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Introduction

The human brain might be one of the smallest organs in the body, but it is the most powerful and the most important. It’s like the CPU of a computer. It controls all the activities of the body. Once something goes wrong with it, it will affect every other body part. In fact, if something goes wrong in some parts of the brain, it can lead to complete paralysis of the limbs and even insanity. Therefore, it’s vital that you do your best to protect your brain and boost its functions.

It must matter to you that your brain is working at its optimum level because your life revolves around the effectiveness of this organ. The activities in your brain are the reason you form habits. They are also responsible for the effectiveness of medications. The reason medications work in your body is because there are receptors in your brain that binds to them. Therefore, you shouldn’t be passive about protecting your brain and enhancing its abilities.

In this short but educative book, we will explore the various ways you can boost the functioning of your brain. There are many benefits you stand to enjoy when your brain is functioning at its peak level. We’ll highlight them in one of the chapters. Ensure that you practice every tip you find in this material because they are based on research evidence. This journey promises to be life-changing. Therefore, ensure you have the right approach to it so that you can make the most out of it.

Chapter 1: Brain Power and Brain Heath 101

Since brain health and brain power are the main themes of this book, we’ll begin by exploring them. Like many similar concepts, brain power and brain health are often used interchangeably. However, they’re not the same. This chapter will explain the two ideas so that you can tell the difference. It’ll also help you know what exactly it is that you’re trying to improve when we start digging more into the subject matter.

What is Brain Health?

The crux of brain health is the ability of a person to function well when performing daily activities, including work. This includes functions such as making quality decisions, solving problems, enjoying emotional balance, and interacting successfully with others. All of these functions are based on the ability to remember, understand, learn new things, process information, think strategically, and being innovative when solving problems. Note that brain health is not the function. Rather, brain health is the fact that your brain is in a good state that enables it to carry out those functions.

So, when your brain isn’t healthy due to various reasons, which include an unhealthy lifestyle and accident, it’ll not be able to carry out its functions effectively. There are many changes taking place in the brain when you think, learn, imagine, and feel. Your habits also lead to changes in the way your brain functions and can affect its performance. Therefore, you have a role to play in ensuring that your brain health isn’t affected.

World Health Organization’s Take on Brain Health

According to the World Health Organization, brain health is an emerging and growing phenomenon that encompasses plasticity, functioning, and recovery across the life course. When you have good brain health, you’ll be able to realize your own abilities and maximize your emotional, psychological, behavioral, and cognitive functioning to cope with different life issues. Several interconnected biological and social determinants play a role in brain health and brain development from pre-conception through the end of life. These determinants are responsible for the way the brain develops, responds, and adapts to various situations.

They give ways to strategize in order to prevent issues and make progress across the life course. Brain health conditions are characterized by disruptions in normal brain growth and brain functioning. They emerge throughout the life course and may manifest as neurological and neurodevelopmental conditions. They include headache, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, neuroinfections, autism spectrum disorders, cerebrovascular disease, brain tumors, epilepsy, cerebral palsy, dementia, traumatic injury, and neurological disorders resulting from malnutrition.

Social and health care for these conditions often requires multisectoral and interdisciplinary collaborations with a holistic person-centered approach focused on prevention, promotion, treatment, and care. They also include rehabilitation over the lifespan and the active engagement of persons experiencing the conditions and their families and carers, as appropriate.

What is Brain Power?

Unlike brain health, brain power is all about the brain’s functions. It includes intelligence and the ability to think. So, what we admire about people isn’t their brain health but their brain power. People with fantastic brain power are capable of handling highly intelligent activities and perform at a high level. You cannot afford to have low brain power in the modern world due to the fact that we are increasingly moving away from the days when we depend more on our muscles and strength.

The most successful people in the modern world aren’t the most muscular but those that know how to maximize their brain power. These days, we are involved in many activities that require idea generation, business meetings, copywriting, and other endeavors that require you to be alert and focused. The pressure to perform at your optimum level is very high in the modern world. There are many people waiting in the queue to replace you if you cannot produce the goods. Therefore, it is vital that you’re deliberate about improving your cognitive ability.

When you have high brain power, it guarantees that you will be able to do more in a short time. Indeed, there are some people that are naturally super intelligent. Still, there are things that can be done to ensure that you can compete favorably with such people. Scientifically, brain power can be measured. It can be done by using the Brain Health Index (BHI). The BHI is a multi-faceted science-based snapshot that helps to measure the brain’s performance. You can subjectively detect when your brain performance is improving. However, tests like this can help you to track changes in your brain performance in an objective way.

Fun Facts About the Brain

As we conclude this section, we’ll highlight some fun facts about the brain as we prepare for further discussion regarding brain health and brain power in the next chapter. Below are some interesting facts about the brain that you will find intriguing:

Incredible Miles of Blood Vessels

The brain has more than one hundred thousand miles of blood vessels! This is striking because even the distance around the world at the equator isn’t up to that. The distance is 24,900 miles. This implies that if the blood vessels in the brain were stretched out as a journey, it would take days to complete it!

It’s Normal for Your Mind to Wander

It’s vital that you do all you can to stay focused. However, it’s not necessarily a sign of indiscipline to find your mind wandering once in a while. Research has proven that some parts of the brain are responsible for controlling activities such as daydreaming. Interestingly, these parts are always active when your brain is at rest.

Thinking Consumes a lot of Oxygen

Oxygen is the fuel of the brain. The more you think, the more it consumes. Serious and rigorous thinking, especially when you are anxious, can consume up to fifty percent. So, you should try as much as possible to cut off anxiety to preserve your brain health.

Size Doesn’t Matter

Some people assume that an individual will be more intelligent when he or she has a relatively larger brain. However, this isn’t true. There is no scientific evidence that supports the claim that a larger brain will make a person smarter.

Jelly-Like Texture

The average adult human brain weighs around three pounds. Interestingly, it has a texture that feels like firm jelly. Have you ever wondered what it feels like if you touch the human brain? There it is!

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Introduction

What does it take to become one of the top respected brands on the web, in any niche?

It takes a LOT of hard work and grit – that’s for sure. But it also takes a lot more than that. It takes strategy, cunning and actually a big helping of luck! If you want to be one of the major players in your chosen niche, then you need to know exactly how to build an audience, gain their loyalty and keep them coming back to your site time and time again.

But there’s not just ‘one secret’ to this. In fact, there are countless little things that the very best do differently. These are the things that set apart those incredible brands and make them the huge household names they are today. Things like Bodybuilding.com, The Verge, Mashable, Tim Ferriss, Smart Passive Income, Engadget, Wired…

While these companies also have the advantage of having built up their name over countless years and huge amounts of investment to pour into their marketing and sales, it’s still really the strategy that is the big difference.

And this book is going to share that strategy and some of the most powerful tips that set the very best apart from the less special…You will learn…

- How to make the most of your online brand
- How to leverage the power of social media to gain shares, likes and followers
- How to integrate your social media with your website for better synergy
- The most important platforms you need to be on
- How to make your brand professional
- How to grab attention with great headlines
- How to deliver true value
- How to avoid losing followers
- How to become part of a community
- How to work with influencers

And much, much more… Provide Value

Here is the single most important thing you must know about thriving on social media: it is absolutely imperative that you always provide value. What does this mean? It means that you’re going to be offering something concrete and tangible to your audience and giving them something that they can benefit from. Think of your social media much like a product or a service in its own right and NOT just a means to get as many people to your blog as possible.

This simple paradigm shift is the absolute difference between a successful social media channel and an unsuccessful one. You need to give people a reason to follow you, a reason to share your content and a reason to keep checking back to your page. Don’t just expect people to follow you on Twitter because they ‘like your brand’!

So how does one go about providing value? In the case of social media, this can mean offering:

- Entertainment
- Information
- Discounts and offers
- Inspiration

A good example of this is any of the thousands of successful channels on Instagram that post pictures of healthy lifestyles. There are a lot of great Instagram accounts run by fitness experts and enthusiasts and that include images of people working hard in the gym, looking great topless on the beach or downing protein shakes. People find this inspiring in helping them move toward their goals and so if the images are well composed and they are well designed, then they are providing value in that way. People know that by following that account, they’ll get updated regularly with new inspiring pictures to help drive them further in their own training.

Another example might be to share links to informative posts on a Facebook account. If you have a blog about online business, then you can post links to news stories regarding SEO, to tips and ideas for creating content etc. Don’t only post your own content – find and share the kind of exciting content that your audience can benefit from! (Note that this is all much easier if you genuinely are passionate about the subject matter – as that way you can simply share the things you’re reading anyway!

But perhaps the best example of ‘social media as product’ would be one of the many Pinterest boards on Pinterest. These tend to act as collections of ideas for interior design, for weddings, for personal style etc.

Thus, many people will head to these pages whenever they need ideas and some brands that have come up with related boards have been able to garner huge followings that way.

How do you know if you’re doing this right? Ask yourself this simple question: if your social media channel were to shut down today would your followers be disappointed? We’re not asking if they would notice – we’re asking if they would genuinely feel that something they enjoyed had gone.

If the answer is yes, then congratulations! You are officially providing value.

Don’t Just Promote

That’s what you need to do then but just as important is what you need to avoid doing.

What is the polar opposite of providing value?

The answer is simply promoting your business. And this is what too many misguided small businesses actually use their social media to do. These tend to be the kinds of companies that feel a little stuffy and out of touch to the user. Local service businesses like plumbers and removal men, or more corporate operations like EPOS providers and time clock solutions/accountants.

These are the companies that will use their social media to post things like ‘Visit our site and see why we’re the best at what we do!’. Or, ‘Our software solutions are second to none!’.

This is literally just advertising and it completely misses the point of social media.

Don’t do it!

Post What YOU Would Want to Read So why is self-promoting wrong?

The answer is that it’s not offering any value. People do not want to go out of their way to be advertised to and they don’t want adverts showing up in their home feeds alongside posts from their friends and family! This will simply demonstrate a lack of understanding on your part (hurting your reputation) and it will frustrate your visitors likely motivating them to simply unsubscribe and leave.

And can you imagine anyone actually clicking on a post about why you’re the best accounting company in the [INSERT AREA] region? No, didn’t think so…

The best way to get a good idea of whether your posts are ticking the right boxes is simply to ask yourself: would you read it?

If this came up on your homefeed, how would you feel? If you’d be pleased and then go on to read it and possibly share it, then it’s an ideal choice for your own social media channel!

But if you’d ignore it, or worse yet feel frustrated, then that’s a sign you shouldn’t do the same.

Look at your own history on these sites and ask yourself why you clicked on the links you did and shared the things you did. What are the best posts you’ve seen in your niche lately? Why? What can you do to emulate their success?

The key here is to remember that your audience are real people who have the agency to follow whatever they want and leave when they want. Thus, you need to get inside their heads.

Often that just means putting yourself in their shoes but another option is to create your fictional ‘persona’. A persona is a buyer biography – an imaginary individual that you will consider to be your ideal customer. By getting inside their heads, you can know precisely what kind of content you should be creating/sharing and you can speak directly to that person with things that will interest them.

One way to do this is to think of someone in your own life who would be your ideal customer. I sell fitness products for instance and I have a few friends who always want to get into shape and are always asking for advice but who never put the time in to get the results they need. They are the ideal customer for a fitness ebook or a protein shake and so I keep them in mind whenever I create content for my social media pages – I write to them and write in a way that will get them interested and engaged!

Learn How to Create Titles That Grab Attention

Writing content and sharing posts that can do this is the crucial skill you need to develop if you’re going to build and grow your social media channels.

But there is nowhere where this is more important than in the titles of your posts. Your title is your first impression – it’s like wearing the right suit to an interview.

In this case, if you want people to read your content, then you need to make sure you are creating really great titles that will really stand out and sound fascinating, unique and exciting.

We can see this when we look at clickbait and that’s the reason that clickbait has become some popular.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, a clickbait title is a title that is designed to grab attention and encourage clicks. Often, it does this by piquing the interest of the reader with some kind of mystery or shocking statement. In other cases, the language might even be intentionally strange, such that people will be interested to click it and find out what’s going on.

Here are some examples:

“Fitness Trainers Hate Him! Find Out How This Man Has Been Overturning Centuries of Fitness Advice”

Or

“Try This One Weird Trick to Get Rid of Bodyfat!”

Or

“This Man Told Me His Secret to Making Money Online… What Happened Next Will Shock You”

Or

“10 Tricks to Look Sexier Instantly. Number Four Changed My Life!” In each case, there is some mystery. Who is this man who fitness trainers hate? What’s so special about number four? What’s the ‘weird trick’?

These titles invite clicks because they sound and look interesting and readers can’t help but want to know more. What’s more, is that the titles all allude to the fact that the information can somehow change their lives or at least be shocking and controversial. In either case, this information doesn’t sound boring – it sounds engaging and enticing and it’s very hard to keep on scrolling past. Especially if you combine it with an image of someone looking very attractive, or before and after pictures showing an incredible body transformation!

Understanding the ‘Value Proposition’ Something to understand as you’re doing all this is what your value proposition is.

Your value proposition should go beyond just your social media. This is rather the entire ethos behind your brand and it should be the reason your business exists: your ‘why’.

So what does all that mean? Essentially, it means that you should be aiming to sell more than just a product or a service, you should be selling a dream, an idea or something that can one way or another, improve people’s lives.

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Introduction Annihilator Stress Course

It seems like you hear it all the time from nearly every one you know – “I’m SO stressed out!” Pressures abound in this world today. Those pressures cause stress and anxiety, and often we are ill-equipped to deal with those stressors that trigger anxiety and other feelings that can make us sick. Literally, sick.

The statistics are staggering. One in every eight Americans age 18-54 suffers from an anxiety disorder. This totals over 19 million people! Research conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health has shown that anxiety disorders are the number one mental health problem among American women and are second only to alcohol and drug abuse by men.

Women suffer from anxiety and stress almost twice as much as men. Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in America, surpassing even depression in numbers. Anxiety is the most common mental health issue facing adults over 65 years of age. Anxiety disorders cost the U.S. $46.6 billion annually. Anxiety sufferers see an average of five doctors before being successfully diagnosed.

Unfortunately, stress and anxiety go hand in hand. In fact, one of the major symptoms of stress is anxiety. And stress accounts for 80 percent of all illnesses either directly or indirectly. In fact, stress is more dangerous than we thought. You've probably heard that it can raise your blood pressure, increasing the likelihood of a stroke in the distant future, but recently a health insurance brochure claimed that 90 percent of visits to a primary care physician were stressrelated disorders.

Health Psychology magazine reports that chronic stress can interfere with the normal function of the body's immune system. And studies have proven that stressed individuals have an increased vulnerability to catching an illness and are more susceptible to allergic, autoimmune, or cardiovascular diseases.

Doctors agree that during chronic stress, the functions of the body that are nonessential to survival, such as the digestive and immune systems, shut down. "This is why people get sick," he says. "There are also many occurrences of psychosomatic illness, an illness with an emotional or psychological side to it."

Furthermore, stress often prompts people to respond in unhealthy ways such as smoking, drinking alcohol, eating poorly, or becoming physically inactive. This damages the body in addition to the wear and tear of the stress itself.

Stress is a part of daily life. It’s how we react to it that makes all the difference in maintaining our health and well-being. Pressures occur throughout life and those pressures cause stress. You need to realize that you will never completely get rid of stress in your life, but you can learn coping techniques to turn that stress into a healthier situation.

When I first got the assignment to write this book, I immediately thought, “Sure, you can eliminate stress and anxiety by locking yourself into a room and never talking to anyone ever again”. But that wouldn’t make a very informative book, now would it?

I have suffered from anxiety disorders caused by stress for years. I have learned somewhat how to cope with that although I’m always learning new things and dealing mechanisms. So what I’ve done in this book is taken some of my own experiences and combined them with advice from experts to give you tools that will help you in stressful situations.

I’ve also outlined different ways you can face debilitating anxiety and panic attacks that many people suffer from. While researching this book, I’ve come across some amazing information and can’t wait to share it with you. I’ve learned so much myself, so let’s look at how to eliminate stress and anxiety from your life!

Chapter 1: What's The Cause For All This Stress?

We're living in very trying and difficult times and things don't seem to be getting any easier. Sometimes life can seem terribly painful and unfair, yet somehow we manage to struggle on, day after day, hoping and praying that things will soon get better.

But day by day the world is becoming a crazier and more uncertain place to live in, not to mention stressful. Nothing seems safe anymore. Millions of people are in record levels of debt. Many are losing their jobs, their homes, their health and sometimes even their sanity. Worry, depression and anxiety seem to have become a way of life for way too many people.

We seem to have entered the Age of Anxiety. In fact, in 2002, the cover of Time magazine proclaimed this loud and clear on one of their covers as the featured story in that issue. The constant stress and uncertainties of living in the 21st century have certainly taken their toll, and as a result many of us seem to live a life of constant fear and worry.

When the terrorist attacks happened on September 11, this constant stress and worry seemed to just be magnified. In fact, many people even now four years later report they are still scared that something of that magnitude could happen again – perhaps closer to them.

Turn on the news or open up a newspaper and we are bombarded with disturbing images and stories. We begin to wonder if we are safe anywhere. In this, the information age, never before have we had so much access to so much data.

The economy is another stressor. Our country is in debt and so are many Americans. Soaring gas prices, outrageous housing costs, even the cost of food has sent many Americans to work in jobs that are unsatisfying and tedious. They work these jobs because they need a paycheck. Today, it’s more important to bring home the bacon rather than work in a dream career. Having more women in the workplace adds to the stress. So many women feel the need to be everything to everyone and that includes a paycheck earner, house keeper, mom, wife,

daughter, and sibling. The only problem with that is some women just don’t make any time for themselves thus contributing to their stress levels being at an all-time high.

Even children can feel the pressure of stress and anxiety. Teenagers who want to go to college find themselves pushing themselves during their studies to try and obtain scholarships so they can attend schools that have ever increasing tuition costs.

They find themselves having to hold down part-time jobs on top of all that to earn money for extras that their parents can no longer afford. Add peer pressure into the mix and you have a veritable pressure cooker!

Cell phones, internet, palm pilots, blackberries, i-pods – we are always on the go and always reachable. We don’t make time to relax and enjoy life any more. Why not? We certainly should! We feel pressure to do these things because we think we HAVE to, not because we WANT to.

All too often, it’s difficult for people to just say “No”. Not saying that one little word piles up unneeded expectations and obligations that make us feel anxious.

All of us will experience situations that may cause us to become stressed or feel anxious. The reasons are too many to note but can include, buying a property, having guests stay over (inlaws!), being bullied, exams, looking after children, managing finances, relationship issues, traveling etc.

Stress is a ‘normal’ function of everyday life. Only when it appears to take over our lives does it then become a problem.

Everyone will have different reasons why a situation causes them pressure. As a rule it’s usually when we don’t feel in control of a situation, then we feel its grip tightening around us causing us to feel worried or ‘stressed’.

If stress is caused by us not feeling in control of a situation, the answer is to try and reverse this, and regain that control. The good news is: YOU CAN!

You have everything inside you that you need to overcome your stress and the accompanying anxiety. The problem is, often we don’t realize that we are in control because we feel so out of control at time. But the tools are there, you just have to use them.

Let’s first look at the barriers we put up that are preventing us from becoming healthy and getting rid of our anxiety and stress.

Chapter 2: Avoiding Behaviors That Fuel Stress

There are three obsessive behaviors that you are likely to be engaging in that impeded your healing process and stop you from enjoying a stress-free life. Recognizing these barriers can be a great first step toward getting rid of the problems that go with being too stressed.

The first is obsessive negativity. When you are obsessively negative, it means that you have a tendency toward being "negative" about people, places, situations, and things in your life. Perhaps you find yourself saying things like "I can't do this!" or "No one understands!" or "Nothing ever works!", for example. You may be doing this unconsciously, but essentially you have what's known as a "sour grapes" attitude, and it holds you back from knowing what it's like to view life from a positive lens and enjoy the beauty in yourself and people around you! There's a whole world out there for you...with happiness and positive thinking.

Then you have obsessive perfectionism. When you engage in obsessive perfectionism, you are centered on trying to do everything "just so" to the point of driving yourself into an anxious state of being. You may find yourself making statements such as, "I have to do this right, or I'll be a failure!" or "If I am not precise, people will be mad at me!" Again, this behavior may be totally under the threshold of your awareness, but it interferes greatly with your ability to enjoy things without feeling "uptight" and "stressed."

Finally there is obsessive analysis. When you are obsessed about analyzing things, you find yourself wanting to re-hash a task or an issue over and over again. For instance, you might find yourself making statements such as, "I need to look this over, study it, and know it inside and out...or else I can't relax!" or "If I relax and let things go without looking them over repeatedly, things go wrong!"