run riot! Imagine that you have limitless time, resources and energy, and that you can do anything that you wish, for all eternity. Again, using a large sheet of blank paper, and having a compact image in the centre that pictures, for you, the essence of your Ideal Future, develop a Mind Map (or ten!) on all those things you would like to accomplish if there were no limits placed upon you.
This Ideal Future Mind Map should include all those things you have dreamed, at any stage in your life, of doing. Some of the most common dreams include travel, learning new languages, learning to play a musical instrument, drawing and painting, writing, learning new dances, exploring new subjects, and taking up new mental and physical sports and activities. (One useful way to prepare your brain to do this Mind Map is to do a quick speed Mind Map on everything you do not want in your ideal future.)
Suggested topics for your main branches include: Skills; Education; Friends; Family; Job; Hobbies; and Goals. Mind Map the rest of your life exactly as you would design it if a genie from a magic lamp had said to you that if you Mind Mapped perfectly and extensively your ideal future, that genie would grant you every single wish!
When you are doing this Mind Map, make sure that you let your mind go totally, and Mind Map out everything you would truly like to do if you had that infinite time and money. Include in this Mind Map as much colour and as many images as you can in order to stimulate your creative thinking.
One other useful mini-Mind Map you can create while Mind Mapping your Ideal Future is an ideal day in your future. Using a clock as your central image, Mind Map all the major elements of that perfect day. After you have completed that Mind Map, make that perfect day every day of your real life.
When you have completed your Ideal Future Mind Map, use it as a stimulus and guide to add quality and hope to the real future that you are going to both live and create. Decide that you’ll make as much of it as possible come true. Many people who have already tried this Mind Map have found it to be extraordinarily successful in transforming their lives and making them more happy and successful. Within a few years (or less!) of creating their Mind Maps, they have found that as much as 80% of their dreams have come true!
For an example of a completed Mind Map on this subject turn to Plate 8.
Mind Maps and the Future
What the brains of the world have needed is a thinking tool that reflects their natural ways of functioning – which allows them to use all the images and associations in the networking, radiant and explosive way to which they were born.
You are now in possession of that tool. The tool that one Irish broadcaster recently described as: ‘Perfect art for the mind.’
The Mind Maps you make will amaze, delight, and enrich you.
Mind Maps will make your life more productive, fulfilled, and successful.
Mind Mapping is, in a very real sense, a co-operative venture and adventure between what we put on paper and what goes on in our heads.
You have already realized that Mind Maps can be used for as many different things as you can think about. And how many is that? Infinite!
In addition to the uses we have explored in this book, other popular uses for Mind Maps include:
planning vacations, parties, weddings, events, jobs, and life
customer Mind Maps for salespeople, in which the growing relationship is constantly updated on the customer Mind Map
reviewing for study purposes
running and recording meetings
solving all sorts of problems including personal, interpersonal, and academic ones
getting perspectives on any situation
interviewing
running a household or multi-national business
2.1 Fore-word! Your Journey to Verbal Power Begins
‘“The pen is mightier than the sword” only if the brain behind it knows how to wield the word!’
Tony Buzan
What is ‘Verbal Intelligence’?
Verbal Intelligence is the ability to ‘juggle’ with the alphabet of letters: to combine them into words and sentences. Your Verbal IQ tends to be measured by the size and range of your vocabulary, and by your ability to see relationships between words.
Why Does Verbal Intelligence Matter?
At the beginning of the 20th century, psychologists observed that there was a direct correlation between vocabulary size and strength, and life-success. In other words, the bigger and better your vocabulary and your Verbal Intelligence, the more successful and confident you will be in your life in general – in your work, in your social and personal life, and in your studies.
Words have tremendous power. Those people who harness the strength of words give themselves the power to persuade, to inspire, to mesmerize, and to influence in all manner of ways the human brain. It is not surprising, then, that words and their power have become one of the most important currencies in the ‘Knowledge Revolution’ of the 21st century.
How Will The Power of Verbal Intelligence Help Me?
The really good news is that it is easy to improve and expand your verbal skills, and to increase immeasurably your Verbal IQ, and this book will show you how. Barry McGuigan, whom you can read about in Chapter 2.7, deliberately set about raising his Verbal IQ when he turned to TV commentating after his retirement from the boxing ring, and has since become as adept mentally as he was physically as a fighter.
The Power of Verbal Intelligence is about to take you on one of the most exciting journeys of your life. It is a journey on which you will:
discover and explore new worlds
feast your imagination on new concepts and ideas
learn more about your amazing brain and how to use it
learn the basic building blocks of word power, enabling you, at a stroke, to expand your current vocabulary by thousands of words
learn how to use your body to communicate effectively
rediscover the joy of playing around with words and their meanings
learn the basic secrets of reading faster and comprehending more
learn how to mesmerize and entrance others with the power and beauty of the Power of Verbal Intelligence has been designed to make sure that you have fun while you increase your Word Power.
Most importantly, the Power of Verbal Intelligence has been designed to make sure
