The Human Mind Is An Amazing Instrument

Something I like to remind myself of once in a while is that a person can do whatever they set their mind to. It is not without reason that we tell children to dream, and to dream BIG. You can't get anywhere if you don't have a vision.

There is something pretty amazing that happened to me when I was in university that illustrates this very nicely. Here is the true story:

When I was in university studying to be a teacher, I had a part-time job at the Budapest Delicatessen in Ottawa's By Ward Market. I worked quite a lot of hours there, devoting my weekends and quite a few afternoons every week to earning money. Eventually, the owner of the Budapest bought the butcher shop next door and I was often scheduled to work the cash there on Sundays.

It happened one semester that I had a presentation to give for one of my classes. The teacher had handed out the subjects and told us to research them so we could teach the class about them. It was pretty intimidating since we didn't get to choose our subjects ourselves so we didn't know the first thing about them. Even so, we were expected to become knowledgeable so we could explain and answer any questions our classmates might have.

This happened over 12 years ago, so my kind readers will forgive me for not remembering what subject I was assigned. All I remember is that it was a teaching technique and I had read quite a few books about it and I still had no real idea what it was concretely. Needless to say, I was a bit stressed out.

Sundays at the butcher shop were very slow, so I had about five of my books with me and was taking notes on what I thought I should share with the class. I was basically preparing to b.s. my way through the presentation, regurgitating what the books said, and hoped that it would somehow make sense to the class. As I went over the content and wrote down my notes, the concept started taking form in my mind. I was starting to understand. This shouldn't be surprising because the more you turn something over in your mind, there more your understanding grows. Your mind creates connections within the subject matter and links these to your previous life experiences. This is how we learn. But the amazing thing is what happened next.

As I said, I was working the cash at the butcher shop on Sunday. The presentation was to be on Tuesday. On Monday I only had one class in the afternoon, so I planned to write up my presentation on Monday morning so I could practice and memorize it Monday night after supper. 

I woke up on Monday having dreamed every word of my presentation! I kid you not. I got out of bed, grabbed my notebook, and wrote down word for word what I was going to say. To top it off, I understood it all! (Thank goodness!) I didn't even have to work on memorizing anything because I already had, while I was sleeping! Isn't that amazing? 

It was after this happened that I recognized how truly amazing the human brain is. It did me a huge favor that time. In essence, it did my homework for me! How cool is that?

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If you will indulge me, I would like to make a small sidetrip down memory lane... It's the 1980s and Growing Pains is one of my favorite sitcoms. There is an episode where Mike is caught cheating on a test. He had written notes on the bottoms of his sneakers. He is allowed to retake the test but he admits that he had cheated the second time too: he hid the answers in his head! :D
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So, now that you know its potential, what are you going to use your mind to do?