Brain specialist, Dr. Carolyn Leaf, contends that the brain can rewire itself if you do the work. Some of the books I read,  podcasts I hear and seminars I attend, I say, “Every entrepreneur, business owner and church leader must read this”. The first such book of 2015 is Seth Godin’s All Marketers are Liars (Storytellers). I did not expect to hear him talking about brain function.

“…our brain is always inventing a plot, a story, an explanation for what we see. We need to see explanations where there are none because our brains are too restless to live with restlessness. In the face of random behavior, people make up their own (stories).”

“We expect something to occur and our brains make it so.” (Portfolio Books 2005)

To repeat: What you give your brain to work on, it will! If you aren’t intentional your brain will go to its default and produce last year over again. It will make up its own story based on the past. Do you want to live 2010…2014 one more time in 2015?

With faith, hope, love as the filters and streams for goals, plans, tactical actions, where do we make this work? Terri Savelle Foy’s book, Make your Dreams Bigger Than Your Memories. (Regal 2010) gives us patterns and fabric the brain will work on and work with. These are not limited to Ms. Foy. This list is used by Michael Hyatt and Rick Warren and long before I read Ms. Foy I used them in seminars.

Invest Faith, Hope, Love intentionally (with a written plan) and reciprocally these seven arenas and you will give your brain something to work with.

1. Faith
2. Family
3. Fitness
4. Financial
5. Friendship
6. Free-time
7. Vocation

Under each category ask and answer:

• What am I going to do?
• Why am I doing this?
• How am I going to do this?  Process. Pay attention to your daily process and the outcome will follow.
• When am I going to do this?  Time each day and the “by date.” For a goal to work it must be S.A.M.—specific, attainable and measurable. The goal must have calendar dates connected. “By July 2, 2015, I will have done….”

We get what we expect! You are worthy!! You deserve it. Write your goals down and ask, What? Why? How? When?

©2015 D. Dean Benton—Writer, Wonderer, Provoker–Benton Quest House