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elib.tech Exclusive… sharing elsewhere will result in being banned!Class OverviewCan you change your brain to bring more ease to your life? Absolutely! You can take charge of your cognitive health and this class will give you useful tools to begin right away. (Check out the Top 10 Big Ideas from the class below!)Your ProfessorDr. Eric Maisel is the author of 40+ books and is one of the world’s leading creativity coaches. His interests include the creative life, creativity coaching, and natural psychology, the new psychology of meaning.How to Improve Your Cognitive HealthYou make a tremendous amount of your own suffering by not taking active charge of your cognitive health. Unlike so much of life, this is something you can control. Well, at the very least greatly influence . Maybe you can’t always think thoughts that really serve you but you can learn how to do that most of the time! And no learning is more important. Let’s look at how you can do this!The Top 10 Big Ideas1. Get a Grip on Your MindYou are in charge of what you think. You do this by really listening to what you say to yourself, by disputing those thoughts that don’t serve you, and by thinking thoughts that do serve you. This three-step process is key to your cognitive health and easy both to understand and to do—but only if you really commit to working on it every day! 2. Be Brave About StoppingIf you race through life, you have little chance of getting a grip on your mind. But stopping long enough to really listen to your thoughts, dispute them, and substitute more useful thoughts can feel scary. Be brave and stop! Stopping is an opportunity to finally hear what you’re saying to yourself and really deal with thoughts that aren’t useful. 3. Only Think Thoughts That Serve YouWhy think a thought that isn’t serving you? Why think that you aren’t capable, talented, lovable, or worthy? How can it possibly be helping you in life to be thinking “I’m ruined” or “I have no chance” or “It’s too late”? A thought that doesn’t serve you isn’t just an annoyance but an anchor that will drag you right down into your very worst feelings. 4. Don’t Accept a True Thought Just Because It’s TrueWe reflexively think that just because a thought is true we’re obliged to countenance it, consider it, and let it matter. We aren’t! If you’re a writer, you may idly think, “Wow, there are a lot of writers out there”—a perfectly true thought that doesn’t serve you to think! Don’t grant a thought any cachet just because it’s true. 5. Do Not Create Dramas and DistractionsIt is tremendously easy to turn nothing much at all into a drama and a distraction because you prefer dramas and distractions to the real work of your life. Someone slams a door—what a wonderful reason to get up from your writing! Someone sends you a rude email – what a wonderful reason not to have that hard conversation with your mate. Time to stop this! 6. Create Thought Substitutes for Your Negative Self-TalkFor each negative thought that you are accustomed to thinking, like “I have no talent” or “I’m not loveable,” create a new thought and think it! Think a thought substitute such as “I have talent!” or “I am loveable!” all day long, ceremonially thinking it first thing when you get up, before and after breakfast, and so on. Fill every silence with your good thinking! 7. Eliminate Dualistic ThinkingWe get in the habit of creating pairs of categories—process and product, discipline and spontaneity, morning person and night person, introvert and extrovert—and then deciding that one member of the pair “isn’t really us.” This unfortunate dualistic thinking badly limits our possibilities in life. It’s time to stop dualistic thinking! 8. Create an Off Switch – and Flip It!Human beings come with a racing brain and no off switch. We find it very hard to stop our worries, doubts, fears, negative self-talk, and unproductive obsessions. Since we come with no off switch, we have to create one for ourselves—and then learn how to use it. This will help you sleep better, think better, and live better! 9. Accept Emotions – But Don’t Let Them LingerWhen something negative happens in life we are bound to react emotionally—that’s natural. And these powerful emotions get in the way of our right thinking. Our goal should be to accept and not try to squash these emotions but also to make the conscious decision to move our emotions along and not let them linger. That way we can get back to right thinking sooner rather than later! 10. Get Out of Your Own WayIf you recognize the extent to which your own unproductive and negative thinking wastes your time and causes you pain, then you will have a clear picture of the extent to which you are in your own way. Cognitive health means getting a grip on your thoughts so that you can finally get out of your own way and live your life purposes. Begin that work now!