get around to it. Jokes and the ability to laugh can really change your entire perspective from what may seem like a grim, serious situation, to a happier, more positive one. They also have the potential to help increase positivity in the lives of others. Making yourself laugh and possessing the ability to tell funny jokes to others will allow you to easily guide yourself and others through what may perceived as distressing life events.

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1. Practice personal development

Taking action to better your life through the concept of personal development is an extremely effective way to make yourself a more conscious human being. Virtually every aspect of personal development deals with upgrading your state of awareness whether it be directly or a side-effect from something like overcoming fear. Think of personal development as the act of upgrading every area of your life to function at the highest possible level: health, finances, relationships, etc.

There are tons of awesome ways to practice personal development. Actions that I take to educate myself in the field of personal development include: reading personal development books, reading personal development blogs, listening to personal development audio programs, talking with others interested in personal development, and using internal reflection (meditation) to consciously learn from and understand my life. I like to think of personal development as a learning process involving the act of applying wisdom from myself and others to be a better functioning human being.

For the long-term, personal development has potential to make you a healthy, wealthy, and wise person. With that said, the advice that you gain from pursuing your personal development is only as effective as the degree to which you are able to apply the advice to your life. I believe that an easy way to apply what you’ve learned from personal development to your life is to take immediate action after learning an important piece of material. Take immediate action in the act of applying your new knowledge to your life. Without taking any form of action after learning a new personal development technique, the advice can be deemed absolutely useless to your life.

If you find yourself interested in the concept of using personal development for conscious advancement, there are many wonderful online sources to help you with your journey. There are also many great books to help you move forward with your conscious advancement with a primary focus on personal development. I think that if you are interested in the concept of conscious development, pursuing personal development can prove to be highly rewarding.

In contrast, conscious advancement and personal development are very similar concepts that yield similar results. Comparatively, conscious advancement is just one aspect of personal development, while virtually all aspects of personal development lead to greater conscious development.

2. Shift your conscious focus; focus on the now

Being preoccupied with thoughts of past events and of the future has potential to lead your consciousness in the wrong direction. Focusing your attention on this exact moment (commonly referred to as “the now”), however, is a great way to raise your level of awareness. It is a great habit to get yourself into focusing on the now because the practice has been associated with many positive life changes. Focusing your attention on this exact moment in time is a great way to get rid of negative emotions, enjoy the moment, and really in full control of your consciousness.

A great way to practice focusing your attention on the now is to guide your consciousness. Every time that you catch your mind wandering towards past memories or future hopes, shift your attention back to this exact moment. Ask yourself what you can do in this exact moment to ensure optimal conscious development. As you work on your conscious development, focusing on the now will become much easier. Individuals at higher levels of conscious functioning, understand the concept that there really is no past or future, there’s only right now.

Imagine what depressed individuals could do if they could just shift their focus to the moment of the now and decide that from this point on, they are going to be happy. It would work, because there is no reason to feel depressed unless by choice if you are able to avoid thoughts about the past or future. The truth is, most people feel a certain way due to momentum from their past. Momentum from the past and preoccupation with past thoughts has a very big impact on the way in which we are feeling right now. This is why it may be very difficult for some to shift their focus away from depression and consciously choose to be happy instead. When our focus cannot be shifted from a lower state like depression, consciousness automatically is guided to an even lower state of functioning.

Therefore, a great exercise to practice if you’re ever feeling depressed is to shift your focus to the now (this exact moment), and decide to be grateful for everything positive in your life. If you are more consciously advanced, you will instantly be able to shift from depression to a state of gratitude and happiness.

Heres another realistic scenario: Let’s say that you are in an argument with another individual and are in a state of pure fury due to the remarks made by the other individual. If you would simply shift your focus to this exact moment, you could program yourself with the idea that in the grand scheme of life, this dispute is a minor rough patch that can be peacefully resolved. You then could consciously take full control and decide to positively change yourself to put yourself in position to make peace of the argument. All fury and anger will instantly vanish as soon as you shift your entire focus to something else.

Focusing on the now is an extremely powerful concept that has potential to instantly change the entire focus of your life. Focusing on the now is one of my favorite exercises to practice throughout the day. It will do a great job at teaching you to be consciously aware of your thoughts and shifting them from a state of past and future into the moment. Meditation also boosts my ability to focus on the now. By learning techniques that allow you to shift your awareness to this exact moment, you can work wonders in the process of conscious advancement.

3. Be energetic; allow others to feel your radiance

Being energetic can be very powerful for advancing your state of consciousness and for inspiring others to become more consciously advanced. Your body can become energized and your brain can become energized. When both are operating in at maximum intensity and energy, you are said to be in a state of peak performance.

Energy serves the purpose of giving you conscious power to help your own awareness and that of others. Acting lively, speaking passionately, and using your energy to achieve maximum positive expression will attract positive, conscious attention. On the other hand, acting tired all the time, speaking sluggishly, without enthusiasm or excitement, or expressing your energy an unhealthy way will attract negative attention. Healthy ways to express your energy include: smiling, laughing, starting an interesting conversation, giving a compliment, exercising, getting proper sleep, and using relaxation techniques. Unhealthy ways to express your energy include: thinking negatively, stressing yourself out, arguing with others, fighting with others, and any action that can be considered self-harm. What’s ironic is that all of the unhealthy ways to express your energy are much more draining of energy than all of the healthy ways to express your energy.

Allowing others to get a positive vibe from your energy will first require that you make a conscious effort to express your energy in a positive manner. Every single action that you take draws from a specific type of energy within. As you increase the number of times that you positively express your energy each day, you will be naturally reciprocated and replenished with excess energy to positively express your the future. Coincidentally, increasing the amount of unhealthy ways in which you express your energy will drain your overall energy for your future. Become more conscious by directing and expressing your energy in as most positive manner as possible.

4. Make healthy dietary changes; be conscious of what you consume

Making healthy dietary changes means searching to find the best possible diet to fit your mental needs, physical needs, spiritual needs; to fit your needs. Are you fully conscious of what you are consuming? Are you a meat eater? Did you ever consider consciously thinking about the pain of the animal that suffered and died before you ate that big piece of ribeye steak? Or are you a person who lacks total compassion for animals and disregards them as a beautiful expression of life here on Earth? Or are you a vegetarian that has never opened up your belief system and tried thinking that eating meat may actually be good for you - providing your body with vital nutrients that the vegetarian diet misses?

I am currently a vegetarian for personal, moral, and ethical reasons: I am consciously aware of the pain, suffering, and killing cycle of animals for food sacrifice and I feel that it should be stopped. I also have yet to witness any evidence in my physical body or mental ability that would lead me to believe that vegetarianism is unhealthy. I have read cases where certain individuals didn’t react well to switching to a vegetarian diet, while others actually felt much better after the change. It all depends on the person; we are all unique. As already mentioned in the previous article, trying new things and consciously experimenting in life will raise your awareness.

Maybe you need to cut sugar and sweets from your diet for optimum health, maybe you should try a vegan diet, maybe a raw foods diet will work best. No matter your diet of choice, it is important to be non-judgmental towards the diets of others. Arguments can be made in support and in opposition of eating meat; they can also be made for and against eating a vegetarian diet, raw food diet, and virtually every other type of diet. Debates can be made for and against any diet.

What matters most for conscious advancement is to find a diet that works best for your needs, while being completely conscious of what you consume. Simple questions such as: how will eating this affect my thinking, body, health, etc. are all questions you should be asking. You should also ask other questions such as: How does eating this affect the planet? AND Did an animal suffer and die for my personal benefit? Be aware of where your food came from, if it has been chemically treated or altered, injected with additives or preservatives, and if it is healthy for your body.

To advance consciously it is important to be respectful and accepting of the diets of other individuals without making spiteful judgments. But most importantly, in order to boost your own level of consciousness, it is important to be fully aware of the food in which you are consuming in your diet.

5. Accept others for who they are

As mentioned above in being conscious of what you eat, it is important to be accepting of the diets that others choose to use. Whether they make a conscious decision to have an unhealthy diet or unconscious decision, accept their actions. Accepting others can apply to every area of life. No matter if you disagree with another person’s actions, disagree with their personality, or disagree with their perception of life, it is important to accept them for who they are and not try to force changes upon them. Settle your disagreements with other individuals by purely accepting them for who they are.

Realize that we are all unique individuals with different needs, different life stories, and different interpretations of life. The easiest way to overcome all disagreements is to accept others for their differences and be grateful for the unique perspective that each person brings to the table. If everyone were the same in life, life just wouldn’t be as much fun! Pure acceptance for others may not be easy initially, especially if you are a person that likes to fix bad habits in others.

Chances are good that if another person is involved in a bad habit, he or she may want to break that habit. What you can do is work with them to make conscious positive change to replace bad habits with good ones if they want to break the habit. However, if the individual doesn’t feel any urge to change his or her bad habits, don’t try to be in control of their life; you’ve already got your own to deal with. Let others live their own life without being judgmental. Don’t attempt to take control over others; it gets your ego heavily involved. Instead realize and accept the fact that everyone will have their time to consciously evolve and deal with perceived personal shortcomings.

6. Accept and love yourself for who are; count your blessings

Life’s journey becomes much easier and significantly enriched if you can learn to accept yourself for who you are. Depending on your current state of consciousness, it may be difficult to love and accept who you are. Often times people operating in lower levels search for ways to externally look better, places to buy fancier clothing, ways to make more money, and the best place to get breast implants. Q: Why do they do it? A: Because they truly believe that it will make them happier.

The real truth is, none of these things will make a person happier in the long-term. What will make you happy is being deeply grateful for what you already have. Though you may not have a lot of money, top-notch clothing, a perfect face, or have Hooter’s girl sized breasts, there are wonderful gifts that you were blessed with that nobody else has been given.

We are all unique and all have a unique, rich set of things to be profoundly grateful for. Maybe you are a fast runner, maybe you are a natural comedian, maybe you have a genius level I.Q., maybe you have a very positive personality, maybe you are very consciously advanced, maybe you have a natural talent for singing, maybe you have many friends. Whatever you have - be grateful for it! Celebrate it! Celebrate your individuality and uniqueness by fully accepting who you are and loving yourself.

Things like changing your external appearance by getting breast implants, buying expensive clothing, and getting rich will only bring you some short-lived happiness. What causes you to shift towards the polarity of unconsciousness is the act of not being grateful for what you’ve already got. For long-lasting happiness and for conscious advancement, accept yourself for who you are and feel truly blessed to have what you’ve got. Take the time to count your blessings, be accepting of yourself and your level of consciousness. Realize that at this current moment you are doing the best that you know how to do in order to advance consciously.

7. Understand your own thought process

An extremely effective way to become more conscious is to take note of your thought process and understand it to the best of your ability. I’ve seen many people run themselves in mental circles due to an ineffective understanding of their own thought process. Being consciously aware of your thoughts and why you are thinking them is an integral step in creating an accurate understanding of your reality.

What causes one person to shed tears of joy, may be a boring event to watch for others. What may feel pleasing to one person may feel extremely painful to a different person. What is one man’s junk is another mans treasure… you get the picture. Everyone has a different internal working model and unique thought processing. To become more conscious is to learn how understand your thoughts and why you think certain thoughts when faced with certain situations within your reality.

A great way to understand your thoughts is to simply be aware of what you are thinking while you are thinking it. I personally recommend meditation to help yourself understand your thinking. Meditation has been proven to boost activity in the left-prefrontal cortex of your brain which allows you to be more aware of your thoughts with less mental effort. Therefore, to supplement your current state of awareness and become more conscious of your thoughts, you may find that meditation proves to be extremely helpful. Once you are aware of your thinking patterns, you can effectively learn to quickly change your reality, belief systems, and understanding of your uniqueness. This is a great situation to put yourself in for conscious advancement.

8. Bless everything that happens; look at the bright side

There are times throughout life when amazing things happen to us and other times when upsetting events take place. Just like accepting who you are and blessing what you are thankful for, you should also learn to bless everything that happens in your life. No matter how bad an event, it has potential to make a positive impact on your life in the long run.

Let’s use an example of a perceived bad event and understand why it should be blessed. Hypothetically, let’s say that you were involved in a crime and thrown in prison. Your life situation is looking extremely grim, but there is still a lot of potential for your life. Here’s where it’s important to recognize [the perceived negative event of] getting thrown in prison as a blessing in disguise. Though you may be in prison, you now have potential to stop your criminal behavior, understand why your actions were wrong, the ability to make some big conscious decisions about your life while you’re locked up, the ability to make positive conscious change, the ability to do push-ups to strengthen your body, the ability to make a positive impact on lives of others in prison, the ability to meditate to strengthen your mind, and the potential to get out of prison earlier than expected! This situation, though initially looking absolutely terrible, has lightened up. Let’s say that you are now out of jail and become a multi-millionaire that has learned to become highly conscious.

In hindsight going to jail could’ve been the best thing that happened to your life to “wake you up” out of your low functioning state and guide your consciousness in a better direction. Who knows, you may still be a criminal if you hadn’t gone to jail. For this reason, it is important to count your blessings and be thankful for what you’ve got in every situation.

Though I did choose somewhat of a bad example, I was still able to demonstrate the ability to bless what appeared as an unfavorable stage of life. The ability to bless everything that happens in your life comes with conscious experience and being able to think positively. No matter what has happened in your life, look back and force yourself to optimistically bless every event. Every event in your life has happened for a reason - whether you are aware or unaware of that reason depends on your current level of consciousness. Blessing everything that happens to you is a highly conscious tool that helps greatly for dealing with life. Your ability to bless and appreciate, even what may be initially perceived as a worst case scenario, will ultimately provide you great conscious satisfaction.

9. Take time for internal reflection; meditate

Taking time for internal reflection is the single most effective way to learn more about yourself and your state of consciousness. Internal reflection will certainly help you better understand your thoughts, emotions, spirituality, and current life situation. Internal reflection is basically the act of meditation. Simply closing your eyes and observing your thoughts can be extremely effective for learning more about your consciousness. Do your best to interpret the feedback that your internal reflection provides.

My favorite internal reflection / meditation practice begins by getting into a comfortable position and consciously focusing all of my awareness on my breathing. I then focus my attention on relaxing individual parts of my body. After I am deeply relaxed, I will shift my attention towards my entire internal state. Usually the subconscious will throw something at me during meditation that may be insightful, may be interesting, or may just be a long-time memory of the past.

No matter what information you are able to extract from your internal reflection, it will help you advance consciously. Sometimes you may not get anything out of your experience with internal reflection, other times you may be bombarded with a plethora of internal information. Be happy with yourself and results and understand that the insight you are provided with was meant to be. The more often you take time to meditate or internally reflect, the better you will understand yourself and be able to create conscious change. If you don’t currently take time to internally reflect: start up a 20 minute meditation routine each morning and observe the difference it quickly makes in your state of consciousness!

10. Focus on advancing consciously; tune out distractions

In the process of conscious development, it’s important to focus exactly on what you are trying to accomplish: the act of becoming more conscious. During this process, it is important to tune out all unhealthy distractions such as: negative relationships, abuse, fighting, illicit drugs, etc. If you allow yourself to become distracted with unhealthy, unconscious habits, then act of advancing consciously will become a much more difficult or slower process than normal.

One very helpful way to ensure conscious advancement is to pack your daily schedule full of healthy habits. Here is the example of a typical day that you could consciously force yourself to have: wake up - go into meditation; after meditation lace up your kicks and go for a run; after your workout, eat a wholesome, healthy breakfast; after your breakfast educate yourself by reading an interesting article; after your reading go to work - while you’re there, make an effort to share your positivity with others by smiling, giving compliments, and making others laugh; after work (maybe on the drive home), use positive incantations to change your belief system; when you get home, celebrate your family by talking with them about their day and spending time with them; after dinner, plan a fun activity (like going bowling) that allows you to express your vibrant energy; after bowling, stop by 4 Mind 4 Life and read another interesting article; finally end your day with a positive visualization of tomorrow; get a good night’s sleep to ensure optimum health. This is just one day that is packed with consciousness boosters. By packing your schedule with consciousness-boosting, healthy roadblocks, it becomes very easy to tune out all distractions and stay focused on your conscious advancement.

Focusing on advancing consciously and tuning out distractions will make the process of your journey become very quick and highly effective. Eliminating all unhealthy patterns and putting up conscious enhancing roadblocks will ultimately help you reach the advanced state of awareness that you were trying to achieve much more quickly. It’s obvious that distractions slow progress - so do away with them! Being unable to tune out distractions will only slow or impede your conscious progress!

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1. Boost your brain power and functioning

There are many helpful exercises that you can do to boost your brain power and overall level of functioning. One of my most popular articles, 50 Ways To Boost Your Brain Power, should get you on the right track if you are currently confused about the topic or don’t know where to start. Raising your level of consciousness will naturally boost your overall brain power, and boosting your brain power will raise your level of consciousness; both affect each other in direct proportion.

As you learn to enter a higher state of mental functioning and understand the effects resulting from a more powerful brain, you will have a much easier time dealing with reality and connect deeper with deeper parts of yourself. Your senses of taste, hearing, smell, vision, and touch become significantly enhanced. As your brain power increases, so do the baseline levels of various helpful neurotransmitters, making conscious thinking and awareness a much easier state to access. You’d be very surprised at the large number of exercises that you can do to raise your consciousness and brain power. Simply cutting unhealthy substances from your diet will have a profound impact on your mental wellbeing. You be the judge as to what works best for you and stick with it.

2. Take full control of your lifestyle

Are you living the lifestyle that you feel is most beneficial for your mental and physical wellbeing? Maybe there are certain bad habits that you need to get rid of or certain good habits that you’d like to implement in your daily routine. Don’t be afraid to act now and make necessary positive changes in your lifestyle to help you take full control. In my opinion, it definitely helps to befriend like-minded individuals who have similar interests and mindsets towards making positive lifestyle changes.

One example of an easy lifestyle change that most people can make is: adding a daily exercise routine to their schedule. Let’s face it, most people don’t workout everyday, which can definitely turn into 2 days, then 3 days, a week, a month, then an unhealthy habit. Consider either talking to a friend about going for a walk each day - and having a nice talk while working out, or purchase that Y.M.C.A. membership you’ve long thought about. Next, schedule a time period that will work best during your day for you to go do some exercise. Any amount of exercising, no matter how small, is better than none! And adding a daily exercise routine to your schedule is just one of many positive changes that you have potential to make!

Think positively about your lifestyle change and continue the process by making more changes. Once you are able to effectively able to make one lifestyle change, add another positive one. The process of making lifestyle changes gets much easier as you continue the process. Initially it may take some self-motivation and solid support from friends. As you raise your level of consciousness to a higher level of functioning by making lifestyle changes, future changes become quite simple.

3. Choose empowering beliefs

In the process of changing beliefs, choose beliefs that are empowering to you at your core. A good way to know what belief will be empowering is to simply ask yourself how you feel about adding the new belief. If you feel a strong connection with a new belief, such as feelings of excitement, it will probably be a very good choice that is very easy to implement. If you aren’t feeling any connection with a new belief, it may be best to wait a bit.

If you tell yourself that you want to change beliefs about “being sad,” to a state of “being happy,” do you feel excited about the change? Does it feel like this belief change is the best you can make at this current moment? These are some questions that you could be asking yourself. Often times when choosing new beliefs to implement, we fantasize about an optimal state of happiness and want to change our emotional beliefs to “I am happy all the time.”

There is nothing wrong with this change, in fact, it is quite a great change to make. However, it may be better to work your way along more slowly and adopt some simpler, more basic beliefs and advance consciously before making the change to “I am happy all the time” - a belief that can be a difficult transition for those in lower levels of consciousness. If you feel that you can tackle adding bigger beliefs to your belief system, go for it; more power to you - literally! Adding empowering beliefs will help you advance in your state of awareness, and on your quest to become a more conscious human being. Make a conscious effort to purge all beliefs that are less than satisfying. Understand also that as you become a more conscious human being, changing your beliefs will become much easier and a more natural process.

4. Avoid physical fighting and abuse

Physical fighting stems from emotional misunderstandings, hatred, and negative emotional expressions. Fighting can be said to be the opposite of peace. Physical fighting and other forms of abuse can really do a great job at distracting us from becoming more conscious human beings. Becoming more conscious involves being peaceful, understanding, loving, and the ability to work out disagreements in a healthy, conscious form of self-expression.

I personally don’t encourage any form of fighting because it usually involves emotional negativity, hatred, and sets a bad example. Even in boxing though there may not initially be any dispute, both parties end up putting their bodies and brains up for potential damage. Allowing yourself to be physically abused or mentally abused will also lower your state of awareness. One hard punch to the head and no doubt brain cells will die. Many punches to the head and you risk developing devastating diseases, disorders, and tumors.

Allow yourself to rise above any forms of violence and work smart in your effort to become more conscious. If you live in an abusive environment, get out. Call for help, talk to someone about it, and get yourself to a safer, healthier environment. If you know someone who gets abused, offer them help and support by getting the law involved. Anything that you can do to stop physical fighting and abuse will ultimately make you and the individuals involved more consciously aware.

5. Be aware and accepting of your emotions

No matter your current emotions, you will profoundly help yourself if you are accepting of them. Some people are in deep states of depression, others are happy, fearful, content, etc. No matter how you feel or how difficult your emotions feel, a great way to cope with them and become more consciously aware is to accept them, feel them, and understand them. We experience certain emotions for a reason: whether we are aware of the reason or not.

Going through life resisting your emotions and trapping them inside yourself makes life much more difficult. Trying to escape from our emotions lowers our awareness. Many illicit drug addicts, alcoholics, and people on psychiatric medication don’t realize that they are only running from their emotions and ultimately lowering their awareness. If they would learn to consciously accept what they are feeling and take steps to move forward and express themselves, their lives would gradually become much easier. Resisting our emotions lowers our level of consciousness. When you accept what you feel and consciously understand why you feel a certain emotion, your level of consciousness rises.

6. Speak compassionately; be conscious of your words

When having conversation with others, do you choose your words wisely? Or are you the type of person who could care less what you say? The truth is, people who choose their words wisely and consciously think during conversation are the ones who show greater respect for themselves and more compassion for others. Those who care less about what they say are much more prone to lowering their level of consciousness. They often will intentionally, or unintentionally, offend others and themselves, both of which will lower their state of functioning.

Choosing your words wisely will attract positive conversation, and others will naturally find you much easier to relate to rather than those who could care less about their speech. All of the benefits that result from choosing your words wisely and having intelligent conversations will ultimately benefit your consciousness and the consciousness of those that you interact with. Make a conscious effort to speak compassionately and healthy results will follow.

7. Think positive, act positive: be positive

Being a positive influence sets a good example for others and for yourself. It is also very beneficial for raising your consciousness and the consciousness of others. Make an effort to replace any negative thoughts with more positive ones. Thinking positive really rubs off on your own consciousness and making it a habit is very beneficial for your mental health. Acting in a positive manner around others sets a great example. The act of being positive entails both thinking, and acting positive.

Positivity and states of being positive are direct effects of raising your consciousness. I highly recommend trying to be a more positive person in all areas of life; you will notice and feel the beneficial changes in your awareness. It also will feel phenomenal to know that your positivity makes your consciousness expand and causes the consciousness of others to be more receptive to positivity each time they associate with you!

8. Have sexual intercourse

Having sexual intercourse is a great way to spread and share your love with another person. The best way to have sexual intercourse is with another positive, healthy, person in which you fully love and trust. Having sexual intercourse is a loving way of transferring and sharing energy with another person. No matter who you have sexual intercourse with, there can be many conscious benefits.

As mentioned in the article 20 Ways To Murder Stress: Killer Relaxation Tips, sex is an extremely effective way to reduce stress. Reducing stress and becoming a calmer individual is just one way in which sex helps raise your awareness. Being with a loving partner can be an extremely loving, soul-bonding experience. The deep connection that sexual intercourse can provide is literally beyond expression through words. Besides being a great experience, it will boost your current level of consciousness provided the experience was one of mutual love.

9. Identify with your soul

Realize that at your core, you are a spiritual being who is living in a physical body. In lower stages of consciousness, this concept may seem unrealistic and may be very difficult to grasp. For the most part though, once you become aware that you are a spiritual beings that have manifested in physical form, you can learn to identify better with your soul. Identifying with our soul will ultimately make us more aware of our soul’s interests.

I personally believe that the best exercise for identifying with our soul is meditation. With that said, other practices such as: self-hypnosis and yoga have been proven to be extremely effective. Besides practicing meditation, feel free to supplement the idea of identifying with your soul while in an awake state. In essence, as you become better at identifying with your soul, you become better at working your way up the mountain of consciousness.

10. See perceived faults of others as a mirror image

When you look at the faults of others and identify faults in other people, use them as a teaching tool for yourself. The people that are in your life weren’t put there by mistake, they were put there to teach you something about yourself. Other individuals have the potential to teach us more about ourselves. Many times when we look at what we perceive as faults in others, we probably carry the same problems within ourself. When we do notice faults of others consistently, it is often that they are a mirror image of ourselves being shifted into personal focus.

We can choose to deny our faults and continue to blame others for theirs, or we can rise up and better ourselves. Raising consciousness involves never looking down on others or perceiving them as any less worthy than yourself. Our ego sometimes has potential to push us down the path of blaming others and creating disputes. By being able to take personal responsibility for what is being displayed by others into your conscious focus, you can take the information and make very healthy changes.

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