Expand Your Mind with These 12 Habits

8. Spend Some Time Doing Nothing

Rest purposefully, and give sufficient time and space for your brain to process what you just learn.

Mounting evidence suggests that regular breaks during your mental works helps increase your creativity. It will not become an obstacle to creativity. At the same time, it will not accumulate stress and tiredness.

Sometime, laziness is not a vice, but an indispensable factor for creativity. And it’s also necessary when doing creative works.

9. Spend Some Time Thinking

There is an activity that have great positive impact to you: thinking.

Spend some time doing nothing but thinking. Otherwise, it doesn’t work.

It’s not just reading other people’s point of view and then thinking. You should learn to focus, and the procedure costs you time and energy.

You need to stay alone to release yourself from the outside interference. After all, it’s natural that human brains will be attracted by all kinds of interferences.

State your thoughts, and think about them. Thinking is about asking questions on your thoughts.

For example, Tim Armstrong—CEO of AOL asked his executives to spend 10% working hours a day or 4 hours a week in thinking. Jeff Weiner—CEO of LinkedIn spend a whole 2 hours to think without interrupt.

10. Cultivate Mental Strength

Mental strength cultivation is a continuous process.

New neural pathways begin to be formed when you are learning something new. And that’s the way to improve your mental strength.

Mental strength is not only about your willpower, but also about your commitment to work and to yourself. You need to force yourself to use your brain more frequently.

The more you learn about new skills, new lessons or new thinking styles, the stronger your brain will become. Try to learn something new every week, and then go on working hard.

A real intelligent man will think of problems from different perspectives, while playing the best state.

“The test of a first-rate intelligence,” said F. Scott Fitzgerald, “is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” 

Abraham Lincoln sometimes debated with his friends from one perspective, and then, they exchanged their arguments to debate from the opposite perspective.

All in all, you should exercise your muscles of brain.

11. Cultivate Self-awareness

It’s important for a person to cultivate his/her self-awareness.

Self-awareness helps you realize what habits you have, and decide what habits you need to change.

Self-awareness helps you to recognize your own emotions and underlying feelings, which will all influence your behavior and thinking.

It offers you a way to find peace with yourself. It increases your confidence by telling you “who you are”.

Develop the habit of introspection. Pay attention to your self-awareness, when you are immersing yourself in certain emotion.

12. Compete with Yourself

Improve by 1% every day.

Pay efforts to make a little improvement every day.

Learn to exceed your own expectation, during which you will learn how to push your limits.

You may sink into mediocrity if you find everything satisfying.

As Calvin Coolidge said’ “All growth depends upon activity. There is no development physically or intellectually without effort, and effort means work.”