Think Like a Genius

In "Change Your Thinking Change Your Life", Brian Tracy quotes Maxwell Maltz.  He stated, "Make ever thought, every fact, that comes into your mind pay you a profit.  Make it work and produce for you.  Think of things not as they are but as they might be.  Don't merely dream - but create!"  Our brain has more than 18 billion cells each one is connected to and interlinked with as many as 20,000 other cells.  We have the capacity to learn at incredible rates and to retain more information than we can ever imagine.

We have moved from the agricultural age to the industrial to the service age now to the communication age.  We can create an unlimited future for ourselves by tapping into our brainpower, channeling it to energize our life.   The chief assets of any organization are contained in the ability to think and to apply that thinking to get results that other people will pay us for.  The ability to create wealth is determined by mental strength rather than physical strength.

Often small improvements in the way we think and perform can lead to significant improvements in our performance.  Successful people today are those who are continually investing in learning and expanding their intellectual asset base.  Knowledge grows exponentially.  Tracy writes, "if we fail to regularly seek out new knowledge in our fields it means we have unconsciously, accidentally, slipped into the intelligence trap of the low performer."  OUCH... but true and we don't want to be the low performer! 

Answers are changing.  The answers in our field are changing as we sit here.  What was true a year ago may not be true today.  Keep open and alert to changes.  Nothing remains the same for vey long.  Our best opportunities come from applying our knowledge and brainpower to new products and new services.  Make it a little bit better, faster, or cheaper.

Questions open our mind and expand our options.  It increases our creativity, enables us to think effectively about a problem and to ultimately reach a better decision.  Questions stimulates our imagination.  Some questions to consider are:

• What exactly is the problem?
• Why is this a problem?
• What is the ideal solution?
• What holds us back from achieving the solution?
• Which solutions seem to be the most acceptable?

Look for ideas everwhere and get around the right people.  According to the American Management Association, at least 70% of our decision will turn out to be wrong in the fullness of time.  7out of 10 decisions...wrong!  With the numbers against us, we need to be willing to admit we made a mistake and adjust the decision.  Don't "fall in love" with the decision, be willing to "give it up".  Be flexible.

Brian Tracy encourages us to read something related to our field at least one hour everyday. Take notes, review them, reflect on what we are learning and apply the new ideas to our life.  He also encourages us to take all the training we can get, because knowledge is power.  To change our thinking in a positive and constructive way, we must continually feed our minds with new ideas and stay on the cutting edge of our field.

Recently the company I worked for offered a webinar training session during our workday.  Unfortunately, I was not in the office that day.  A co-worked decided to take the class and said she learned some good nuggets and was happy she went.  If your employer offers training, don't pass it up.  If you feel you need additional training, don't hesitate to ask.  Develop a plan to study and learn everything you can in an area.  Be the best at what you do.