10 mind reading tricks
The mind knows many tricks that you might have not heard about yet. You will be surprised how exploring its extraordinary possibilities can be easy and pleasant. Are you up for learning 10 most interesting mind tricks? Here they are.
- Have you ever found, when lying down to sleep, a beat of some energetic song endlessly rumbling in your head and not letting you sleep? There is a solution to it. As “switching off” this song and quieting your mind completely is very difficult, you can try replacing it with another song. Start playing in your head some quiet, slow and soothing music, which you like very much and which will put you to sleep. You will need to consciously focus on introducing this new song in your head, instead of the old one, for only about a minute, and later on this new tune will play automatically, while the previous one will disappear. This will help you fall asleep quickly and without a problem.
- To concentrate effectively, do a small visualization exercise. Imagine that you are on a beach. Look at the sea and watch how the rough sea creates large waves coming towards the shore. Concentration is a state in which you focus only on a single thing, without any other thoughts bothering you. Imagine that the waves take away your thoughts, one by one. Create a representation of every thought - a symbol, an association or an image. Arrange your thoughts (one at a time) close to the water and watch them being washed away by the waves.
- Do you have moments in your life when you talk to yourself and the things you say are not quite positive? Such a negative inner dialogue, unfortunately, has the power to put you in a bad mood, undermine your self-confidence and introduce stress. However, for the negative inner dialogue to have power over you, its tone and form must be firm and determined. Take this power back, changing its mood from indicative into interrogative. Add a question mark to each sentence that goes on in your head and let it say whatever, as if asking you for your opinion. Do these words still have a negative impact on you? If you want to achieve an even better effect, speak out loud these thoughts in your head using a voice of some funny fairy tale character. It’s guaranteed to make you smile :)
- Program yourself for a specific dream. When you get ready for sleep, start to visualize the dream you would like to have. Specify exactly what you want to see - with every detail. Think of the sounds that you want to hear in your dream and try to feel the texture of the objects and the emotions that they evoke. Continue to visualize the scenery of your dream for about 10 minutes. It is very likely that you will dream about what you have just programmed.
- When you are about to make a difficult decision or look for a solution to a specific problem, impersonate a character from a movie or a fairy tale. Think about what he or she would do in this situation? It will give you access to different points of view, thanks to which you will see a wider range of possibilities. You are likely to find the answer you were looking for, which you would not find otherwise. So, when you need to solve a problem, ask yourself what Superman would do in this situation, or Alfred Hitchcock, or Donald Duck, or Mr. Beans, or Forrest Gump. In NLP, this is called the second perceptual position, i.e. looking at the problem from someone else’s perspective. Apart from coming up with very useful solutions, it is also great fun, which is why I often talk about perceptual positions in my workshops.
- Warm up your mind. When you are about to study or engage in some other intellectual activity, take a moment first to do a few mental push ups. The idea is very simple: do some simple mathematical calculations in your head. You can, for example, add up the number 123 and repeat this calculation many times. Or multiply a given number by 3 as long as you can. At the beginning, it will be easy, later it can become quite a challenge. Continue this task for 5 minutes. During this time, if you get stuck in one calculation, you can juggle between different types of calculations. Having done such a warm-up, it will be easier for you to think and concentrate on a particular activity.
- Do you know what a hypnagogic state is? This is a state between wakefulness and sleep, the moment when you sail away to the land of dreams. Hypnagogia are images, sounds, associations and symbols that emerge in your mind in this state, randomly, not connected in a logical sense. Apparently, some inventors used this phenomenon to boost their creativity. There is actually a way to see what interesting things run through your mind when you are falling asleep. As you go to bed (preferably feeling beat), lay down on your back. Raise one forearm, so that it is perpendicular to the bed. Only the part extending from the elbow to the hand should be lifted, the rest of the arm should lie on the bed. Let yourself fall asleep lying in this position. When we fall asleep, all the muscles become slack. That is why, as soon as you fall asleep, your forearm will free fall on the bed, which will most probably wake you up and bring you back to consciousness. In this way, you will remember the content of your hypnagogia.
- Take a piece of paper and a pen and keep writing down your thoughts for 10 minutes. Word for word, recreate the exact inner dialogue. Don’t try to concentrate on anything specific during this exercise. Let your thoughts wander wherever they want. Your job is just to put it on paper. When you’re done, put away your notes, without reading them. Return to your previous activity. After an hour or so, look at them again and read everything you had written down. You will be astonished by the level of chaos that prevails in your mind. Thanks to this exercise, you will be more aware of how your thoughts pop up in your head when you don’t control them.
- When you are about to meet with a friend or an acquaintance, try to imagine, just before the meeting, that you have not seen him or her for a very long time. Convince your mind that this is your first meeting after many many years and that you simply cannot wait to find out what's been going on in that person’s life. This trick will put you in a great emotional state and trigger behaviours that will define the whole meeting. The person you meet with will also feel great as he or she sees how excited and interested you are in his or her life and consequently there will be an explosion of positive energy between the two of you.
- When you are listening to your favorite music, try closing your eyes. Turning off the sense of sight will sharpen your hearing. In this way, the reception of music will be much more intense, just as the pleasure of listening. You can try out this trick also while having a meal. In this case, you will sharpen the sense of taste and treat yourself with a totally distinctive experience.
And how do you like these mental gymnastics? Let me know in the comments which trick you are most fond of!