on the other hand, that you have a giant library, filled with incredible amounts of information on everything you ever wanted to know. In this new super-library, rather than all this information being piled randomly in the middle of the floor, everything is filed in perfect order, exactly where you want it.
In addition to this, the library has a phenomenal data-retrieval and access system that enables you to find anything you want at the flash of a thought.
An impossible dream?
An immediate possibility for you!
Mind Maps are that phenomenal data-retrieval and access system for the gigantic library that actually exists in your amazing brain.
Mind Maps help you to learn, organize, and store as much information as you want, and to classify it in natural ways that give you easy and instant access (perfect memory!) to whatever you want.
Mind Maps have an additional strength. You would think that the more information you put into your head, the more stuffed your head would become and the more difficult it would be to get any information out. Mind Maps turn this thought on its head!
Why?
Because with Mind Maps each new piece of information you put into your library automatically ‘hooks on to’ all the information already in there. With more of these grappling-hooks-of-memory attaching to any piece of information in your head, the more easy it is for you to ‘hook out’ whatever information you need. With Mind Maps, the more you know and learn, the easier it is to learn and know more!
In summary, Mind Mapping has a whole range of advantages that help make your life easier and more successful.
It’s time for you to start your first one!
Discovering Your Natural Mind Mapping Ability
Imagination and Association Game
Seven Steps to Making a Mind Map
Creating Your First Mind Map
In this chapter you are going to make your first Mind Map, starting with an Imagination and Association game.
You will graduate from this chapter knowing how to Mind Map and having learned all the ingredients that go into making a great Mind Map.
Discovering Your Natural Mind Mapping Ability
How does a Mind Map work? In the same way your brain works!
And fortunately, although your brain can do the most incredibly complex things, it is based on the most profoundly simple principles. That is why Mind Maps are easy and fun to create, because they work with your brain’s natural needs and energy rather than against them.
So what are the keys to your brain’s functioning?
Quite simply: imagination and association
Doubt it? Then try this game and make your first Mind Map.
Imagination and Association Game
Read the word printed in capital letters below and immediately close your eyes and keep them closed for about 30 seconds and think about it.
FRUIT
When you read the word and then closed your eyes, was all that popped into your mind a little computer printout of the word: F-R-U-I-T?!
Of course not! What your brain probably generated was an image of your favourite single fruit, or a bowl of fruit, or a fruit store, and so on. You probably also saw the colours of different fruits, connected the tastes to appropriate fruits, and similarly ‘experienced’ their aromas. This is because our brains work with sensory images with appropriate links and associations radiating from them. Our brains use words to trigger these images and associations. They produce 3-D pictures with numerous associations that are especially personal to us.
Your brain thinks radiantly in all directions.
What you have demonstrated with the ‘Fruit Exercise’ is that your brain Mind Maps naturally! And in doing so, you have accomplished even more than you thought, and opened the way for phenomenal improvement in your thinking power. You have learned how your brain actually works!
To get some insight into just how brilliant your brain is and how important Mind Maps are as a method for allowing it to express itself naturally and easily, think again about the ‘Fruit Exercise’ you have just completed: how quickly did you get that image of fruit? Most people answer ‘immediately’.
In daily conversation you are accessing ‘immediately’ a constant stream of continuing data so easily and elegantly that you don’t even notice that your brain is doing something that makers of the world’s super-computers can only dream of doing! You already possess the ultimate super-computer. And it’s in your head!
It is this amazing ‘super-computer power’ that Mind Maps harness. Mind Maps are the reflection of your brain’s natural, image-filled thinking processes and abilities.
This is how our brains work –
IMAGES with networks of ASSOCIATION
This is how Mind Maps work –
IMAGES with networks of ASSOCIATION
Seven Steps to Making a Mind Map
1 Start in the CENTRE of a blank page turned sideways. Why?Because starting in the centre gives your brain freedom to spread out in all directions and to express itself more freely and naturally.
2 Use an IMAGE or PICTURE for your central idea. Why?Because an image is worth a thousand words and helps you use your Imagination. A central image is more interesting, keeps you focused, helps you concentrate, and gives your brain more of a buzz!
3 Use COLOURS throughout. Why?Because colours are as exciting to your brain as are images. Colour adds extra vibrancy and life to your Mind Map, adds tremendous energy to your Creative Thinking, and is fun!
4 CONNECT your MAIN BRANCHES to the central IMAGE and connect your second and third-level branches to the first and second levels, etc. Why?Because, as you now know, your brain works by ASSOCIATION. If you connect the branches, you will understand and remember a lot more easily. Connecting your main branches also creates and establishes a basic structure or architecture for your thoughts. This is very similar to the way in which in nature a tree has connected branches that radiate from its central trunk. If there were little gaps between the trunk and its main branches or between those main branches and the smaller branches and twigs, nature wouldn’t work quite so well! Without connection in your Mind Map, everything (especially your memory and learning!) falls apart. Connect!
5 Make your branches CURVED rather than straight-lined. Why?Because having nothing but
