This is a great video.
I tried and learnt to draw cartoons so quickly. Unbelievable.
After you watch the video, ask yourself, “What other limiting beliefs are holding you back? What else can you do and don’t even know that you can?”
Get a pen and paper to draw on. Draw as you watch the video. You’ll be happy you did.
—
By STEVEN PRESSFIELD | Published: AUGUST 26, 2015
This is my favorite of all the posts we’ve ever run on this site. (Mainly because it’s not written by me.) I read it every few months just to psych myself up. It’s an article written by English concert pianist James Rhodes that appeared originally in the Guardian (UK).
Why do I love Mr. Rhodes’ story of his bold move to change his life and become an artist?
1) Because James is a late bloomer. Much as I admire child prodigies, I hate them too because they found their calling so young and with so little agony. I like to see someone suffer before they find their way.
2) James’ saga illustrates the depth of passion that such a journey requires—and the depth of madness. (Note the casual allusion to “nine months in a mental hospital.”)
3) James’ does not romanticize his life as an artist. No, he does not sail through the day whistling and grinning. And yes, the grind is still a grind. But he has gone from working for the Man to being the Man himself.
James Rhodes
Friday 26 April 2013
After the inevitable “How many hours a day do you practice?” and “Show me your hands”, the most common thing people say to me when they hear I’m a pianist is “I used to play the piano as a kid. I really regret giving it up.” I imagine authors have lost count of the number of people who have told them they “always had a book inside them”. We seem to have evolved into a society of mourned and misplaced creativity. A world where people have simply surrendered to (or been beaten into submission by) the sleepwalk of work, domesticity, mortgage repayments, junk food, junk TV, junk everything, angry ex-wives, ADHD kids and the lure of eating chicken from a bucket while emailing clients at 8pm on a weekend.
Do the math. We can function—sometimes quite brilliantly—on six hours’ sleep a night. Eight hours of work was more than good enough for centuries (oh the desperate irony that we actually work longer hours since the invention of the internet and smartphones). Four hours will amply cover picking the kids up, cleaning the flat, eating, washing and the various etceteras. We are left with six hours. 360 minutes to do whatever we want. Is what we want simply to numb out and give Simon Cowell even more money? To scroll through Twitter and Facebook looking for romance, bromance, cats, weather reports, obituaries and gossip? To get nostalgically, painfully drunk in a pub where you can’t even smoke?
What if you could know everything there is to know about playing the piano in under an hour (something the late, great Glenn Gould claimed, correctly I believe, was true)? The basics of how to practise and how to read music, the physical mechanics of finger movement and posture, all the tools necessary to actually play a piece – these can be written down and imparted like a flat-pack furniture how-to-build-it manual; it then is down to you to scream and howl and hammer nails through fingers in the hope of deciphering something unutterably alien until, if you’re very lucky, you end up with something halfway resembling the end product.
What if for a couple of hundred quid you could get an old upright on eBay delivered? And then you were told that with the right teacher and 40 minutes proper practice a day you could learn a piece you’ve always wanted to play within a few short weeks. Is that not worth exploring?
What if rather than a book club you joined a writer’s club? Where every week you had to (really had to) bring three pages of your novel, novella, screenplay and read them aloud?
What if, rather than paying £70 a month for a gym membership that delights in making you feel fat, guilty and a world away from the man your wife married you bought a few blank canvases and some paints and spent time each day painting your version of “I love you” until you realised that any woman worth keeping would jump you then and there just for that, despite your lack of a six-pack?
I didn’t play the piano for 10 years. A decade of slow death by greed working in the City, chasing something that never existed in the first place (security, self-worth, Don Draper albeit a few inches shorter and a few women fewer). And only when the pain of not doing it got greater than the imagined pain of doing it did I somehow find the balls to pursue what I really wanted and had been obsessed by since the age of seven—to be a concert pianist.
Admittedly I went a little extreme—no income for five years, six hours a day of intense practice, monthly four-day long lessons with a brilliant and psychopathic teacher in Verona, a hunger for something that was so necessary it cost me my marriage, nine months in a mental hospital, most of my dignity and about 35lbs in weight. And the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is not perhaps the Disney ending I’d envisaged as I lay in bed aged 10 listening to Horowitz devouring Rachmaninov at Carnegie Hall.
My life involves endless hours of repetitive and frustrating practising, lonely hotel rooms, dodgy pianos, aggressively bitchy reviews, isolation, confusing airline reward programmes, physiotherapy, stretches of nervous boredom (counting ceiling tiles backstage as the house slowly fills up) punctuated by short moments of extreme pressure (playing 120,000 notes from memory in the right order with the right fingers, the right sound, the right pedalling while chatting about the composers and pieces and knowing there are critics, recording devices, my mum, the ghosts of the past, all there watching), and perhaps most crushingly, the realisation that I will never, ever give the perfect recital. It can only ever, with luck, hard work and a hefty dose of self-forgiveness, be “good enough.”
Reading this on a mobile? Click here to view video
And yet. The indescribable reward of taking a bunch of ink on paper from the shelf at Chappell of Bond Street. Tubing it home, setting the score, pencil, coffee and ashtray on the piano and emerging a few days, weeks or months later able to perform something that some mad, genius, lunatic of a composer 300 years ago heard in his head while out of his mind with grief or love or syphilis. A piece of music that will always baffle the greatest minds in the world, that simply cannot be made sense of, that is still living and floating in the ether and will do so for yet more centuries to come. That is extraordinary. And I did that. I do it, to my continual astonishment, all the time.
The government is cutting music programmes in schools and slashing Arts grants as gleefully as a morbidly American kid in Baskin Robbins. So if only to stick it to the man, isn’t it worth fighting back in some small way? So write your damn book. Learn a Chopin prelude, get all Jackson Pollock with the kids, spend a few hours writing a Haiku. Do it because it counts even without the fanfare, the money, the fame and Heat photo-shoots that all our children now think they’re now entitled to because Harry Styles has done it.
Charles Bukowski, hero of angsty teenagers the world over, instructs us to “find what you love and let it kill you“. Suicide by creativity is something perhaps to aspire to in an age where more people know Katie Price better than the Emperor concerto.
theguardian.com Copyright (c) Guardian News and Media Limited. 2014 Registered in England.
If you dream of success in your exam or competition for exciting bright future, this is the most important message you’ll ever read.
I say that because you’ll discover below the 5 Dangerous Trends for Competitions and how you can get ahead of your classmates to get success of your dreams.
Let me explain the 5 dangerous trends briefly (but in sufficient detail so you fully understand the danger they pose to your success and know some solutions to keep you safe):
Over the last 30 years, the number of students joining coaching (for some of the tough competitions like CAT, IITJEE, IAS, etc) has increased 100 times, but seats have only doubled.
What does that mean for you?
It means that the competition now is 50 times more intense and difficult than it was decades ago.
And, yet most coaching institutes let the students and parents believe that “joining coaching almost guarantees success”, while the TRUTH is that ONLY 1 to 2 percent of students taking coaching get success in most tough competitions.
The direct “side-effect” of universal coaching is that students have too much study material including text books, coaching study material, one more coaching classes study material and some reference books.
Decades before, when I was preparing for IIT-JEE, it was hard to get good study material.
But now, everybody has got “too much” of average to good study material.
Unfortunately, students don’t have enough time to study, learn, remember, and master all the good coaching material they have.
Perhaps you know that our body has its own clock-the clock that tells us when to sleep and when to get up-and when to eat and when take a nap.
But, extremely tough competition in competitions and easy availability of too much study material leads to the problem that students eat at irregular hours and sleep at irregular hours.
Sleep problems can become commonplace.
Sleep deprivation can cause several problems such as constant tiredness, frustration, lack of confidence, irritability.
Strange as it may seem, there seems to be one crucial subject in each competition.
For example, Physics seems to have become the most crucial subject in IIT-JEE.
Another example, English seems to be the most crucial subject in CAT (because a lot of candidates are engineers who score very well in Maths, but tend to be weak (or very weak) in English
If you can master the subject that is crucial for your competition and do much better than other students (which is possible), then your chances of success greatly increase.
Most students don’t realize this.
Not all coaching institutes emphasize this.
So, not all students take benefit of this trend.
As you can intuitively know, this trend does not exist on its own, but it direct result of the above 4 dangerous trends.
I call this the MOST DANGEROUS TREND because it can immobilize students. It can leave students without energy or motivation to study / learn or to get success. It can lead to many problems.
Fortunately, not all students suffer from this.
But, if you think you suffer from this, please change your diet (eat raw food), take vitamins, exercise, learn online “Dr Saul Niacin Depression” to find out how vitamin B3 can help you without side effects (as opposed to the psychiatric drugs which have serious side effects).
Wishing you success,
Raj Bapna
Discover secrets in this TEDx video.
After you watch the video, share it.
Then read the article just below to understand the 5 Dangerous Trends in Competitions which cause potential problems all students face and what you can do to about them. This will help you get bigger success.
I have created a short video (only 3:44 minutes) for you.
Watch it now and leave a reply below:
Check this out for motivation: http://www.mindpowerindia.com/motivation.php
Do you know that there are many who run the race towards their goals, but with their hands tied behind their backs (by their own choice)?
Wonder why anyone would be so crazy to not to use their power of choice and untie their hands and run to 100% of their capability?
You know, so many students do the same regarding their competitive exams.
They work hard.
They join coaching.
But, they don’t use the study techniques and they don’t learn simple techniques to use more of their mind power and achieve maximum in the limited time all of us have available.
I hope you are not in that group.
Internet has changed our world and even our minds.
It’s harder to concentrate for long periods, you’re quicker at scanning, and you feel rushed (in a hurry).
The old methods of using too much course material no longer works. Here is a method perfectly suited for the Internet age.
Get the best course material or notes and learn from the best teachers you can find.
Join a good school/college and join a good coaching for this purpose.
Plan how you can get use the maximum from the available time.
Learn each topic for the first time – you may do this in a classroom or by self study. Focus on conceptual understanding. For some subjects, this also requires solving numerical or mathematical problems.
Practice what you learn a few times to deepen your understanding, so that you really become confident in each topic.
As you know, through the ages, people have remembered Gita, Mahabharat, Koran, Bible by repeated reading/hearing them.
I tell my students, “revision or repetition is the mother of memory.”
You have to regularly revise what you learnt days, weeks, and months before. That is the only way to remember and be able to write in the exams to get the maximum marks/rank you deserve.
Have separate revision plans for working days and for weekends and holidays.
Here is the secret: Get the best tools and techniques, so you can use your mind power, your talent, your abilities, and your time for your maximum benefit.
I have helped tens of thousands of students just like you to be more effective in their studies and get more success.
And, I want to help you. I recommend these for you because they will maximize your success:
(1) Use Mind Power Exam Maximizer : You learn Topper’s Secrets of How to Study for Your Success in tough exams. Our Ruby package comes with 3 books and 4 free CDs.
(2) Use Super IQ 7 Mind Machine (Electronic CPU + Mind Glasses + Programs)
Helps You to Get More Marks without spending extra time and without learning new techniques
Just click one of the links above.
Computerized Brain Training Can Increase Your IQ by 10 Points in 20 Days: It has now become possible to play interesting brain games and increase your IQ by 10 points in just 20 days.
First time in 125 years, it is one of the most important breakthroughs in Psychology.
In the 1890s, Hugo Munsterberg began writing about the application of psychology to industry, law, and other fields.
Even though the field of psychology has existed for over 125 years, and all these years psychologists have been trying to find ways to increase IQ because higher intelligence is so important for success, psychologists could not discover an effective way to increase IQ scores.
Now, finally, they have found a way and different teams have proven that it works repeatedly through various scientific studies.
Here is what 10in20.com website says :
Scientifically Proven Method
Here is what experts and journalists say:
Here are quotes from research articles and Wired magazine articles about what the researchers did at their own organizations and universities, using their own research software based on the same concept as our advanced software for students and the general public.“Initially, the test subjects scored an average of 10 questions correctly on the IQ test. But after the group trained on the n-back task for 25 minutes a day for 19 days, they averaged 14.7 correct answers, an increase of more than 40 percent.”
– Alexis Madrigal, Wired Magazine
“We trained elementary and middle school children by means of a videogame-like working memory task. We found that only children who considerably improved on the training task showed a performance increase on untrained fluid intelligence tasks.”
– Susanne M. Jaeggi, Martin Buschkuehl, John Jonides, and Priti Shah, Research scientists
“The most important point of our work is that we can show that it is possible to improve fluid intelligence.”
– Martin Buschkuehl, Researcher in Psychology at the University of Bern,
Switzerland, quoted in Wired magazine interview“The improvement seems to be dosage dependent. We saw a linear increase in performance with increase in training time.”
– Martin Buschkuehl, Researcher in Psychology at the University of Bern,
Switzerland, quoted in Wired magazine interview“Furthermore, we demonstrate that the extent of gain in intelligence critically depends on the amount of training: the more training, the more improvement in Gf.”
– Susanne M. Jaeggi, Martin Buschkuehl, John Jonides, and Walter J. Perrig,
Researchers of the ground-breaking 2008 study“A total of 20 undergraduate students at 24 years old participated in the experiment, with ten training sessions for ten days. Through using Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices as the evaluation method to get and analyze the experimental results, it was proved that training pattern can improve fluid intelligence of adults.”
– Qiu Feiyue, Wei Qinqin, Zhao Liying, Lin Lifang,
Zhejiang Univ of Technology, China“These findings constitute preliminary evidence that intensive cognitively demanding brain-training can improve not only our abstract problem-solving capacity, but also ameliorate cognitive control processes (e.g. decision-making) in our daily emotive environments.”
– Susanne Schweizer, Adam Hampshire, Tim Dalgleish, researchers
“Brain researchers for the first time claim to have found a method for improving the general problem-solving ability scientists call fluid intelligence, otherwise known as “smarts.”
Fluid intelligence was previously thought to be genetically hard-wired, but the finding suggests that with about 25 minutes of rigorous mental training a day, healthy adults could improve their mental capacities.”
– Alexis Madrigal, Wired Magazine
Want to get the benefits of higher IQ?
Consider the fact that Brain Games Can Increase Your IQ by 10 Points in 20 Days. Visit www.10in20.com because based on strong research it seems to work and is worth trying.
When I talk to smart students about this secret, they are always surprised.
Their eyes open wider. But, once they hear about it, they know for sure that it is true.
It is the answer I tell to question “What is the #1 secret of high rank?”
Answer: First let us be clear: I am not saying everybody can get high rank.
The issue here is to get the highest rank you are capable of and deserve based on your IQ, hard work, coaching, etc.
For example, if there are 2 students with similarly high IQ, and they join the same coaching classes, and they share a room and they both work hard.
In this case, who is going to get success depends on just this one thing:
THE STUDENT WHO MAKES MINIMUM NUMBER OF “SILLY MISTAKES IN EXAM” will get success.
The next question is “What can you do so you make minimum number of silly mistakes?”
Answer: Learn techniques of mind power, stress management, deep relaxation, confidence, …
I recommend these:
This 3 minute exercise will help you prepare better and get more success … a gift from me.
Imagine that you are taking exams and you are very well prepared and confident and you read questions comfortably and answer questions confidently.
Imagine you going to the Internet to see the results and as you see the results you realize that your dream has come true … your parents and friends and relatives and teachers and well wishers … all congratulate you … you are confident of a bright future … of contributing to your family … making a name for yourself … making an impact on the society ..
Now, your body-mind is flushed with good emotions. Remember this state. Do this exercise each time you sit down to study.
Here is what Times group newspaper Ahmedabad Times of April 5, 2011 wrote in an article …
Note that even the best cricketers in the world need and can benefit from mental conditioning.
Paddy Upton was the mental conditioning coach for the Indian team.
Let us ask one question: If mental coaching can help a team in a game like cricket to perform their best, can it not help students to take exams and prepare for the exams in similar way?
The answer is: Yes, it will help.
For the past 2 decades, I have been helping students gain an edge and to perform to their best ability.
If you are preparing for a tough exam, now is the best time to get our courses and mind machine.
Here are more articles on mental conditioning of India Cricket Team:
There’s a world-wide explosion of advanced techniques for accelerated learning, supercharged remembering, and peak mental performance.
The publication of the book Superlearning by Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder made superlearning or accelerated learning techniques popular. These help you use your whole brain (both left brain and right brain) for learning and memory.
I was member of the SALT (Society of Accelerated Learning and Teaching, USA) that is working hard to bring the benefits of accelerated learning to schools in USA. Many programs for schools have been supported by the American federal or state governments. (It is really unfortunate that in India, NCERT, good private schools and other important institutions are not open-minded enough to bring these revolutionary discoveries from around the world to our schools. My hope is that the situation will change in the next 10 years as India gets richer and parents start learning about these advances and start demanding from good private schools).
The book Superlearning reports: The Washington State Department of Health and Social Services reported that by using Superlearning techniques, Indochinese refugees learned English five times faster. At Iowa State University students learned Spanish seven times faster. And from Australia’s Woden TAFE College, John Wade revealed, “I have used the Superlearning technology with adult migrants learning English. The results from controlled experiment … show that long term memory retention increased sixfold.”
(You get it as part of Mind Machine ALEM package)
I created “Exam Mastery” to help you master taking exams with speed, accuracy and confidence without stress or nervousness. I created It because I understand its value through my own bad experience of nervousness in class X.
I used to be fearful and nervous because the exams were so important. I would ask myself, “What if I fail? What will I do then and how bad it will be for all in the family?”
My fear and nervousness lead to mistakes in class X board exam. For example, in English paper, I wrote an essay on “Delhi” in place of “Diwali”. I got only 48% in “Social Studies” whereas my average in Physics, Chemistry, Maths was 88%.
I have no way to find out why I got only 48% marks, but it could have been that I messed up things because of nervousness.
For example, in my Maths paper, I answered questions very rapidly and was left with about 20 minute to revise. As I started to revise, I was shocked to find out that I had done first 3 questions wrong (being in hurry and nervous), but fortunately I was able to correct them just in time.
My mistakes appear stupid and silly to you and me, but they were serious mistakes which cost me top 10 rank in class X (I got rank 24 which goes unrewarded and unrecognized). I don’t want to imagine what I would have lost had I continued to make similar mistakes.
Even if you are very confident in your subjects, but if you feel slightly nervous, fearful or worried about the exam results, you can benefit from Exam Master and avoid mistakes.
You can get Mind Machine here: www.MindMachineLab.com
Let me give you a shortcut from our research.
It is called the Bapna’s Will/Shall Rule:
As you can notice, with this short-cut, you’ll always be sure of yourself about using will or shall and never hesitate, which means you’ll be fluent. On the other hand, grammar books take 5 to 10 pages to teach will/shall usage that students fail to remember after a week or even after a day.
If you like this, get our complete Fluent English Speaking Course.
I used to have severe headache from class 1st onward and it continued till class 7th.
In the meantime, my parents got me all kinds of treatments, including 15 days at AIIMS in Delhi. I used to miss half the classes and used to cry because of the headache.
Then, fortunately, Shri Pundaric Sagar ji, a Jain muni cured my headache within a few weeks with blessings.
That was my introduction to the power of the mind.
That is where my passion is, and that is why I am dedicated to helping students to use more mind power for success in exams.
There is nothing more important for me than to train students to use more mind power and get success because that is the best way to pay tribute to the guru, who saved me from pain and suffering and sent me in the direction of success.
If you don’t already have, get them because they can give you an advantage in competitive exams and change your life: Mind Power Exam Maximizer , Mind Power Music , Mind Machine
“Imagination is more powerful than knowledge.”
–Albert Einstein
An imagined experience and a real experience have almost the same effect on your mind. Let us see some examples to understand and experience the power of imagination.
In a 30-day research experiment, students were divided into three groups. One group did not practice the game of Basketball, the second group practiced on playground, and the third group practiced only in their mind for one hour daily. The results: the group that did not practice did not improve. The group that practiced improved 24%, and group that practiced only in mind improved 23%. This experiment showed that practicing in your mind alone improves sports performance almost as much as doing real practice.
Imagine you are returning from the market to your house. You can see the house. You enter it. Now go to the kitchen. Go and take a lemon from the usual place. Feel the lemon in your hand. It is a big, yellow, juicy lemon. It has good lemon smell. Now get a knife. Hold the lemon in one hand and cut it with the knife. As you cut the lemon, a fine spray comes to your face. Feel it. Now you have two halves of the lemon. Lift your hand and put a half of the lemon into your mouth. And squeeze it. Feel the lemon taste.
Can you feel the saliva in your mouth? This shows the power of imagination. Your mind and your body do not know the difference between you really eating a lemon or just imagining it. The body response (as a result of the mind response) is the same in both the cases. Your mind/brain remembers this imagined experience as the real experience.
Suppose you really gave a program on TV, and you were the star of the program. Suppose that your performance was very good. Everybody gave good comments. Next time when you give another TV program, will you feel self-confident? Yes. You will feel confident because you have already done it once.
The imagination techniques give you the power to experience success before really achieving it. So with the new experience, when you really go for exam, interview, or a TV program, you will feel self-confident.
To make imagination more powerful and more effective, enter into a relaxed or meditative state and then imagine achieving success.
To benefit from the unlimited power of your subconscious mind, I recommend Genius CD and my course Mind Power Exam Maximizer which gives many techniques, tricks, and builds skills to propel you ahead of others.
When people hear of mind machines for the first time, they are naturally skeptical, but after seeing the scientific proof from universities, people start to believe.
And it is after using it just once, do they finally believe that “yes, there can be something so powerful and effective.”
It is easy to get the results with mind machine because all you have to do is use the proven mind machine when you sit to study and when you go to sleep. Of course, you continue to work hard for maximum success.
Modern mind machines offer many benefits including:
They are totally different.
One is a course material offering a complete system of learning. Second is an electronic equipment.
| Mind Power Exam Maximizer | Mind Machine |
|---|---|
| It is a course that teach you a complete system of secrets, skills, and techniques, which you need to practice to become good at learning faster. For example, you learn techniques to read faster and to revise in systematic way. | It is an electronic device that has hardware plus programs. The same hardware works with different programs. Examples of programs are: Accelerated Learning and CAT/GRE Vocabulary. |
| You learn the skills and techniques over weeks and practice over weeks to become better and better at your studies. For example, you have to practice reading faster initially with newspaper, magazines, etc. | Nothing to learn. The mind machine simply does two things:(1) Changes your brain waves so you are in a state of relaxation and without stress, so your mind works better, you focus better, study better.(2) You hear 2 stories (a different story in each ear) which are so complex, nobody can understand both simultaneously. After a few minutes, our mind stops trying to understand, and then the messages you hear as part of the stories program your subconscious mind for changing beliefs. For example, you’ll hear “You have great memory. You remember whatever you study. |
| Details at: www.MindPowerIndia.com | Details at: www.MindMachineLab.com |
I know how a student can feel frustrated and helpless because there is just too much of course material to finish but not enough time.
To maximize your success, you have to solve this problem. What you need are both these:
Note that hard work alone is not enough because for all tough exams in India, only about 1 to 4% people get success and from 96% to 99% people fail.
You need both the Mind Power Exam Maximizer System and the Mind Machine to find unique ways to amplify your abilities and talents to skyrocket your success.
Some of my students have only a cycle (not motorcycle, just cycle) and want to select just one course first.
The right course depends on your specific needs:
Everybody needs both. So, the question in your case is what you can afford and what is the biggest challenge you are facing.
Watch this video I have created for you. You’ll benefit because it clarifies the 4 success factors and helps you to decide what to focus on for maximum results.
Clarify your goals and which of the success factors are most important for you to achieve your goals. Then, take massive action.