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How can we continue to grow when we feel stale? This is a question all successful people ask themselves at various points in their lives.

How can we stay fresh in energy, thoughts and emotions? There’s no right or wrong answer. Just strategies used by those who have figured a little something out.

I’m reading a great book right now called Brain Rules, I’m not finished yet because my 18 year old son Brando (cool name) keeps grabbing it.

Like most things when you’re excited about something you tell others and they often get excited. Well, this book has brought about some great dinner conversations.

Some stuff like, “All brains learn differently” that we probably knew inherently from kindergarten but somehow forgot along the way. Well, at least most of my teachers seemed to have forgotten.

All brains are different and hold memories and functions like languages in different areas of the brain. Those that are tri-lingual like Brando (Dutch-German English) could possibly be housing each language in a separate part of the brain. He’s not too excited about allowing me to check though?

As well the brain loves variety and exercise. Sounds simple and is. Whenever something out of the ordinary happens our brains wake up and take notice. This function has saved our ancestors lives on many occassions and is hardwired in all of us. When we exercise our blood gets flowing and delivers more nutrients to the brain which are gobbled up. (literally, food for thoughts)

There’s also massive space available for (no thinking) the ol’… we only use 10% of our intelligence. I’ve often thought that in the physical world if we don’t “use it – we lose it,” therefore we must be using it for something. In some ways my theory must be true. We’re just not using consciously those parts of the brain that neurologists are studying. Much like the universe which is roughly 68% Dark Energy, 27% Dark matter and only 5% normal matter (The parts we can see).

It’s been discovered and proved that our thinking gets stuck into ruts and when this happens we’re bypassing massive amounts of super – computer resources when we don’t push our brain muscle to learn new things. And lucky us this gets worse as we age. Have you ever known someone to be thick headed and stuck in their ways? See, I told you we knew this stuff in kindergarten.

For this reason, Meditation has proven to be vital in maintaining a healthy functioning brain. Learning to tap into this void of nothingness (no-thinking, which is virtually impossible) Lets just say no measurement is well worth the effort. If we can loosen the grip of measuring, comparing and have some moments of blissful floating thoughts each day then we’ve got a fighting chance of survival.

It’s best to meditate in the morning before we tackle our day and in the evening before we fall asleep. You’d be amazed how much fresher you feel each morning and how much more effective at problem solving you are during the day.

I can remember when I became a father for the first time. I was living in London and was responsible for 100 businesses in 11 countries. I was constantly travelling, running meetings, conference calls, seminars and all the daily interruptions that go with running a sales organization.

I started my first meeting every morning in my office at 7:00am and the day usually went until 9:00pm (on a good day). Saturdays were a bit more relaxed and Sundays were normally free unless I was travelling.

Needless to say I eventually felt a quite overwhelmed. It didn’t matter how much my business was growing or how much money I was making. I just felt I was missing out on other aspects of a good life and I mostly that I didn’t have any time left for myself. I decided I needed to make a change and if I didn’t do something fast that I might be risking my health (heading for burnout or worse).

My changes were small but they ended up having a huge impact on my life. I felt more in control and that gave me the blissful feeling of freedom which allowed me to relinquish some control over my personal built up universe.

1. I started getting up at 5:00am which gave me time for myself. I would make a cup of tea and just sit in silence for 30 minutes. I would allow my thoughts to come and float away. I would simply concentrate on my breath and just slow down and “be”.
2. The next big change was reading, reading and more reading. No longer were magazines interesting for me. I started reading thoughts of the masters both old and new. Everything from Deepak Chopra to Anthony Robbins and Andrew Matthews as well as some great thinkers like J. Krishnamurti to Anthony De Mello.
3. Lastly I exercised. I allowed myself the time to go to the gym and get my blood pumping every other day.

These small changes gave me a limitless amount of ideas, energy and freshness that allowed me to move to the next level of my life.

•  A husband,
• An Entrepreneur
• A self-made millionaire
• A Daddy, Father, Papa.

These small things have served me well and I encourage you all to try it out for size. Who knows you might like it and I know you’ll never be the same again.

And these are the Brain Rules