“Forgiveness is the answer to the child’s dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is made clean again.”
Dag Hammarskjold

“To forgive is the highest, most beautiful form of love. In return, you will receive untold peace and happiness.”
Robert Muller

Forgiveness. One of those things many of us struggle with from time to time. But why should we forgive? And how can we go about it?

Here are a few timeless thoughts on forgiveness. I hope you’ll find something useful.

1. Forgiveness sets you free.

“When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free.”
Catherine Ponder

I think this is a great point and one of the best reasons I have found to forgive. It’s easy to get wrapped up in thinking that forgiveness is just about something you “should do”. But forgiving can in a practical way be extremely beneficial for you.

As long as you don’t forgive someone you are linked to that person. Your thoughts will return to the person who wronged you and what s/he did over and over again. The emotional link between the two of you is so strong and inflicts much suffering in you and – as a result of your inner turmoil – most often in other people around you too.

When you forgive you do not only release the other person. You set yourself free too from all of that agony.

2. Forgive yourself.

“The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbour as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves.”
Eric Hoffer

What you think and feel about other people is pretty much what you think and feel about yourself. This is not something that may always be obvious. But we do tend to judge and think about people as we think about ourselves. A person who, for instance, is very critical of others tends to, deep down, be very critical of him/herself.

So how do you get better at forgiving others? You can start by forgiving yourself. Because when you start to forgive yourself you get some practise with forgiveness and you also realise how good it feels. You open up to how forgiveness can improve your life and lives of the people around you.

By forgiving yourself – instead of resenting yourself for something you did a week or 10 years ago – you make this habit more and more of a natural part of you. And so forgiving others becomes easier too.

Also, what you think is a question of forgiving others you may sometimes – after some time and inner struggle – discover is just as much, if not more, about forgiving yourself rather than the other person.

3. Remember to forgive everyone.

“We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends.”
Sir. Francis Bacon

It’s often pretty easy to see the obvious people to forgive. People who have done something terrible or someone you don’t get along with at all.

It’s sometimes hard to see that you should forgive yourself for something. It can also be hard to remember to forgive people close to you. There might be relationships where forgiveness could resolve some vague resentment or other negativity that sometimes arises between you and another person.

When you feel such emotions is can be useful to ask yourself questions like: what is unresolved here? Or just: why do I feel this way towards this person? You may get some revealing answers. They might not come the first time you ask yourself though. So keep asking a bit more.

4. When you forgive, really forgive.

“Once a woman has forgiven her man, she must not reheat his sins for breakfast.”
Marlene Dietrich

“Most of us can forgive and forget; we just don’t want the other person to forget that we forgave.”
Ivern Ball

When you forgive, you have to really forgive. Or you will continue to wreck the relationship again and again. And yourself too.

You can view forgiveness as a way to feel like you are the better person of the two of you and then hold you forgiveness over the other person whenever you feel like it to show your superiority.

But it might be more helpful to view forgiveness as a way to release yourself and the other person from being trapped in the past. As a way to throw a big piece of self-inflicted suffering out the window and get on with the rest of your life in a more open and positive way.

5. Forgiveness is not a weakness.

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
Mahatma Gandhi

It may sound like forgiveness is a way of giving up or giving in. As a way to be a weak person. While the ones not forgiving are angry, powerful and strong. Such ideas may float around in various parts of your world and society.

But reality is a bit different. Not forgiving just seems to mostly eat you up inside. Your feel angry and may even wish for revenge. You replay arguments and memories over and over. While the person you are resentful of or angry at may often not even be aware of all your thoughts and feelings. And so you go on, creating suffering for yourself.

Forgiving releases you from that suffering. It can also make you feel good about yourself. Doing difficult things you know deep down that you want to do tend to have that effect.

6. With forgiveness the future may become brighter than in your dreams.

“Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.”
Hannah Arendt

“Let us forgive each other – only then will we live in peace.”
Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

“Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.”
Paul Boose

If you look at from a very practical perspective then forgiveness is the smart thing to do. It saves you a lot of painful expenses. It makes you clearheaded again.

Forgiveness centres you in the now and in yourself once again. You stop regretting what is already in the past. You stop feeding your thought loops of negativity with more energy. And now you can use that energy and focus that was previously spent strengthening those loops to start moving forward again.

Forgiveness might not be pleasant or something you necessarily want to do. You might think the other person is wrong and that you are right. But sometimes you have to do it anyway.

Without really forgiving moving on will be impossible.

So everyone has to choose for themselves.

Do you want to stay in this protected position of feeling right and superior?
Do you want feel like the victim who has been wronged for the rest of your life?

Or do you want make a real change in your life and world?

You will have a hard time getting them both.

It might not always be easy to forgive. But it has many big benefits. And personally I would be a bit wary of playing up forgiveness and what happened more than necessary. Many of our challenges – not all, of course – become so large and complicated in our heads that we build huge, monumental problems.

Making mountains out of molehills is a good way to strengthen a victim mentality or feeling even more right than you did before. It’s an effective way to paralyze yourself.

It’s not a pleasurable or an effective way to live your life and to explore your true potential.

Note: This is a guest post by Michael Miles of EffortlessAbundance.com.

We live in a competitive society and are often told that to get ahead we require drive, commitment and determination, that we must expend a great amount of energy and, if necessary, use force to get what we want. A survival of the fittest mentality is deeply entrenched in our culture.

Much of this thinking comes from Darwin’s Origin of the Species, a work which has influenced us in the most profound and subtle ways, not least of all because it advanced the idea that competition was a natural and normal part of life, that nature was ‘red in tooth and claw.’ Whatever we might think about Darwin, we do tend to see the world in these competitive terms.

But there is another way of thinking. There is another way of getting things done, a way which sees nature differently and recognizes the importance of harmony, balance and living peacefully.

Taoism is a philosophy which seeks to achieve great things by going with the flow. The semi-mythical figure Lao Tzu is said to have written the classic Taoist text, the Tao Te Ching. Here are six short quotations from the text which give us advice on the best way to get things done. Much is lost in translation, of course, but you will have some sense of the original.

In the beginning.

To see things in the seed, that is genius.

If I held in my hand a collection of seeds, I would have little idea what potential lay in each one, but to a botanist, that potential would be clear – she might see an oak tree, a sycamore, an apple tree or a rose bush.

We cannot know the future, but we can, with experience, see that our present actions have consequences that ripple out into time and space and shape our lives well into the future. We can see, for example, that habitual negative thinking leads to pain, failure and frustration, whereas a clear vision of where we want to go usually leads to a better life.

When I look back over my life, I can see a chain of causes and effects – the actions I took had certain results which have changed my life, sometimes forever. So be careful what you think and what you do – everything has a consequence and, like the botanist looking at her seeds, seeing the potential in nascent things is an important skill to acquire.

Taking your time.

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

Can you make grass grow by pulling it? Can you bake a cake faster by turning up the temperature in the oven? Can a boy make himself grow any faster? In nature, things happen in their own way and at their own pace. Trying to make things happen faster than they do naturally often leads to disaster – the grass gets pulled out and dies, the cake gets burnt and has to be thrown away.

A river rarely takes a straight course, meandering instead through the natural shape of the landscape, keeping to the lowest points, moving around mountains and hills. But the water keeps flowing powerfully and eventually reaches the sea.

Like nature, our own achievements can take time, and this is no bad thing. I work in education and I have seen for myself the results of fast tracking’ students through the grades and promoting them to university courses at a young age. The adults they become are often socially underdeveloped and less able to function skillfully in the complex real world: they have, in a sense, been ruined by speed. Let’s learn a lesson from nature, and do things well, in their own time.

The path of least resistance.

By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try, the world is beyond winning.

In the world there is nothing more submissive than water. It seeks the low ground and always yields to resistance. Yet water can, over many years, wear down sharp rocks into small, smooth pebbles and carve wide, deep channels through a landscape. Electricity always takes the path of least resistance,’ finding the earth as easily as possible, yet the power of electricity has transformed our lives.

Like a reed in the wind, if we can bend down low and yield to the pressures of life, letting go and allowing the natural course of events to shape us, we can survive and prosper. But if we refuse to yield and remain firm and upright, the world can break us. We are like a ship on the ocean: rowing against the wind is difficult and pointless. Let go and let the wind do all the work. It may take you to wondrous new shores.

The only thing you can be sure of.

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.

Whatever you are experiencing in life, it will disappear and something else will come along to replace it. Only one thing is certain in life – that everything changes. People who know this and tap into it, moving peacefully with the natural course of change can be very successful.

Clinging to the past can be a great source of misery. The future has always been a mystery, an adventure, and always will be. But to resist it is madness – a futile exercise and an enormous waste of energy. Some things are worth fighting for of course but, like King Canut, we cannot stop the tide from coming in. Embrace change, honor and welcome it, make it your friend, and success will come near.

The outcome.

Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge.

In the end, life is unpredictable. The wind blows as it will, and life takes us in its own direction. Despite our search for certainty and a clear vision of the future, we cannot know what the future holds for us, what new lands we shall discover when our ship has been blown across the sea. All we can do is lay the groundwork, keep a vigilant eye for danger or opportunity, and relax.

When I look back on my life, one thing is clear – I could never have predicated how things have unfolded over the years; I could never have dreamed I would be in my current situation. Things have worked out well and I could not have orchestrated them any better – nature has taken care of everything. I cannot pretend to know the future, but I am sure that it won’t be what I expect.

The end game.

People in their handlings of affairs often fail when they are about to succeed. If one remains as careful at the end as he was at the beginning, there will be no failure.

In our rush to achieve something, we can sometimes ruin it right at the end. We have laid good foundations, patiently worked for success and we are almost finished when, instead of letting things run through to their natural conclusion, we rush in and spoil everything. Have you ever opened the oven door before a souffle is quite ready? It just sinks and is ruined.

Sometimes we need to act quickly and decisively to avoid disaster – those who held on to their tech stocks after absurdly high prices had been reached at the peak of the dot com bubble soon discovered that waiting too long can be a bad thing. But acting too soon can be just as disastrous. When the prize is just within your grasp, be vigilant and be patient, waiting for jut the right moment to act.

Abundance is our natural state of being. Taoism is not a mystical or religious teaching; it is a practical philosophy for achieving great things in the most natural way and with the least amount of effort. It is a way of making life work – this, truly, is effortless abundance!

Michael Miles runs EffortlessAbundance.com. You can download his new book Thirty Days to change Your Life, for free, by visiting http://effortlessabundance.com/newsletter/

Note: This is a guest post by Christopher R. Edgar of Purpose Power Coaching.

Many of us have a habit of repeatedly replaying arguments we’ve had with people in our minds.

Our memories of past disputes never seem to fade, and we can often rerun them from beginning to end with perfect accuracy.

Sometimes, we fantasize about saying different things in the argument, imagining how the other person might have responded and pondering whether different strategies might have helped us win.

Usually, while rerunning these mental movies, we’re either feeling angry at the person we argued with, or guilty about the incident the conflict was about.  

Whatever feelings we associate with the old arguments, they usually aren’t particularly pleasant.   Our bodies become tense and uncomfortable, responding to the mental movies as if they were present reality.

Worse still, our tendency to replay old conflicts in our minds can poison our current relationships.   When we’re unable to stop watching mental movies of past arguments, we end up behaving in our present relationships as if those past conflicts were still happening today, and treating the people we’re relating with as if they were our old opponents.

This is common in intimate relationships, where we pick fights with our partners in the unconscious, irrational hope that it will help us win our old disputes against loved ones who hurt us in the past.   As psychologists James M. Honeycutt and Michael E. Eidenmuller write in Attribution, Communication Behavior And Close Relationships, conflict is kept alive by reliving old arguments and imagining the next interaction such that the next encounter may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Why We’re Hooked On Mental Reruns

It seems we believe, consciously or otherwise, that mentally rehashing these old disputes somehow benefits us.   Perhaps, if we reexperience our anger at our old antagonist frequently and intensely enough, or come up with the right arguments to make against them, we’ll somehow make them admit we were right.   Or, if we’re punishing ourselves for what happened, maybe if we torment ourselves enough the other person will forgive us.

Of course, this makes no sense.   No amount of replaying an old conflict in our heads will accomplish anything.   However, that doesn’t seem to stop us from doing it.   In fact, although many of us realize that it doesn’t help anyone to constantly relive our painful memories, we can’t seem to switch the mental movies off.   Some part of our minds seems dead set on winning that old argument, and convinced that running through it over and over will eventually bring it victory.

How do we overcome this habit of reliving old conflicts?   I’ll share three techniques here that have been helpful both to me and people I’ve worked with.

1. Bring Your Attention Into Your Body.

If you pay attention to your thoughts when you’re rehashing an old argument, you’ll likely notice that you aren’t very conscious of how your body is feeling when the mental movie is playing.   Sensations like inhaling and exhaling, the circulation of your blood and the pressure of your feet against the ground fade out of your awareness when your mind is fantasizing about past disputes.

The good news is that, if you focus your attention on how your body feels, you’ll draw your attention away from your painful memories and into the present.   As Drs. Aggie Casey and Herbert Benson put it in Mind Your Heart: A Mind/Body Approach To Stress Management, Exercise And Nutrition For Heart Health, your mind quiets and negative thoughts fade as you focus on your body, and if you quiet the body, you can calm the mind. €

I’ve found this works particularly well if you specifically concentrate on the feeling of your feet on the floor.   While focusing your attention in this way, it may help you to visualize your thoughts about the past dispute flowing down your body, all the way from the top of your head into the ground.   The thoughts then absorb into the floor and cease to trouble you.   As with an electric charge, this helps you ground out the emotional energy of the old argument.

As you repeat this practice, you’ll begin to find it becoming automatic.   Each time you find yourself about to replay an old argument, you’ll find your attention immediately shifting to the solid, empowering feeling of your feet on the ground, and you’ll find the noxious energy of the painful memory quickly flowing out of your body.

2. Envision Victory.

It can also help you kick the habit of replaying mental movies for you to imagine what would happen if you actually won the argument you’ve been rehashing.   Imagine you really had the opportunity to have your old antagonist in front of you again, and they admitted they were wrong and apologized for what they did or said.   Or, if the incident you’re rerunning is something you feel guilty about, suppose the other person completely forgave you.

Now consider this question:   what would that really do for you?   Would it make you a wiser or stronger person?   Would it make you feel more loved or accepted?   As psychologists Erik A. Fisher and Steven W. Sharp aptly put this question in The Art Of Managing Everyday Conflict: Understanding Emotions And Power Struggles, What does it really mean to win?   Is it . . . making the most biting comments during an argument?   What have we gained from this?   Recognition?   Power?   Respect?   Who judges or decides who the winners are?

If you give this question serious thought, you’ll see that the other person wouldn’t really do anything for you by conceding defeat.   An admission of guilt by this person simply wouldn’t make any lasting improvement in your life.   When you recognize this, you’ll likely find your mind’s urge to seek victory fading away.

Another illuminating question you can ask yourself is whether your opponent would make you any safer, or remove some sort of danger from your life, by admitting defeat.   In my experience, many people find themselves reliving old arguments because, on some level, the idea that someone else might dislike them or think they were wrong scares them.   They believe, consciously or otherwise, that if someone else is angry at them they’re in danger.   They fantasize about winning the argument or being forgiven, because they believe doing either might dispel the other person’s anger and make them safe again.

Rationally, of course, the mere fact that someone feels upset at us doesn’t usually put us in danger, and thus even if they let go of their anger it wouldn’t make us any safer.   When we keep ourselves conscious of this, our efforts to protect ourselves by replaying our mental movies tend to subside.

3. Observe Yourself In The Scene.

In an earlier article, I discussed a strategy for taking the sting out of painful memories involving adjusting the camera angle, if you will, in the mental movies you find yourself rerunning.   This technique works just as well for overcoming the habit of mentally replaying old disputes.

To do this exercise, start by noticing that, in the mental movie you keep watching, the camera is focused on a specific part of the scene.   You may find that the camera is trained entirely on the person you were arguing with, and what they’re doing, thinking and feeling.   It’s almost as if you aren’t present in the scene at all.

When your attention isn’t focused on what you were thinking and feeling during the dispute, you start forgetting that your own feelings, opinions and dignity matter, and thus you start accepting wholesale what the other person said to you.   When you buy into every insult, sarcastic remark or jab the other person hurled your way, the mental movie can create great pain and discomfort.

You can help relieve this suffering by remembering, each time you find yourself replaying the argument, to focus the camera on you and what you’re doing, thinking and feeling.   Don’t judge, defend or criticize yourself or anyone else who played a role in the event just give yourself your complete, compassionate attention.

Turning the camera toward yourself helps you keep in mind that, no matter what happened in the incident you keep recalling, you’re a human being worthy of love and respect.   This helps you put what the other person did or said in perspective, and makes the argument no longer seem so threatening to your safety and sense of self.

Christopher R. Edgar is a success coach certified in hypnotherapy and neuro-linguistic programming. He helps professionals transition to careers aligned with their true callings. He may be reached at Purpose Power Coaching.

“I won’t predict anything historic. But nothing is impossible.”

The Olympic Games are almost over and if there was one king at these games then that has to be Michael Phelps. He set one world record after another. He took home the most Gold Medals (8!) that anyone ever has at one Olympic Game. And he also has the most Olympic Gold Medals that anyone has ever won in the history of the games.

Phelps has some genetic advantages, like unusual long arms plus very flexible ankles, but the mental part is still crucial. So what can we learn from Michael Phelps and his mindset? Here are five fundamentals.

1. It starts with your thoughts.

“I think that everything is possible as long as you put your mind to it and you put the work and time into it. I think your mind really controls everything.”

It all starts with your thoughts. They and your emotions get you to do – or not to do – things. And how you think and feel about your results and the work you have to put in determines who you are becoming and you what are achieving.

How you act does also to a pretty large degree determine what you get from other people in your life. Emotions and thoughts are contagious. And you tend to get what you give, at least over time.

A brilliant and beautiful expansion on this very basic idea can be found in James Allen’s “As a man thinketh”.

2. Keep a steady and consistent focus.

“If I want to be as successful as I want to be, I have to be thinking about it all the time.”

Thinking about what you want is of course extremely important. But you also need to keep your focus there. Because you are and are becoming what you think about most of the time. If your focus starts to waver all over the place and you forget what you really want to focus on half the time or get caught up in other thoughts or emotions then things will be difficult.

Much of this comes down to how reactive you are to other people and events. If you are constantly in reaction to what happens around you, you let the outside world control what you focus on. So how can you get your focus to become more like an arrow that is moving forward rather than a boat where the guy at the rudder has fallen asleep?

How to train your mind to keep the focus on what you want:

• Practise. This gets the mind used to this new way of keeping your focus. The mind will slowly start to accept this way, inner resistance will lessen and keeping the focus where you want it becomes easier.
• Use your physiology and phraseology. You can use these two things to keep your emotions where you want them to be. Your emotions work backwards too. So by changing your physiology – how you sit, stand and move – to a more confident one you can feel more confident. And by using more positive words you can have a more positive frame of mind. So even if you don’t feel confident or positive right now you can quickly change that by changing your movement and words.
• Reframing. You can use reframing – to see things in a different light – to help yourself. How do you do it? One way is to ask yourself some good questions. If you are in a “negative” situation you can reframe it by asking yourself: what is awesome about this? Or “what can I learn from this?”
• Use an external reminder. Written notes in highly visible places or a bracelet with an inscription can help you to keep your focus in the right place throughout your normal day.

3. Dream without limits.

“You can’t put a limit on anything. The more you dream, the farther you get.”

Sure, there might be some genetic advantages that some have that you don’t. Time can also be a factor. You may not be able to lose those 30 pounds within a month, but you can do it over a longer time span.

You can – to a large degree – dream without limits and also use your own natural advantages to your benefit.

Now, dreaming without limits may sound like empty self-help mumbo-jumbo. But your dreams and beliefs do to a large degree determine what you can and will allow yourself to do. As Henry Ford said in his famous quote:

“If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.”

In my experience this is very much true. And it comes down to if you can see what you want in your reality as something realistic and if you will allow it to be there. If you don’t then you’ll work against yourself. You’ll feel a lot of inner resistance that manifests in different ways such as self-sabotage in subtle and not so subtle ways.

4. Accept what happens and learn from it.

“A lot of new obstacles are coming, a lot of new feelings are coming, … I’m just taking it for what it is and learning from the mistakes I had this year.”

Resistance is fatal to get a good performance out of yourself. And as I mentioned last Friday, acceptance can help you to remove inner resistance and get things not only done but done in a better fashion than if you are resisting and working against yourself.

Acceptance is also very helpful when you make a mistake or fail. You can resist the failure/mistake and beat yourself up. This creates a lot of inner suffering and new resistance. And that makes it emotionally harder to keep going and trying since you associate mistakes and failure with so much pain.

Acceptance is a more useful approach. It can help you to release yourself from slipping into old, conditioned patterns of self-hurting behaviour when something “negative” happens.You can instead see a situation such as a failure with fresh eyes.

And instead of beating yourself up or feeling sorry for yourself you can see the situation in a more positive and constructive way. Like for instance by looking for the lessons or the positive stuff in your failure. One of the greatest things about acceptance is that it can give you freedom from your old behaviour patterns and “you acting as you have always done”.

Failure and mistakes can – in combination with acceptance – be very helpful. Here are four reasons why:

• You learn. Instead of seeing failure as something horrible you can start to view it more as a learning experience. When standing in the middle of a failure, you can ask yourself questions like the ones I mentioned above in the reframing section of tip #2. Questions like: What’s awesome about this situation? What can I learn from this situation? There is always one lesson or many more in what you may see as a failure.
  You gain experiences you could not get any other way. Ideally, you probably want to learn from other people’s mistakes and failures. That’s not always easy to do though. Sometimes you just have to fail on your own to learn a lesson and to gain an experience no one can relate to you in mere words.
• You become stronger. Every time you fail you become more accustomed to it. You get desensitized. You realize more and more that it’s not the end of the world. Failing may in fact become a bit anticlimactic – just like when successfully reaching a goal – after you have spent much time building a grandiose image of it in your head. Failing can also a have an exhilarating component because even though you failed you at least took a chance. You didn’t just sit on you hands doing nothing. And that took quite a bit of courage and determination.
• Your chances of succeeding increases. Every time you fail you can learn and increase your inner strength. So every failure can make you more and more likely to succeed. And there is probably no other way to the success you dream of without a whole bunch of failures along the way.

5. Be careful with inflating your ego or identifying too strongly with your success.

“I’m the same kind of guy before all this happened.”

If you let the success go to your head then it can, for one, make you an arrogant jerk. It can also make you more emotionally reactive as you inflate your ego and strongly identify with your achievements.

This will feel awesome at first. But soon you may start to doubt that you are still as good as your last achievement and as awesome as everyone said you were. And so you become more reactive to criticism or having a bad day. This affects the steadiness of your focus, thoughts and emotions. And so your inner life becomes more of a rollercoaster. All of this can not only affect your relationships with other people but also your performance.

This doesn’t mean that you don’t have a high level of confidence in yourself and your abilities. It just means that you should be careful with getting completely wrapped up in your past achievements and letting you ego inflate too a harmful size.

Note: This is a guest post by Adam Sincinski of The Study Matrix blog. To assist you with understanding the concepts, techniques and strategies outlined within this article, please download the free Study Matrix 101 pdf and utilize it as a visual reference tool to help guide you through this process.

• Do you ever find yourself becoming easily overwhelmed with trying to remember and manage large amounts of information?
• Do you struggle to remember key concepts and pieces of information that are critical to your academic, business and career success?
• Do you ever envy those who just seem to remember and recall information with the greatest amount of ease and without any effort?
• Have you ever wondered about your potential to develop a photographic memory?
• Have you ever considered that Mind Mapping might actually be the solution you have been searching for all this time?

The concept of Mind Mapping has been floating around the education sector for quite some time now. First popularized by Tony Buzan several decades ago, it has since grown in stature mainly within academic circles. Originally utilized as a means of making sense of large fragments of information, it has since been adapted and applied into many industries and fields of endeavor.

This article will provide you with a quick introduction to an advanced process of Mind Mapping that will help you accelerate your learning ability by improving and enhancing your photographic memory and recall of information. The instructions and guidelines presented here will essentially take you through the step-by-step process of creation and learning that goes into a concept known as a Study Matrix.

What is a Study Matrix?

A Study Matrix is essentially a combination of 3 key mapping techniques that have been utilized throughout the academic and business world in a variety of ways to manage and make sense of processes and large fragments of information. These 3 techniques include:

• Mind Mapping – is a diagram with a central topic or image that branches out from its middle into related concepts and ideas that break the topic down into its smaller parts. It is essentially used to structure, classify, visualize, and generate ideas for organization, problem solving, decision making and for study purposes.
• Concept Mapping – is a diagram that shows the interlocking relationships between a variety of different concepts and ideas utilizing intersecting arrows and labels.
• Flowcharting – is essentially a schematic representation of a process.

What are the Benefits of Learning from a Study Matrix?

The Study Matrix technique of accelerated learning is very organic in nature and naturally mimics our brain’s capacity to think, remember and recall information. By teaching yourself how to design your own Study Matrix’s will provide you with the ability to create vivid learning aids that will dramatically improve your methods and strategies of managing large fragments of information.

Here is a look at some other benefits you will derive from taking the time to effectively incorporate this technique into your daily information management habits:

• It summarizes the most important information clearly and concisely making it easy to reference and learn from.
• It summarizes only the most critical, important and relevant facts that are applicable to the topic under study.
• It naturally helps to create links and associations within the brain to related concepts and ideas that are necessary and required to master the subject you are learning.
• It can accelerate your speed of learning, thusly reducing the amount of time you spend on your studies.
• It can accelerate your recall of information during examinations by up to 500%.
• It encourages ease of learning and the creative flow of new ideas and insights.
• It makes learning more fun and entertaining.
• It encourages the development of photographic memory and recall of key concepts and ideas presented within the Study Matrix.
• It improves focus, concentration and encourages us to learn information in manageable chunks.

Next, we will begin breaking down each of the parts that go into the formation of a Study Matrix. Every component that will be discussed is an essential piece of the Study Matrix that is critical to the entire structure – just as much as a kidney is essential to the balance and health of a body.

Pathways – The Branches that Interlock the Disconnected Parts

Pathways are the organic-like lines and arrows that interlock and connect all the different segments of a Study Matrix. Their purpose is to link concepts, words, phrases and ideas in an associative manner that improves memory and recall of information. They are organic in nature (smooth branch like structures) because this naturally mimics the brain’s neurological tendencies and processes of thinking. They are also purposefully “unbroken” in their design, thusly allowing your eyes to glide smoothly from one piece of information to another as you read the Study Matrix.

A Study Matrix utilizes 3 alternating pathway structures for different purposes:

• Lines – Connect words and phrases within a hierarchical tree branch, synaptic, and organic-like structure. This essentially means that as you move out from the central image of the Study Matrix, that the pathways naturally become thinner.
• Arrows – Help to identify the directional flow of a pathway.
• Colors – At times different colors are utilized to represent seemingly unrelated crisscrossing pathways. These colors can either signify a change in direction, change in time, in place, or an alternative intersecting idea. To simplify things, when reading a Study Matrix it is important to follow along with the pathway color you are reading until you reach an ending.

Colors – The Memory Enhancing Separation Tool

Colors are an important and critical component of a Study Matrix helping to boost memory, recall and ease of learning. They are effectively used for a number of key purposes:

• To distinguish segments, topics and specific events that take place among fragments of information presented within the Study Matrix.
• Because they help distinguish key pieces of information, they effectively provide greater clarity, thusly opening up the channels to accelerated learning.
• At times they are used as a means of changing the time or place of key interlinking fragments of information within a Study Matrix.
• Finally, they can also represent different perspectives or points of view to further help distinguish the variety of information presented within a Study Matrix.

Pictures – The Strategic Associative Tool that Builds Photographic Memory

Pictures are great memory building tools because they are much easier to remember than words alone. In fact, if you take a moment to close your eyes and think about what you did yesterday, you will quickly realize that all your thoughts actually come through an interlocking associative collection of picture fragments that lay down the foundations of memory. Through a similar means within a Study Matrix, pictures make interlocking associative connections with words, ideas and concepts helping to boost the memory and recall of information we are learning.

• Pictures make powerful and lasting associations with the issues, themes, phrases, symbols, and words scattered throughout a Study Matrix.
• Pictures assist with improving the memorization and recall of key concepts and pieces of information.
• Pictures naturally stimulate the visual learning process making learning fun, entertaining and enjoyable.

Pictures are connected and associated with words in 5 common ways:

• Pictures can literally “word-for-word” represent the words they are associated with.
• Pictures can metaphorically represent the words they are linked to.
• Pictures can symbolically represent the words they are linked to.
• Pictures can sound-like the words and phrases they are connected with.
• In other instances, pictures can simply replace words altogether.

Symbols – Expanding Our Awareness and Understanding

Symbols play an important part in helping you to pinpoint key concepts and ideas presented within your Study Matrix. They are essentially a tool that will help you to expand your understanding and awareness about the information you are learning.

• Symbols will help you segment critical facts and pieces of information making them discernible to the naked eye.
• Symbols will organize and categorize your information into easy and manageable learning chunks.
• Symbols will support the key insights, themes, issues and ideas within your Study Matrix, thusly making them easier to remember and recall.
• Symbols can also be utilized to highlight the relevance and importance of certain pieces of information.

The type of symbols that can be utilized within a Study Matrix depends on the structure of your information and the purpose of your learning. To get you started, here are some common symbols that can be utilized within a Study Matrix to help identify key concepts and ideas in quick succession (please refer to the Study Matrix 101 diagram for a visual overview of these symbols):

• NO Assumptions – This symbol can alert you to key words or phrases within your Study Matrix that can be easily misunderstood or misconstrued in some way.
• Major Themes – This symbol can be utilized to quickly identify major themes and issues that are relevant and important to your understanding about the topic you are learning.
• Key Points / Ideas – This symbol can draw your attention to key ideas that are most important to remember. These ideas may in some way build upon the foundations of other concepts within your Study Matrix.
• Seek More Information – A Study Matrix represents only key concepts and ideas about a specific topic or subject. However, at times there will be important pieces of information that you may like to expand upon throughout the learning process. In such cases, simply create a symbol that you can utilize to pinpoint areas within your Study Matrix where further research is required.
• Study Questions – This symbol is utilized to identify key questions that help you expand on certain concepts and ideas within your Study Matrix.
• Stop & Reflect – This symbol is used to highlight important concepts or ideas that require some thought and reflection.
• Setting or Location – This symbol is utilized to identify a key setting or location that you would like to highlight within your Study Matrix.
• Time or Period – This symbol is utilized to identify key dates or periods that are important to remember.

Once inserted into the Study Matrix, these symbols will help you to immediately recognize key pieces of information that are essential to your learning of the material you are studying.

Content Pieces – Representing the Foundational Structure of Your Learning

The Content Pieces of the Study Matrix are the distinguishing elements that help to improve the readability of the information you are learning. You will notice in the Study Matrix 101 diagram that different Content Pieces effectively represent alternative distinguishing concepts and ideas within the Study Matrix.

As such, they each have their own unique look and style in order to assist the human eye in breaking through the clutter of not being able to distinguish between different fragments and pieces of information. Hence, when you are creating your Study Matrix it is critical that you take the time to distinguish specific Content Pieces from all others. This will help you to better recognize them throughout the learning process.

Another critical component of the Study Matrix extends from the Connector Words that smooth the transition between the Content Pieces. The primary purpose of the Connector Words is to improve comprehension and understanding of the material.

Pure Mind Maps do not utilize Connector Words, making it difficult for other people reading your mind maps to comprehend the information you represented in a consistent fashion. However, by utilizing Connector Words you essentially open the doors of comprehension and understanding that make your Study Matrix’s easier to remember and recall.

Other Bits – Bringing Everything Full Circle

In order to further enhance the readability of a Study Matrix, it is important to incorporate a few more essential components into your design:

• Font Differentiation – The size and style of the font utilized within a Study Matrix differentiates the relative importance of key concepts and ideas. As a general rule, the further the Study Matrix pathways extend out from the center of the Matrix, the smaller the font becomes. This thusly helps improve readability.
• Hierarchical Structure of Pathways & Pieces – In a similar fashion, the pathways and pieces are also effectively miniaturized the further the Study Matrix expands from its central location.
• Numerical Sequences – Numbers are utilized in order to highlight numerical sequences of events or pieces of information that are important in helping us expand our understanding of the topic we are learning.
• Pathway Stoppers – These are RED Dots that represent punctuation “full stops” along the Study Matrix pathways. Whenever you come across one of these, just take a breath and continue reading a new sentence.

Study Matrix Accelerated Learning Study Plan

The following points present you with a quick strategy that will help you to develop a photographic memory of the Study Matrix you are learning from. Feel free to adjust this strategy any way you wish in order to fit your ideal learning style and preferences.

Day 1

• Peruse the Study Matrix identifying key symbols, headings, colors, pictures, words, patterns and other landmarks.
• Focus on the Study Matrix’s organic structure, the sequences of numbers and the white space surrounding the information. Your goal is to effectively create a mental snapshot of the entire Study Matrix.
• Divide the Study Matrix into efficient learning chunks based on color.
• Begin reading the Study Matrix one color chunk at a time from the central image moving outwards – all the while chunking the information into even smaller bits and pieces (progress in a clockwise direction). As you are processing this information be sure to utilize the pictures and symbols to help improve your memory and recall.
• As you read gently guide your eyes over the dark pathway lines and arrows, much like following directions along a street map.
• Follow the 3R+T Process of learning by firstly Reading the color chunk aloud as you create mental pictures of the material. Secondly, close your eyes and Recall the color chunk from memory. Thirdly, return to the Study Matrix color chunk and Review your memory and recall of this information by reading through it once again. Finally, Test yourself by physically sketching that color chunk of the Study Matrix onto a piece of paper. Continue moving through the 3R+T Process until you complete all the color chunks successfully.
• Next, take yourself through the 3R+T process (Reading, Recalling, Reviewing, and Testing) for the Study Matrix as a whole. This will help to assimilate the entire Study Matrix into your long-term memory.

Day 2

• Reverse the 3R+T Process and move through the color chunks of the Study Matrix in an anti-clockwise direction on the second day of learning.

Day 3

• Peruse the Study Matrix as a whole and sketch it out on paper for a third time. If you are unable to remember some parts, than go back to these segments of the Study Matrix, review them and sketch in the relevant details accordingly.

Day 4 to 7

• Finalize your understanding of the material by testing yourself with a set of questions – you personally prepared in advance – related to the content you are learning presented within the Study Matrix. Before answering these questions be sure to quickly overview the Study Matrix as a whole paying particular attention to bits and pieces that were difficult to remember during Day 3.

This 7 Day accelerated learning study plan should help you to build almost 100% recall of the information you are learning. Test this process by utilizing the Study Matrix 101 download as an experimental tool. In conclusion, please set challenging yet doable time limits for each step of this process. The better you are at sticking with these time frames, the more efficient your learning will become.

How do I go about creating such a Study Matrix?

You effectively have 2 options. You can either draw them out on paper or you can utilize a Mind Mapping software package. Here is a list of recommended Mind Mapping software tools:

• Tony Buzan’s iMindMap – Free 7 Day Free Trial – the most graphically pleasant software package.
• 3D Topicscape – Free 30 Day Trial – 3D mind mapping software package.
• NovaMind – Free 30 Day Trial – ideal for brainstorming and creating large mind maps.
• FreeMind – great Free flexible mind mapping package.

Feel free to visit the List of Mind Mapping Software Wikipedia page for further information and suggestions.

If you are interested in learning more about Mind Mapping than visit some of the following helpful resources

• Mappio Mind Maps – A website showcasing a large variety of Mind Maps.
• Topicscape Mind Maps – A website showcasing almost 1,000 Mind Maps.
• Mind Map Search – A website with the largest collection of Mind Mapping resources and links.

Adam Sincinski is active over at the The Study Matrix blog. If you haven’t done so already, please feel free to download the full pdf version of Study Matrix 101 here.