The physical brain is the most complex and amazing organ in the human body. It does all kinds of amazing things for you, like regulating your breathing, maintaining your bodily functions, and generally – keeping you alive. Your mind, however, does things to you – like keeping you stuck! The reason for this is simple – you don’t know how it works. Just like with investing, relationships, money or business, if you don’t know how things work – it will likely get you into trouble. At the very least you will be learning things the hard way! If you have made the choice to become wealthy, you have to know more about how your mind works – logically, physically and biologically. Understanding how your mind works will allow you to use your mind to serve you, instead of you serving it.

To start, let’s look at the difference between your brain and your mind: Your brain is the organ, like your liver, heart or lungs. It is the physical organ that rests inside the skeleton of your head. It does what it does because it was built to perform a biological function. Just like your heart was designed to pump blood, your brain was built to handle thought. But your brain is just that – an organ.

Your mind however, is associated primarily with the handling of thoughts and memory. Not to say that the brain is simple, but the mind – in comparison to the brain, is the process of thinking, storing, reasoning, evaluating, filtering, organising, learning and mentally growing – and is far more complex. Yet, there are simple analogies we can look at to make the working of your mind much more understandable.

If we were to say that your mind is like a television without an off-switch, it would make perfect sense – right? It is always busy. It never sleeps. It is always processing, even when you are asleep. It has a billion channels and scans all of them and switches amongst these channel at will. What most people don’t know is that you can change the channel. In other words, you can instruct your mind to stop scanning/processing, and switch to a specific channel, and stay there. Not for long, but long enough to help you. How do you do this? Simple: You can either just think about something specific, or say something specific. Your mind will for a moment go off from auto-pilot and “give” you partial control. (If you are looking for specific thoughts to practice on, please read 101 Questions everyone should ask.)

However, this is where most people stop. The mind is capable of processing so many instructions per second that it briefly goes off auto-pilot, presents an answer from its storage and then continues, back onto auto-pilot. If you would like to change the channel, and keep it there, you will have to learn how to keep your mind off of autopilot for longer. This is not something you try today and tomorrow it is working flawlessly. No, this will take time to train. In the upcoming article How you should work your mind, we will cover this in more detail.

Speaking of auto-pilot, your mind works like a plane. It is in the air, flying, and it is both controlling and guiding itself. It is on auto-pilot. It does what it does and up till now, has never really needed or asked for your help. But here is the secret: With training you can take over control of the plane and the flight path anytime you want to. How do you do this? Simple: You can either just think about something specific, or say something specific. Again, this takes practice to master and will be covered in the upcoming article How you should work your mind.

Another way to think about how your mind works, logically, is like a garden. If you plant good seeds, it will grow good seeds. If you plant bad seeds, it will grow bad seeds. And if you plant nothing – it will grow whatever it wants. The reason most people do not become wealthy is they are in the second or third category. They either planted the wrong seeds (thoughts or words), or they did nothing at all, and their mind did whatever it wanted to. So how do you change this? Simple: You can either allow your mind to ponder specific thoughts, or allow yourself to use only specific words – and accordingly, only speak in a specific way. Again, this takes practice to master and will be covered in the upcoming article How you should work your mind.

Your mind operates on being right. Internally your mind accepts and stores everything as facts or truth – whether the facts are actually true or not. This is extremely important to understand as it directly affects your beliefs or what you assume to be true. When you as much as think “I will never be wealthy” your mind stores that as true, and will ensure that all the actions you take, the choices you make and the way you communicate supports this ‘truth’. In the next section on how you should work your mind you will simply change what your mind perceives as truth.

Your mind is pre-programmed to either gain pleasure, or avoid pain. Essentially, with all decisions that you make, your mind does a quick self-check to see if this behaviour will gain it pleasure or help it to avoid something painful. And, if it had to choose, it would rather avoid pain than gain pleasure. As an example, when you say: “I would like to become wealthy,” your mind can visualise the pleasure of being wealthy and living free – the pleasure. However, it can also anticipate that you would need to work extra hard, save religiously and skimp on some luxuries that you are enjoying right now. It can see that you may have to go to the movies less often; eat out less often; buy less of the things that you “feel” that you “need.” Your mind associates this with pain, and thus stops or blocks you from doing what needs to be done. It does this because it would rather avoid pain than gain pleasure – and more often than not, this is what keeps you stuck. This simple principle is keeping you from making financial progress. Can this be fixed? Absolutely! In the section on How you should work your mind, we will cover this in detail.

Another important component of how your mind works logically is that it requires a reason – always. If you don’t have an answer to the “why” I should do this, your mind does a self-check and comes up with a “good enough” reason why you should say, think or do anything; or, why you shouldn’t say, think or do anything. This self-check is performed against your current beliefs and values. Remember that what you believe is what you deem possible or doable. If you believe that whatever you want to do is not possible, your mind will block you from performing any further action or thought. Also remember that what you value is what you deem to be important. If what you want to do is not stored as “important”, your mind will also block you from taking any further action or dedicate any further helpful thoughts. That is why you will need to revisit your values and beliefs in order to make any further progress. In the section on How you should work your mind, we will cover this in detail.

And then finally, the one we know and have heard a thousand times: Your mind is like a muscle. It grows with mental exercise. It becomes stronger, processes better and physically creates more connections when you give it “food for thought,” a challenge or a specific problem as often as you can. In the section on How you should work your mind, we will cover this in detail.

In summary, how your mind works logically is quite simple. It has specific ways in which it processes most information.

How your mind works – logically:

1. Like a television – and you can change the channel.
2. Like a garden – growing seeds, but you can choose what to plant.
3. Like a plane – on autopilot, but you can take control.
4. Like a muscle – and you can make it grow.
5. Wants to gain pleasure.
6. Wants to avoid pain (more).
7. Always checks your values and beliefs
8. Always requires a reason
9. Always right.

Knowing how your mind works will allow you to start utilising its amazing power and get it to be more of a servant to you. Once your mind becomes your servant it will greatly assist you in creating the life you have always wanted. Your mind can help you to create wealth! In the next sections we will cover how your mind works physically and biologically so that you will have even more tools to harness the awesome power of your mind!

What you can do:

– Read this article again so that you understand how your mind works – logically.
– Spend more time on creating your values. You have to know what is important to you.
– Challenge everything you believe. Beliefs are just assumptions – you can change them.
– Join The Secrets to Wealth on Facebook – we learn new things each day.
– Follow me on Twitter – you will see when I have posted something new.
– Subscribe to this blog – you will be emailed new articles as they come out.
– Article by Christo van Zyl
– Write a comment below if this helped you. I appreciate and evaluate all feedback.