Essay-Set #6: Focus on Your Creative Success Strategy

THE SELF-LIBERATION PHILOSOPHY
Asserting your right to be happy and successful Every Day!
Self-Creation + Self-Esteem + Self-Actualization = Self-Liberation

Essay-Set #6: FOCUS ON YOUR CREATIVE SUCCESS STRATEGY

6.1: YOU CAN MAXIMIZE YOUR SUCCESS BY CONTROLLING
YOUR FEELINGS WITH CREATIVE THINKING:

When you realize that you can stop procrastinating and learn to control your own emotional feelings, which are caused by your hormones and thoughts, by using your "self-talk" skills, then you will be able to understand how important it is for you to take responsibility for your own "Brainpower Mindset." In short, when you learn to control your own feelings at the brain tissue level of existence, then you will be able to take responsibility for your SELF.

When you do this, you will have mastered the art and science of "self-control." You can then go forward to successfully accomplish your greatest goals because you will be "self-empowered" to actually control your own destiny with the help of your social network. Your "social network" of friends and relatives is the group of individuals whom you choose to relate to or bond with! It is your courageous assertion that you have the right and responsibility to spend time with the individual people who you believe will contribute most to your health and happiness and long-term success! It is a positive constructive attitude that transcends blood kinship relationships and gives you the power to choose people who share your goals and values.

A basic assumption of modern evolutionary psychology and sociology is that your "thoughts" can and should control your "feelings" even though it is a big challenge to overcome unconscious cultural pressures to make you conform to the social expectations of the people with whom you grew up with or with whom you live now. This website promotes the fundamental assumption that the best rational solution for creating continuous authentic happiness and lasting satisfaction is to understand the factual scientific ideas contained in the self-liberation process. The creative process is to use the new factual brain ideas and happiness facts of life to create a rational basis for giving meaning to your life and selecting personal goals to achieve or fulfill.

Your feelings, which are learned just as much as your thoughts are, can support your rational creative mind to think "outside the box" of our status quo global consumerism culture. Your feelings can be a cage that can hurt you by confining and limiting and distorting your brain's thinking and feeling processes. Or they can free you to think for yourself in the context of your most significant relationships with others!

The "self-liberation" strategy can help you survive and even thrive in the continuously evolving biologically and sociologically diverse environments we all share in our emerging "global culture" on planet Earth. You can even learn how to think "inside the box" in a more efficient way that can provide more effective solutions to your existential problems of daily life.

Healthy feelings can result when your brain is freed from the ignorance and prejudices and stereotypes that may result from past distressful living conditions. But you will need to learn how to control and manage both the inner conditions, caused by your own "self-imposed limitations," and the outer conditions, caused by the "global culture" of business or consumerism, if you are to realize your full potential for self-understanding and acceptance. You are automatically a "culture carrier" just by being born into an advanced human society with incredible scientific and technical tools for survival and pleasure. However, now you can choose what parts of our mass global culture lifestyles that you want to carry!

To use a metaphor from agriculture, if you want to "sow seeds" of success, it is helpful to review the ideas of Denis Waitley, who is one of the most famous motivational writers of the past 50 years:

Book Source:
Seeds of Greatness

Book Source:
Crucial Conversations

Book Source:
Crucial Confrontations

You will also need to open your mind in order to realign your feelings with research-based ideas and your own perceptions about the objective reality "outside" your brain and body that you can see, touch, and hear. In order for you to fully understand what the objective reality "inside" your brain and body is truly like, you will need to understand the emotional filtering process and the functions of several parts of your brain, notably your brain's "limbic system."

You will either develop an "open" or a "closed" mind depending upon how well you have mastered the ideas and attitudes expressed in the new brain science and the degree to which you understand how you perceive what is inside your body. These ideas can be evaluated along a continuum of relative differences rather than a strict dichotomy of exact opposite mutually contradictory abstract ethical differences.

6.2: YOU CAN CHOOSE REASON-BASED SCIENTIFIC REALITY
AND BANISH FAITH-BASED MAGICAL THINKING

With the new Evolutionary Brainpower Mindset as a motivational and ethical foundation for your success, you can become a "lifelong learner" with a zealous desire to learn exactly how your brain works so that you will get the most out of your life. For example, one crucially important factual idea is that it is not your "heart" that makes you happy or sad or loving or lonely, but rather it is your "brain." This essential idea has taken more than 15,000 years of "civilized living conditions" for humans on planet Earth. It is a practical life-affirming and life-saving way to confront the future.

In truth, the rhythm and intensity of your heartbeat responds to your thoughts as well as unconscious anatomical and physiological controls. If you have a healthy brain and the latest scientific knowledge about how your brain really works, you will be able to understand the true purpose of your heart, which is to pump blood throughout your body but particularly to your brain.

The word "heart" has been one of the favorite symbols for centuries to mean love and sweetness, especially on Valentine's Day. However, the word's use in describing a major blood pumping organ is the factual definition, that the heart is the largest muscle in your body, which pumps blood essential for the healthy operation of your brain and body. This true scientific meaning of the word "heart" as the physical pump that makes brainpower possible is often ignored and taken for granted. Instead, it should always be thought of as an important bodily organ essential for survival.

However, the metaphorical use of the word "heart" can still be understood to express love and romance since it is ingrained in our language and culture. Yet it must now be understood to be only a shorthand expression for far more complex biological and psychological emotional ideas and behavior.

The key to understanding how you must learn to use language properly is the awareness that words can be used as indicators of real "objective things" or they can be used as metaphors to express "subjective feelings," which may or may not accurately describe reality and help you to achieve your goal of being satisfied or happy.

However, if you don't make the conscious decision to commit yourself to learn the new brain facts, you will be at risk of being awash in a sea of conflicting opinions, which can cause you to develop self-destructive habits and addictions. By controlling the excess stress in your life caused by the media-centered and consumer-oriented global economic culture, you will be able to live better in the present and make easier plans to solve your problems.

6.3. YOU CAN CHOOSE TO THINK WITH SCIENCE-BASED FACTS
AND BANISH FAITH-BASED DELUSIONS FROM YOUR BRAIN'S MEMORY

If you seek the "magic rings," which were the subject of the quest in the popular three-film series Lord of the Rings that was inspired by the British writer JRR Tolkien's books, you will find that there are no magic rings that can save you. Instead, your greatest treasure is your brainpower and your evolving brainpower mindset -- no matter who you are or who you want to become!

Symbolically, the "Lord" is "you" and the "magic rings" are your new Brainpower Mindset" in combination with the five Smart Skill-Sets, if and when you have conscious control of all your thoughts and feelings

Instead of constantly seeking some unknown hypothetical invisible "magic rings," it would be better for you to learn about the magnificent career path of the world famous award winning director of The Lord of the Rings movies, Peter Jackson, who is the person responsible for adapting the books for the film series. Jackson's career began early in childhood as a self-taught kid from Wellington, New Zealand. His parents gave him a Christmas gift of a Super 8 camera at the age of nine that inspired him to imagine that he wanted to be a professional film maker for the rest of his life.

That gift of a camera when Jackson was young gave him the creative spark to practice the essential career skills as a youth related to film so he could become a great movie-maker in his adult life. He has pioneered and exploited new techniques of using computerized film graphics to make movies more exciting and cost less to produce. Jackson has created many other popular films besides the exciting Lord of the Rings film series.

However, Jackson is a better example or ethical role-model for you --- with regard to his personal values and the great respect that his actors feel for him on the movie set --- than the warrior-heros in the three films. Jackson's personal and career successes both demonstrate the importance of the objective core values cited as best examples in the educational Self-Liberation Keyword Categories that elaborate on the universally acknowledged Golden Rule.

The positive core values sharply contrast with the overwhelming violence depicted in the books by Tolkien and the films by Jackson. The horrible war scenes are based on Tolkien's memories of the sheer violence and the destruction he saw first-hand during World War II in Europe. Luckily, however, you do not have to fight any computer-generated giant monsters to achieve your most significant treasure in life, namely, happiness!

6.4. YOU CAN MAXIMIZE YOUR SELF-CONTROL SKILLS
BY USING A RATIONAL PLANNING PROCESS TO CONTROL YOUR ANTS

You have to fight your Automatic Negative Thoughts or "ANTs" in order to banish them from your brain's memory resources. Your ANTs became a part of your brain's memory after traumatic experiences such as bad parenting, bad teaching, bad friends, bad movies, or bad advertisements. Those past personal events distorted your perception of an ethically-oriented or principle-centered wholesome reality. Then you consciously suppressed or unconsciously repressed the bad memories in order to feel better about your "SELF." The word "bad" in this context means unethical and dangerous ideas from those cultural sources that lead to self-destructive habits that you may have unwittingly and wrongly stored in your brain's long-term memory resources.

Always remember that the ANTs are not really "YOU" even though they can confuse you about the true nature of your SELF!

Your ANTs are your learned self-destructive negative thoughts and habits. They must be willfully liquidated from your memory, which you can do if you deal with them in the right way. By trusting in the new factual ideas about how your amazing brain works and in the "best practices" educational approach to self-liberation and self-leadership in modern business and education, you can become a successful very happy person by creating your own adaptive independent lifestyle of choices and decisions.

You can achieve "self-control" by learning to use the Self-Control Motivational Skills. You can use them to plan ahead to analyze the difference between your genuine factual needs and your fictional fantasy wishes. You have the personal power to "focus" on your real needs and your truly achievable goals. It is simply a sophisticated brain-centered combination of successful time-management and stress-management strategies to achieve continuous little successes that lead to big successes in life. The strategies are all associated with definable principles.

The problem of being alive at the beginning of the 21st century is that your brain and five senses are being assaulted every minute by a complex communication network aimed at your brain, nervous system and five senses in order to sell you something day or night. Because of the global consumerism culture influencing you everyday of your life, you are constantly being exposed to commercials 24/7 from birth onward tempt you to focus on distorted explanations of true success.

The intrusive advertising machine that generates the global consumerism culture can either bring you temporary pleasures or it can cause you to develop lasting self-destructive habits called "addictions" that can be harmful and even fatal. The sales pitches, disguised as friendly and helpful advice, can lead you either to beneficial products or they can produce the following disorders.

The self-defeating and often painful disorders include overeating, smoking, alcoholism, the abuse of drugs or the overuse of prescription drugs, the abuse of gambling, the abuse of shopping, sexual abuse, or various degrees of depression. The disorders and their accompanying disease symptoms can be caused by a combination of ignorance and/or unwillingness to apply the new brain facts within the dynamic creative interactive context self-knowledge and self-leadership concepts.

Since the commercial sales propaganda can cause you to develop excessive distress and dangerous phobic reactions, they can cause the loss of your brainpower and even contribute to your premature death. In contrast to that bleak possibility, the Self-Liberation Philosophy provides a plan and strategic method for you to survive and thrive in the face of the self-destructive aspects of the global consumer culture.

It is based on the assumption that through lifelong self-directed continuous education, you can confront the ubiquitous unscientific fictitious explanations of reality that surround you night and day and erase them from your consciousness and long-term memory resources by thoughtful self-analysis that can lead to self-control.

The factual scientific ideas of the Broadband Brainpower Mindset can influence your basic survival skills, such as thinking skills, memory skills, self-talk skills, motivation skills, mindmapping skills, and goal-achieving skills. The five Smart Skill-Sets are essential for developing a strong positive life-enhancing "attitude of gratitude" for your existence and the almost unlimited possibilities and opportunities in the future:

Go to skill-set #3:
Your Smart Self-Control Motivational Skills

A fundamental assumption of this website is that excessive distress can cause you to have disabling and even medical disorders that can cause premature illness and even death. But by understanding how brainpower knowledge gives your thoughts control over your feelings, you can guide yourself to success by mastering the essential "self-control" motivational skills required to achieve success.

Being stuck in the treadmill of excessive consumerism, which dominates the lives of countless millions of people world-wide from birth to death, and which can destroy your willingness to grow and change. Modern brain research has irrefutably proven that a primary cause of your success or failure is your hopeful attitude toward lifelong learning. You can perform at high ethical standards of conduct and experience maximum happiness as you reach your most important lifetime goals, just like any other successful person, if you plan your life well and remove your culturally derived but self-imposed emotional barriers to learning.

Your worst enemy may be your learned negative feelings which cause your "learned helplessness" or learned attitude of social victimization. Ignorance and fear and self-doubt and shyness and anger and self-pity, are all negative emotions that can be obstacles and cause procrastination and apathy and ultimately depression or loss of willpower. These negative emotions are usually experienced as fear-provoked low self-esteem. They can block your self-confidence and assertiveness. If they become habitual, they can become self-destructive Automatic Negative Thoughts or ANTs. They can interfere with your ability to reason and your intuition.

A disabled brain dwells on fatal delusions. In the face of almost overwhelming pressures to conform to the all encompassing global consumer culture, why not choose to enable your brain to boost your own natural recovery potential and utilize the placebo effect to impact your life in a positive way?

6.5 YOU CAN MAXIMIZE YOUR SELF-TALK SKILLS BY USING
MINDMAP DIAGRAMS TO VISUALIZE FACTS AND IDEAS

The Self-Liberation Philosophy emphasizes the assumption that you are responsible to learn the new factual scientific ideas about how your brain works. The easiest way to do that is to use your amazing brainpower to systematically talk to yourself and thus empower yourself. This wonderful ability that you have to correct your memories is an extremely important survival skill.

You can apply the "self-talk" solution in a systematic way to clarify and change your personal values and to create new goals and plans for achieving them. You can start by having an creative dialogue with yourself, using the "self-talk" communication skills described at the following link:

Go to skill-set #4:
Your Smart Self-Talk Communication Skills

Your Self-Talk Communication Skills depend upon your competency in the other four skill-sets, especially your thinking and memory skills. In addition, you can begin by asking yourself basic philosophical questions and documenting your answers with "mindmaps" diagrams, especially your "self-map." This activity of self-study can stimulate your brain to not only survive but to thrive in the future as you determine your goals and create plans to accomplish them.

Whether you are aware of every detail or not, you do have a lot of self-control over your brain's view of your self and your mind, as well as your culture and nature through politics. If you rely solely on a stream of consciousness approach to life where you merely enjoy one pleasure after another, without understanding WHY you feel and think the way that you do, then you cannot motivate yourself to achieve the necessary skills and knowledge that you need to protect yourself and your loved ones from bad decisions and bad luck.

You can be as successful as you want to be, and as quickly as you want, if you first understand that you must consciously distinguish between your true "needs" as a human animal and your "wishes" since wishes are not based on knowledge and skills. But you can learn how to analyze and determine your genuine needs by following the advice on this website, which gives you an objective understanding of your personal values.

To summarize, your goals and decisions are an expression of your personal values which are, in turn, based upon your genuine healthy universal needs for physical pleasure and social recognition.

Thus, true Self-Liberation can only happen when you learn to trust the new "brain science facts" and the "best practices" approach to leadership training. In short, you must take full responsibility to train your brain to appreciate the new Brainpower Mindset and the necessity of creating a Mindful Brainpower Mindset for your own unique lifestyle.

The new "positive psychology", which is based on trust in scientific ideas about how your brain works and how it evolved to get to be so wonderful, with its infinite opportunities and possibilities, can give you predictably control over your own thoughts and feelings and behavior through rational moral values and philosophical assumptions that translate into powerful sensible ethical choices.

The true value of your life in the future will depend on the scientific knowledge you choose to translate into practical common-sense Brainpower Knowledge and you choose to apply to the lifelong process of progressive self-empowerment by achieving your own most significant goals --- one goal at a time.

However, if you ignore the factual lessons of history, historically relevant ideas that you can analyze and appreciate, you may be deluding yourself about your own true abilities to be successful at the human level. If you rely too much on unscientific "faith-based" religious or spiritual beliefs about the meaning of life, without considering the impact of the discoveries and inventions of modern science, you will be confusing your SELF to the point of ignoring the new scientific evidence about how your brain perceives reality.

The mysteries of ancient life can now be interpreted clearly and comprehended within the genuine life-sustaining life-promoting rational secular humanistic ethical viewpoint of the significance of nature and the awesomeness of the universe. If you are questioning the gap between "reason-based" and "faith-based" beliefs and values and assumptions about the meaning of human life, a good perspective for dialogue is contained in the book Speaking of Faith by Krista Tippett, which is outlined at the following link:

Book Source:
Speaking of Faith

If you still believe in religious "faith-based" beliefs instead of scientific "reason-based" facts, then you may be part of the "problem" of human existence rather than part of the "solution." The human predicament as defined on this website is to extricate your phenomenal SELF with its amazing brainpower from: (1) ignorance of science history, (2) cultural prejudices, (3) superstitious ideas, and/or (4) chemical addictions. Unfortunately, these disorders overlap and require special interventions.

You may be hurting yourself more by believing in false ideas or superstitious ideas or prejudicial attitudes, or all of those pseudo-scientific distorted ways of thinking, than you would by learning to cope with the pains and uncertainties of real life situations through the "conscious awareness" of true reality. You may be sabotaging your chances for a lifetime of happiness and satisfaction and successful achievements rather than enhancing them because you are still perpetuating self-destructive behavior instead of liberating yourself from the ignorance, prejudices, superstitions, and/or chemical addictions.

This bold assertion is a reminder that if you have been ignorant of the scientific method or blinded by religious beliefs, cultural prejudices, superstitious fallacies, or are brain-damaged due to addictive drug abuse, then you may be more depressed than you would if you liberated yourself. The hundreds of "quick links" on this website repeatedly demonstrate that the interconnections between your emotions and your physical well-being can be managed by better thinking. By learning to manage your body's responses to the many excessively distressing negative cultural pressures that you face daily, you can thrive as you adapt to the many changes of modern life.

The following book outline provides excellent advice on how to understand and cope with excessive stress that can distort your thoughts and feelings, which can inevitably lead to many kinds of illnesses and depressions:

Book Source:
Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers?

An emotional crisis can cause harmful physical changes in your body, if it is prolonged or set in motion too often. The resulting wear and tear can cause all kinds of health problems including indigestion, cardiovascular, sexual, reproductive and sleep disorders as well as many other illnesses.

Also the dynamics of these "psycho-somatic" illnesses and disorders and the ways you can resolve them --- if you are informed enough or have the right coaching or counseling --- are described in detail in the book, Psycho-Cybernetics 2000,that is outlined at the following link:

Book Source:
Psycho-Cybernetics 2000

The "Psycho-Cybernetics Theory" is based upon the real experiences of thousands of victims of facial disfigurement who had to learn a new way to think about themselves after severe accidents or diseases damaged their faces and their "self-esteem." Sommers, who is an internationally respected speaker and trainer, advocates the use of specific thinking and writing exercises done in a systematic way in order to change old habits and gain new self-confidence. She has organized many practical techniques for helping people create personal success plans and achieve goal-oriented results. These ideas, and the ones in the following book links, provide excellent positive strategies for achieving the essential liberating vision that you need to guide you along the trail of self-liberation and authentic happiness and lasting satisfaction.

In addition, the new brain research combined with the new findings of relationship psychology has produced new knowledge about how your brainpower can either strengthen or weaken your immune system and, therefore, your overall health and ultimate achievements in life. This new scientific knowledge is being studied and applied by doctors and therapists in the field called "psycho-neuro-immunology." It is proving that the traditional Western dualism concerning the separation of your mind and body due to religious values is erroneous and potentially very dangerous in a global context.

The behavioral biologist, Paul Martin, has developed comprehensive arguments demonstrating that your mind and body are inextricably linked regarding health. He has explained how your physical health affects your mind and, therefore, your thoughts, emotions, and behavior. He also has explained how your MIND, which includes both your left and right hemispheres, meaning your thoughts and your emotions, respectively, can be influenced by your conscious self-awareness or SELF. You are totally responsible for all your behavior including the "hidden" unconscious behavior that you may not of understood until you learned the about the Brainpower Mindset and the Broadband Brainpower Vocabulary:

Book Source:
The Healing Mind

Martin uses examples from medical research as well as classic literary novels to illustrate the links, which have been accurately observed for centuries, between psychological factors and disease. The illustrations help convey complex scientific ideas in a recognizable way. Many people, including some poorly trained doctors and scientists, still find it inherently easier to believe in the reality of simple-minded physical causes of disease, such as high cholesterol or excessive salt in your diet, smoking, lack of exercise, bacteria or viruses, than to accept the scientific fact that your thinking itself controls your feelings and can control your health.

By more completely understanding the essential connection of your mind and body for your brain to work, you will be better able to understand the new ideas about how your memory influences your perceptions of your SELF and also what is meant by "psychosomatic" illnesses as described in the following comments, for example:

The Healing Mind,

Martin has included the following significant quote to indicate how important it is for every intelligent person to understand the factual ideas of modern biology, including the scientific ideas about evolution and DNA. (From P. & J. Medawar in his book, The Life of Science, 1977, as cited in the book, The Healing Mind, p277):

"For a biologist the alternative to thinking
in evolutionary terms is not to think at all!"

In short, the health of your mind influences the quality of your choices and the meaning you create during your lifetime. The book illustrates the biological and psychological connections that exist between your body and your mind. Actively taking responsibility to balance your "mind-body connections" is called "mindfullness in modern psychology and "Mindful Brainpower" on this website.

Now religious beliefs convey mythological or metaphorical or symbolic truths instead of real empirical truths about the nature of genuine things and processes, what is true reality. Ancient religious beliefs were the best explanations for many human problems until modern "science-based" answers provided discoveries and inventions that explained the real life cycles of animals and plants, in contrast to mythical or fictitious "faith-based" or spiritual imaginings of ancient humans.

At worst, the old religious dogmas and doctrines can stop healthy normal thought processes and memory processes in the human brain. Rational humanistic counseling principles called Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy were developed by Albert Ellis to provide a scientific basis for understanding human nature:

Book Source:
The Road to Tolerance

They challenge the old sacred, magical, mythical, metaphorical religious interpretations of reality by providing intelligent explanations for human behavior and how individuals can change. How much do you know about the 15,000 years of genuine human history?

You may need to understand and use the Native-American idea of "radical Hope" in a time of great technological and cultural changes, similar to what the Great Crow Chief, Plenty Coups, enunciated more than one hundred years ago:

Book Source:
Radical Hope ---
Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation

One way to check your knowledge of human history is to look at the high points of human invention by first reviewing the following chronological summary of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World:

Human History Chronology

6.6. THE SELF-LIBERATION KIT (WORKBOOK AND CD-ROM COMBO)

The Self-Liberation Kit will contain a CD-ROM with an annotated bibliography for this website. This information is based upon the latest verifiable brain science facts and ideas developed and explained by hundreds of world-class scientists, writers, and teachers, whose arguments and conclusions have been published in books based on thousands of research studies.

By keeping your immune system strong and healthy, you will be better able to cope with the changes in your life, especially those that create new stresses. In addition, by choosing to use the Broadband Brainpower Mindset Categories to structure your learning progress, you will be able to focus on powerful positive perceptions of your SELF.

Whenever you schedule your discretionary "free time" to visit the links on this website, you can immerse your awesome infinitely adaptable brainpower in order to empower your SELF with accurate up-to-date inspiring information about the new factual brain ideas. They will support your own natural curiosity and optimism and they will help you create more satisfying successful feelings no matter what you choose to achieve during your lifetime!

Please send email to ---
flyingeagle@earthlink.net

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