The Ultimate Mind Game: The Secret to Overcoming Anything

By Lee Ferguson

Lee Ferguson is a highly accomplished researcher with a passion for exploring the fascinating world of interactive mind/brain cognitive processes. A cum laude graduate of Metropolitan State University in Denver, Colorado, Lee has spent many years refining his knowledge in this complex field while developi

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amz Book Publishing Services
• Release date: Sep 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9781088286982

Lee Ferguson

An independent researcher of interactive brain processes. Inventor, essayist.

Book preview

The Ultimate Mind Game

The Secret to Overcoming Anything

Lee Ferguson

Copyright © Lee Ferguson, 2023

All Rights Reserved

This book is subject to the condition that no part of this book is to be reproduced, transmitted in any form or means; electronic or mechanical, stored in a retrieval system, photocopied, recorded, scanned, or otherwise. Any of these actions require the properwritten permission of the author.

To my wife Sharon,

whose integrity is impeccable

The other day my wife asked me when was the happiest time of my life. It’s a great question and one we should all consider; and if ‘NOW’ isn’t the answer, it may be time to look inward. Personal happiness is about the person. The individual alone and engaging with the world around them in a way that allows happiness to be the norm rather than a temporary phenomenon.  The secret is to be the cause of happiness and not look to circumstance as the answer. It begins with you. And to that end….

Preface

T

his book is about going deeper, further, toward who you truly are and can be. Toward becoming the master of yourself!

Achieving self-masteryshould be a given, a no-brainer thing we should all be taught to accomplish. It would seem the most logical training we could receive at home, in school, or in our churches; the most valuable education we could give our children. The fact is few understand what it takes to achieve it. It is a simple and somewhat easy thing to accomplish if one has the desire to do it. And those who make the effort soon find it’s a lifelong endeavor. And what greater ambition could we have? It is a noble aspiration. Self-mastery has been a cornerstone of all the major religions. It is the place where their teachings are meant to lead us. It is a place of peace and power that many of the high achievers in world history have discovered and practiced.

The Ultimate Mind Game is the title of the book, and it refers to The Awareness Game you will find later in the book. The game is a very simple mental exercise designed to facilitate your ability to discipline your thought processes. It takes place inside your mind. Its rules will help you develop the skill and discipline to monitor your thinking; to discriminate between thoughts that serve you and those that do not. It’s then you can consciously and deliberately discard those that are not productive and replace them with choices that ennoble you and those around you. These conscious and deliberate choices will be the building blocks of a new you. The result of playing the game is an affirmative, power-producing, spirit-lifting change to your experience of life.

There are several aspects to this process, and they will be illuminated as you move forward. The genesis of self-control lies in your thoughts, but it’s the words that become manifestations of those thoughts and your attention to them that will determine your life experience. Internally, the words you use to communicate with yourself are more powerful than those you use to speak to the outside world. You use words to direct all your actions. They are so powerful they virtually rule your life! If you are trying to describe your experience to yourself or others, you will use words. They begin in your mind as thoughts and leave your tongue as words. Can they make a difference in how you see the world? How the world sees you? I offer a brief and very elementary example:

Two people doing the same job in the same place. One says, I have to go to work today, the other says, I get to go to work today. The first one reflecting obligation, the second, opportunity. Which has a more peaceful and productive effect on the mind?

There are tens of thousands of meanings we assign to events each day. Meanings we depend upon to express what it is we are encountering or observing. Each meaning we choose carries a consequence. Some producing self-doubt, anxiety, distress, or pain. Some bringing peace, confidence, power, and joy. Their effect is nearly always cumulative. Becoming aware of your internal dialog and what meanings we are assigning to events and circumstances is directly related to what our experience of them will be. Taking control of those assigned meanings and mastering the language about them can elevate your experience of life.

That’s what I want for you! I want us to change the world. Yes, you and me and any others who want to do the work to get it done. I’m not talking about a political movement or armed insurrection; I’m talking about making changes to ourselves that will radiate out into the world, becoming a collective force of power, rationality, and love. The way to get there is through individual self-mastery.

I wrote this book because I felt compelled to share what I discovered when I played The Awareness Game and began living with what I had learned. When I began the game, I wasn’t aware what the result would be, but after playing the game, I found I had become the master of my own mind! And it was expanding my experience of life. That is a delicious statement! The power and peace it offered were remarkably profound. And even though I knew what I was doing to get there, the reasons why it produced such remarkable change in me remained a puzzle. That paradox spurred me to search for the reasons such a change could come about. Why did this simple game produce such change? I began to study. Beginning with discoveries of brain processes occurring in neurological science and advanced psychology and cross-referencing relevant literature and religious texts led my inquiry. Preparing this presentation for you was a matter of selecting from many subjects and sources of information relevant to the process.

The place we begin now and the first issue of importance to acknowledge and understand is culture. It’s a broad term and encompasses so much about who and how we are and how we became that way. It is the base from which we came to relate to nearly all things. There is no assumption that one culture is better or worse than another. We have all lived in and through a multitude of cultures. They began with our immediate family, and it expanded with our relatives and friends, the people we worked with, hung with, admired, or loved, at school, church, etc. The he, she, or they, who came into our lives. Each passing something on to us; a way of thinking or acting or simply a way of being. All of it had a part in determining who we became. Our beliefs, our mindsets, the way we encounter and measure the world, and the way we respond to it come mostly from how those myriad cultures influenced us to deal with things. Some family cultures are infused with love and support. Others may include murderous abuse. We have all been raised somewhere between these bookends. For the purposes of this book, it doesn’t matter which was yours. Only that you can understand its importance in shaping who you are. If there are parts or areas of your life that bring difficulty or stress, your culture may be the source. The same holds true for those whose lives are wonderfully fulfilled and happy. You can give much credit to your culture. The point of bringing this up now is how very important your culture has been in your life.

Most of what you will discover from this text is a cogent distillation of verifiable information culled from the studies of prominent neuroscientists, social scientists, psychologists, and from religious writings. It is meant to support the underpinnings of the experience I went through following the process I will describe. I put the information together to give you confidence in trusting The Awareness Game to deliver what I’m asserting is possible for you. The experience you will have from playing the game will convince you that you can design, develop, and implement a new mindset that will serve you beyond your current imagination. The greatest challenge to getting the full benefit from this information is personal integrity and mental discipline. It will depend upon your willingness to follow two simple rules and adhere to them with scrupulous integrity and a steely discipline for only ten days! Two simple, easy-to-understand rules. Trying to do it will not get it done. You must do it to reap the wondrous harvest that awaits just ten days away!

So just a few words about integrity and discipline. Integrity is a simple idea; lying to oneself or others is a self-degrading and ultimately self-destructive practice and has no part in attaining self-mastery. As for discipline, do you think for a moment anything exceptional or great is ever achieved without discipline? I’ve heard that great musicians practice ten thousand hours to achieve mastery of their instruments. Champion athletes of any sport spend inordinate hours honing their skills in the pool, on the court, in the gym, in the batting cage, etc. Highly functional doctors, scholars, and other professionals invest years in study. The true professionals apply discipline to master their skills and their crafts.

The discipline required for self-mastery is far less time-consuming, even though the commitment is equally necessary. But where to begin? That is the point of this book, the point of The Awareness Game. If you can follow the two simple rules of the game and play it with commitment and integrity for only ten days, you will have begun to develop a profound mind skill. You will see that you have the ability to take your thoughts captive and determine what you want to do with them. How you want them to be expressed or acted upon, and you will be able to speak and act from your intention. That disciplined intentional awareness will integrate into the totality of your brain’s operation and performance. The discipline will begin a re-ordering of your brain’s processes and capacities. It will create circuits and connections that never existed before. Your brain will work more efficiently than ever before. And wonderfully important: Its improved capacity and power will return to being under your purposeful and conscious control!

This process can deliver a profoundly remarkable state of being, one that offers astounding insight into what is real and wonderful, and what makes it so. You will notice vastly improved mental acuity and a more peaceful, powerful mindset. One that can find a solution for anything that provokes stress in any of its many manifestations. It will reveal a basis for trust in one’s life choices. All of it is relevant to the very interesting brain processes that go on inside your brain, in your mind and using those processes under conscious, purposeful direction. There is a common thread connecting the many pieces as you progress through the book. I have meant to stitch it into a cohesive whole.

It's difficult to imagine life without thought. It’s safe to say that thinking is the first cause of anything that follows. Humans think continuously. Our minds stay busy every waking moment, both in the conscious and subconscious state; creating thoughts that mostly reflect our need to operate in the world in which we find ourselves. We learned the rules of how to do that mostly from the examples provided by our personal cultural heritage: all we have learned and been exposed to in our lives. The material in this book, when paired with the results of the mental exercises you will be encouraged to complete, will help you examine whether what your culture taught you is correct or not, constructive or not, productive or not. It will also illuminate your capacity to change any or all of it as an operating system. We can, if we choose, change any of our ways of thinking and being that have been determined by that cultural heritage, its perceptions and conclusions. We can do it