Flickr image "Do you find my brain? - Auf der Suche nach meinem Gehirn" by alles-schlumpf

Your journey towards financial freedom is dependent on how well you grow your brain to its fullest potential, so that you empower yourself with its ability to think up of ways to:

• Live within your means;
• Save and invest;
• Grow your means; and
• Protect your means

Your brain may stay the same size physically in adulthood, it’s not the same brain as you age. The reason is that the connections between the neurons can keep growing and growing as we experience more of life and life experiences that make our lives so diverse and unique.

1. Feeding your brain

You have heard of brain food such as fish and omega 3? Feeding your brain with nutritious foods is one of the ways you can maximise its potential. Did you know that the brain is the not the biggest organ in the body (it’s actually the skin) but it draws a lot of resources from the body. To be fully support your brain, do provide it with the nutrients it needs to function effectively.

A well balanced diet with sufficient proteins, cabohyrates and fat will help fuel your brain (and body) for you to be effective in your journey towards financial freedom.

2. Use your brain

“Use it or lose it.”

This simple but important quote is applicable to our brain. It’s either we exercise it or we lose it. Scientists now recognise how mental games such as mahjong help the elderly mitigate the risk of dementia and degenerating brain function due to aging. Even before you hit the age of 62 to be withdrawing your Central Provident Fund, you should constantly be building up your brain.

Learn something new everyday. One of my recent finds on the internet is the Technology Entertainment and Design (TED) conference. It’s a conference where speakers touch on varied topics with a common theme of  “spreading ideas”. The useful thing about TED is that the conference videos are available online free to the world. I’ve been downloading a video or two every week to listen to speakers expound on ideas relating to success and delaying gratification using marshmellows as a real-life experiment.

I’m also reading a book every weekend on topics that will help me. I make use of the Personal MBA book list by Josh Kaufman to develop management and personal effectiveness skills through reading the recommended books.  The last book I was reading was “Presentation Zen” by Garr Reynolds whose blog got me into watching TED videos. I picked up “Presentation Zen” as I would be doing a 40 minute presentation at a local conference soon and thought it was time to update how I make use of powerpoint and to maximise my own effectiveness as a speaker since I’ve had five solid years of experience in toastmasters.

Learning as a means can be rewarding. Learning to be more effective in your journey can be even more rewarding. My blog monetisation efforts yielded me around $1,700 last year. It’s small money but significant enough to be worth my time in learning and applying web 2.0 technologies. My investments in social networking tools such as twitter and facebook has also allowed me to tap into networks that were buried deep and beyond my reach until I learnt to dig them up.

3. Focus your brain

Your journey towards financial freedom requires you to focus on the objective. If you don’t set objectives and prioritise how you spend your time to meet those objectives, you’re not living, you’re just existing.

Financial freedom means to learn, apply and make changes to parts of your life that help or hinder your progress. Wasting money on magazines. Minimise buying them, make use of the library to borrow old issues for free. Spending too much time on World of Warcraft? Set aside only 1 or 2 nights out of the week to play computer games and the rest of your remaining free time reading investment, personal finance and personal effectiveness books.

I’m focussed on financial freedom and increasingly I can see how each of my day-to-day decisions in life affect how I progress or deviate from my plan to be financially free before the age of 45.

Your life your rules

Your life is in your hands. Your brain directs your body to do the actions that help you (or not) towards being financially free. I realise that the more you take control, the more you realise there are a lot of things you can change in your own life to make yourself move closer to being financially free.

You too can grow your brain towards financial freedom.

Be well and prosper.