“Whatever your mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.”
~Napoleon Hill

Last week I had the opportunity to listen to a presentation by Charley Harary. It was entitled 5 Steps To Maximize Your Mind To Achieve Your Goals. I was completely blown away by his performance- so I had to share it with you.

I took notes throughout the whole presentation, but the 45 minute video is available for your viewing pleasure here ^[1] (it has a very homemade feel). The presentation is part of a 10 week program I’m doing at RAJE (Russian-American-Jewish-Experience) USA in Brooklyn, NY. It involves learning about Judaism, learning Hebrew, and listening to millionaires and several billionaires speak about their roads to success.

The cool part about the video, even though it has such a homemade feel, is that I’m in the audience. You can experience what I experienced as well as hear me interact with Charley. It’s a nice alternative to hearing my interpretation of Charley’s presentation by hearing it directly.

5 Steps To Maximize Your Mind To Achieve Your Goals

Prerequisites:

1. Whatever you have is enough. You don’t need more brains, more strength, or more anything. Whatever resources you have are enough to accomplish what you want.
2. No excuses about deficiency. No handicaps can hold you back from achieving your goals.
3. Desire and decision to work. If you have the desire, and you make this decision, and you do all the necessary work. You will accomplish what you want.

The 5 Steps

1. Define What You Want. Instead of letting things happen to us in our lives and instead of letting our emotions guide our decision making process we should define what we want and use logic and reason to get to our destination. Often times, if left off the leash, our emotions can hinder our progress and serve us as a disadvantage.

The truth is that a lot of times we do not have a firm grasp of what we want. We may say we want love, happiness and success, yet not know their true definitions. This is the step in which we define it, because by defining it, we gain a new appreciation of how to reach it.

2. Figure Out Where You Are. During this presentation, Charley gives us a very interesting example that I haven’t heard before. A king travels through the forest and sees dozens of trees with arrows perfectly fitted inside of bull’s eyes. Upon further investigation it seems that a young boy has shot these arrows into the tree. However, he first shot the arrow and then drew the bull’s eyes around them as part of his game.

This seems a little too similar to how we do things in our lives. We do something, and then change our whole definition to reflect our actions. Yes, the relationship I’m in is abusive, but I’m happy and in love. No, if we clearly defined what happiness and love were, we would be able to remove ourselves from the relationship and start fresh elsewhere.

3. Involve Your Emotions. I’ve previously mentioned that our emotions can serve as great boundaries and distractions between us and our destinations as opposed to following logic and reason. That was only partially correct. Once we’ve uncovered the true meaning of what we want, and have done a constant update of where we are in relation to our definition we can now bring in the secret weapons.

If used correctly our emotions and our passions will keep us on track. They’ll push us even when we’re tired and want to give up, they’ll get us there. Emotions are like the rocket jets in the back of a space shuttle. They’ll be able to propel us millions of miles. The key to remember is to keep our emotions in the back pushing, and our logic and reason in the front steering.

4. Use Your Mind To Plan Your Life. This is the fun part, I’m a big fan of planning. I sit down daily and plan my next day. I plan out my next week and month with a break down of tasks and important goals. I get this from my 5 and 20 year plan that I have for my life.

This is a crucial step to getting what we want. We can have a firm definition (steering) of what we want, a good idea of where we are (compass), and a great emotional support (jet pack), and now we need is the planning (map) to get us exactly where we want to go.

5. Use Your Mind To Find God. Charley and I both have a massive collection of self-help books and are the guys that run to the self-help section as soon as we enter Barnes N’ Noble. Charley mentioned that steps 1 through 4 were all within the self help books, but to reach step 5 he had to visit his collection of Torah books. These are the books that brought the world the 10 commandments and the same books the Christian bible are based on.

Using our minds to find God gives us a new sense of purpose and direction in life. It’s a new level of fulfillment and connection that cannot be found from any other aspects of our existence. I’m sure you’ve read about it in the 55 Monumental Ways to Enjoy Life’s Greatest Pleasures ^[2], it was the last point. It’s every human beings desire to discover and connect with that higher being, or source, or creator. For Charley the way to get there is the Torah, for you it might be another religion, or meditation, or whatever it is that you do. Regardless, that is the final step.

Happiness: Charley’s Definition

Happiness is taking pleasure in what you have.

This certainly is an interesting definition. I think it’s inline with what many other people think about happiness from the Happiness Project ^[3].

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