2. Practice using the opposite side of the brain than you are used to.  Singing is a great right brain activity.  The right brain is an expert in recognizing patterns and help improve your problem solving skills.

3. Do mathematical calculations or try to memorize something.  Try to remember the names of your high school teachers, memorize prime numbers or verses you find helpful.  Learn to recite the alphabet backwards

4.  Use music.  Don’t listen to the same songs over and over again but change them up.  Listen to Jazz, country, Hip Hop, etc.

5. Eat nutritional food. Eat fruits, vegetables which will boost your brain power.

6. Learn something new on the computer.  Try understanding a different political viewpoint or look at things from another persons perspective.  You’ll find that although the viewpoint could be distasteful to you – you may then be able to more fully defend your own position because you understand theirs.

7. Word searches and crosswords are a great exercise for the brain.  It helps you to focus and think – both of which are exercising the brain.

8.Invent a joke.  This is one of the more difficult but effective exercises.  Take a random topic and make a joke about it.  You are using creativity, thinking, problem solving and having fun all at the same time!

You’ve probably heard people talk about having “hunches”, “gut feelings” or “the still, small voice within.”  They’re talking about intuition.

But what does it mean to have a “gut feeling?”

Well, if your intuition tends to speak to you through your stomach or chest area (can be a sense of tightening or anxiety or, on the positive side, can be a sense of lightness and euphoria) then that’s what intuition is for you.

The key thing to understand is that intuition can speak to you in a variety of ways. Some people don’t get “gut feelings”. Instead, they may feel a shiver go through their body or feel a pinch on the back of the neck, depending on the ‘message’.

If you are just now learning to recognize your own intuition, I recommend keeping a journal. Record your thoughts, feelings, dreams and impressions. You can go back over this information a later date to determine whether your hunches actually manifested and see what your personal intuitive cues were for the situation.

What is intuition?

It might be easier to start here by discussing what intuition is not. The first thing to understand is that, while intuition may sometimes seem like magic, it is very much grounded in reality and science. Unfortunately, science has yet to completely explain the exact mechanism in the brain which allows for the perception of information outside our five senses.

Intuition is not ESP or any of the other psychic “gifts”, although it is very likely connected to them and may certainly be enhanced by them. Nor is intuition a matter of animal instinct. The fight-or-flight response is one that is triggered by obvious cues in one’s environment.

Many people have trouble, however, distinguishing their intuition from their own inner fears, wishful thinking and imagination.  If this describes you, you’re probably asking: How do you know if your intuition is right? 

The problem here is in the way the question is phrased. A better question to ask is: How do you know when your intuition is leading you astray?

Think about the distinction for a moment.

Intuition is about knowing and feeling within the present, but with an eye on what’s best for you in reality. So, the first step is to identify what you’re feeling, and second is to ask whether that feeling is compelling you to do something ration or irrational.

For instance, let’s say you just have a strong ‘gut feeling’ that you should drain your bank account to play the lottery tonight. Is that really your intuition speaking? More than likely not.

1.       Am I feeling like doing something that belies reason?
2.       Is the action I feel like taking even plausible or within my control?
3.     Is what I feel drawn to within my moral and ethical code?
4. Is it responding to a situation at hand? In other words, does the feeling directly impact something you’re dealing with in the moment?
5.       Do I feel sincerely drawn towards (or repulsed by) something my intuition is telling me to do?

If you get a strong sense that you need to call up a long lost friend, for example, you are likely correct in following that hunch. It meets all of the above criteria in that it is something actionable in the present, sincere and reasonable.

Spending all of your money on the lottery, however, would not meet most of the above criteria, no matter how strongly you feel about your chances of winning. It is not realistic because the odds truly are stacked against you. Taking the action could potentially devastate you financially, and this is not something that true intuition would try to lead you towards.

The next time you’re evaluating a hunch, keep that checklist in mind. The answers you give to those questions will ultimately help you determine whether your intuition is right.

It can be difficult to distinguish that “still, small voice within” from all of the usual clutter and chatter that goes on in our heads. In order to hear your intuition most clearly, you must learn to be still, quiet and focused.

One of the best ways to do this is to take up some form of meditation. You don’t have to become a meditation guru, though! All you need is the ability to clear your mind completely for about 15-20 minutes each day.

Tip #2: Learn to recognize your own intuitive signals

How does your intuition speak to you? It’s not the same for everyone. Your subconscious can try to get your attention in a variety of ways, including:

·        Repeated thoughts or ideas

·        Physical sensations in a particular  part of the body (e.g., chills, tension, relaxation, pain, pleasure and so on)

·        Emotions. Strong feelings of being lead towards or away from something or someone

For most people, intuition manifests as a combination of all of these. Your inner voice or higher self will always speak to you in a calm, loving and neutral tone.

The feelings you experience as a result of receiving that information may represent additional intuitive information or may represent your own fears and wishes talking.  The way to tell the difference is to ask whether any action you take as a result of the information is for your and everyone else’s highest good.

Tip #3: Play with your psychic senses

You can give your intuition an intentional workout. For instance, try to intuit who is calling you on the phone before you look at your caller ID, or guess which song is coming on the radio next.

You can also play with things like “ESP” and card-reading tests where you try to intuit one of five possible geometric shapes on the card before it is turned over. This online ESP test is a fun place to start: http://www.realmsofthearcane.com/extrasensory-test.php

Last, but not least, make sure you keep a log of your intuitive insights. Write down any impressions you’re getting, then revisit them at a future date to see how accurate you were.

To be unconscious is to be knocked out. The subconscious, however, represents all of the things you know or are aware of, but are not paying attention to in the present. In other words, whatever you are actively thinking about is conscious, while whatever you aren’t thinking about is subconscious at that moment.

Remember when you first learned how to ride a bicycle?  You had to think about what you were doing at first, consciously focusing on your balance. You learned in the moment how to train your muscles to properly control your center of gravity.

Once you learned this, however, it became an automatic process. The “how to ride a bike” information was safely stored into your memory and your subconscious took over the “script” or “program” you created that tells your body how to ride a bike without even having to think about it anymore.

If you look deeply into this elementary example, you will see two things that stand out and point to how to begin working with power of the subconscious mind.

The first thing to notice is that, as a child, you approached things like riding a bike with a “beginner’s mind”. The second thing to notice is that your subconscious was trained via conscious repetition of focus on your goal.

Let’s say that you want to lose weight, and you decide to program your subconscious to help you make healthier food choices. First, you would still your mind through meditation or relaxation to get into a state similar to beginner’s mind. You want your subconscious to get the exact message, and not any of the clutter that goes through your conscious mind.

Once in this relaxed state, you visualize yourself making healthier choices. Let your imagination be as detailed as possible (taste the food, imagine yourself enjoying it, imagine how good you’ll feel, etc) and create in you the kind of feelings you want to achieve by creating this new habit.

The feeling component is very important. It’s the job of your subconscious to protect you, and it’s not going to budge on existing habits unless you tell it that the new habit leads to greater happiness and enhances, rather than threatens, your identity.

For best results, you’ll want to do visualization exercise for about 15 minutes a day, every day. It will take about a month of repetition for the average person to fully program their subconscious with a new goal or belief. Your results may vary, though.

Here, we are not talking just about the day’s events or information in the immediate environment. Your subconscious is also connected to the subconscious of every other living being on the planet. This is commonly what is known as “universal mind.”

So, your subconscious holds an tremendous amount of power, both on a practical level and a spiritual or metaphysical level. You can install new habits and beliefs into your subconscious through conscious effort. You can also connect to your intuition and psychic perceptions.

Brain Booster #1: The Brain ‘Dump’

The chaotic thoughts and worries of daily life can drain your physical and mental energy. So, the first step to enhancing your brain power is to “dump” all that mental clutter.

You can do this by keeping a journal. You don’t have to save your entries if you don’t want to or are afraid someone will read them. It is the act of getting everything out on paper that helps.

Brain Booster #2: Find a creative outlet

Do you like to draw, do crafts, dance or sing?  Do a little more of it!  You might also consider picking up a hobby or creative outlet that you think you are not good at. For instance, maybe you are a great musician, but you can barely draw a stick figure.

If you were to start drawing, though, you’d find your brain’s visual-spatial “muscles” will strengthen, and this has benefits beyond drawing pretty pictures!

Brain Booster #3: Take naps

It seems that new studies emerge every year praising the benefit of daily naps to our overall physical, mental and emotional well-being. You don’t even have to take a long nap, though, or fall asleep at all.

Instead, you will get the most benefit from taking what’s commonly known as the “power nap”. Just set your alarm for 10 minutes, lay down, close your eyes and focus on completely clearing your mind of all thought.

When you get up, you’ll discover you feel refreshed and have a renewed feeling of mental clarity and focus.