If you are at a point in your life that you would like to start excelling expect to ease your self into some lifestyle changes. These five easy tips will get you back on the right track.

1. Shut off the idiot box!

This is also known as the TV. There is a channel on TV called “Junk Food TV” this actually should be called crap for your mind. Watching hours and hours of tv is actually very draining. Have your ever sat in front of the tube watching a game or some tv marathon and felt just totally drained afterwards? That’s because you are just watching garbage.

Why do you think advertisers spend so much money on advertising on TV? Because once your mind is numb your mind can be controlled. There have been studies on this very same thing.

2.Start a workout program.

People really do underestimate the power of a good work out. Lazy people look at it as a chore while others of us look at it as a way to feel good and look good. However, getting the old blood flowing with a good run or weight lifting proves to help you focus with clarity and for longer spurts. That’s why so many gyms are open early in the morning. The people who work out in the morning use that exercise as a catapult for the rest of the day.

If you are just getting started go for a walk and work your way up into a run. You will notice a difference in think and focus within the first few days.

3.Go to bed earlier and get up earlier.

We all have done it. You stay up till 2 or 3 in the moring on a weekend night and have slept till 10 or 11. You wake up but the day is half gone already and you feel tired and lethargic, right?

You feel like laying around the house all day and can’t get motivated for anything. You got eight hours of sleep right?

Now compare that feeling to when you get to bed at 10 that night and are up at 6 in the morning. It’s the same eight hurs of sleep but you are more alive and peppy.

Our bodies were designed for getting to bed early and getting up early. That’s what helps our brain run at its optimal performance.

4.Read a book.

Reading stimulates our thought process. It also uses a great deal of imagination. Imagination leads to creativity and creativity can lead to excellent problem solving skills. If you run across a word that you don’t know the meaning of take a look up the work in a dictionary and improve your vocabulary as well.

5. Take time to focus on yourself.

We have busy lives. Going to and from, playing, working etc. At the end of the day take a few minutes after life has settled down, and start journaling. It’s an interesting process that if you stay with it will enhance your life and train your brain to think.

Good IQ score is subjective. Raw score is what a person scores when he/she answers the questions correct. The following practices should be used to interpret or draw conclusions. Comparing two scores also needs the following methods to be used to establish if the score is really worthy or not.

Title of the IQ test
The need today is of a perfect system to compare scores from two IQ tests. It will be foolish to compare two scores solely on the basis of which is higher. You have to know what IQ test was taken by the participant.

The Level of the IQ Test
The difficulty level of the test also needs to be considered while evaluating the score. Usually, the accuracy level decreases as the level of difficulty increases. You may score different scores on test with the same name. The reason might be the difficulty level of the test. The tests are not uniform and show a variation in the level of difficulty. The developers of these tests modify the pattern depending on factors like age, education and others.

Pattern differs
It is possible for one to score differently on tests with same name, because these tests vary in their content. Suppose that you score as high as 120 in an IQ test with tested your verbal ability. This does not mean that you will score the same in another category, say logical reasoning. IQ tests, usually, test all categories, but a new trend is emerging in the industry. It is getting specialized. Hence, to evaluate a score or interpret it due consideration must be given to the area on which the IQ test focuses on.

It is possible that your scores decrease as you progress in your education. But this does not mean that your intelligence is deteriorating. There could be a whole lot of reasons which could be causing this. It could be the name of the test, the difficulty level and the pattern. It is not always the case that your highest score is your good one.

Standard Deviation : a variable factor
In the earlier stages, the mental age (MA) was the only factor that was taken into account to gauge intelligence. But it proved to be a wrong approach and hence the term intelligence quotient was introduced. Mathematically, it is defined as the ratio of mental age to chronological age multiplied by 100. A person was considered average intelligent if he/she secured a score of 100. Below it was below average and above 100 was above average intelligence. All was fine, until it was found that the standard deviation wasn’t a constant all through a person’s life.

Hence standard deviation measure for each IQ tests differs today. Some have 15 and some take it as 20. So, it would not do justice to judge two IQ test scores. This has further complicated the issue of judging what a good score is.

Sample Size and Elements
It may be easy to find instructions about the factors like test items, content, standard deviations in the manual of the IQ tests. But it is very difficult to get access and information to the guidelines which helped the people who shaped these test to research and establish these standards.

To do this, the developers aim for a perfect sample space. But there is too much variation in each individual, so a perfect sample remains a distant dream. Further, comparing IQ scores of different societies is even more difficult. Given these conditions and factors, it is impossible to claim that a score is the best even though all other factors do not vary much.

IQ Score: What is good?
It is highly impossible to say that a particular IQ score is good. Any such claim will be establishing a wrong practice. At the same time, we cannot establish a score as bad. To increase this ambiguity, it seems that even the testing industry is not much inclined to clarify this issue.

Simple Tips
Simple techniques can sharpen your brain. Take a simple tip. If you want to invest and want to forecast your earning use a rule called “rule of 72”. You can use this formula to estimate in how much time you can increase your money by 100%. The rule is: divide 72 by the rate of return on your investment. The result will give you the time span it takes to double your money. It assumes compounding of interest and that you reinvest all interest again into the same.

Another useful rule is from the real estate advisors. They say not to pay for a property if it exceeds 100 times your monthly rent. Although, not a substitute for a more complex analysis, but it is an easy tool to take decisions. If a property costs 150 times your monthly rent, you need not even think twice before deciding not to buy it.

Ask
Mathematical formulas are not the only tool you have at your disposal. Make it a habit to ask simple queries. This many times helps you reap results quicker. Many comedians, use these questions and are able to produce better jokes.

A friend says that he feels immortal since he has children. The comedian would ask, “Detect what is the mistake in this picture?”.. Soon it dawns upon you that it indicates death. You answer that you wish to have immortality by not having to die.
Some other scenarios of comedian asking questions are : “ what happens if I drag it to the upper limit?”, “ What will this look to a dog?”, “What are the words with multiple meanings that I can use?” and many more.

Methods
There are a host of problem solving techniques you could use daily and gradually they become a part of your thought process. Do not take assumptions for granted. Always question them. You can use this to solve your personal problems, where there are lot of unknown assumptions.

There are 4 possible assumptions when your kids are squabbling over TV.
1. TV is a necessity.
2. Fight is the real issue.
3. Squabbling has to end.
4. It is none of your business.

Question these and you may get the following alternatives.
1. Restrict the access and use to TV or eliminate it altogether.
2. Improve your kid’s behavior.
3. Exit and just ignore their fight.
4. Give kids a week to solve their issues or else tell them that no access to TV will be granted to them.

There are simple rules for every activity we undertake and there are also rules that life makes us see. Using this will help us make informed and logical decisions. Always evaluate if any activity you did helped you move towards achievement of your goals or if there was a better way you could have performed a task.

Over a period of time, all of us cultivate habits which get ingrained in our subconscious mind. Just examine their need. We can easily train ourselves to practice tips and techniques which will us become more efficient. Mental training of a basic level is only thing which we need to do.

Intellect and High IQ: Interrelated?
It is a known fact that the more your IQ score is the more intelligent a person is believed to be. But there are tests which are culturally biased. So for a person whose intelligence level is mediocre, this is a wrong means of measurement. Also, many simple techniques exist using which one can very easily boost IQ scores.

These techniques like a cup of coffee before a test may help you boost your score. Hence it is easy to adopt techniques which will modify your score. In short, you can manipulate the IQ score. I do agree that there is correlation between intellgence and IQ score, but it has its limitations.

Is lifestyle linked to High IQ?
There is no proof till date that higher intelligence leads a better lifestyle. Moreover, how do you quantify “better life”? What parameters are used to measure lifestyle?

There are people who had high IQ, yet they ended their lives voluntarily. Some of the names are Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway and Sylvia Path. Does this indicate towards a inverse relation between IQ and life? Research has shown that chances are high that people with low and high IQ would commit suicide. But these studies are only indicative. They do not pinpoint towards a reason for this phenomena.

Educational Grades and High IQ
Studies and experiments conducted lately, indicate that there did exist relation between IQ and academic performance. But it also showed that self discipline is more closely related to the grades a student secures. The more the self disciplined the child is the better is his/her performance. Yet there is no relation between IQ and discipline. These qualities are independent of each other.

There are experiments which have been conducted to understand the relation between discipline and academic performance. In these experiments the children were presented with two choices. First was that they could choose the cookie then. Second alternative was, if they do not choose cookie they could have 2 at a later stage. Those who opted the second choice had good academic grades. Thus the will power to choose the more lucrative choice, which comes through self discipline, has proven to be more influential on educational grades.

True meaning of IQ
I do agree that intelligence is a powerful tool, but remember there are far more significant tools which play an equally important role in shaping up our lives. It is only useful if applied to improve one’s lifestyle. Computing power alone is not capable of making a computer helpful. Other components are necessary to support it. Do not underestimate people with average IQ. People like Henry Ford have been successful. So be cautious when you exaggerate the importance of high IQ.

But, don’t start resenting your older brother just yet. While the 2.3 points are fairly significant, they only reflect the educational potential of an individual. So, even if you weren’t the first to arrive on the scene in your family, you are still entirely capable of being more successful than all of your siblings combined. It’s all about how you use what you’ve got.

There are several theories as to why first-born children usually have higher IQ’s. One, they are usually given undivided attention during their early developmental years. As additional children are born, the attention of the parents is spread more thinly across the entire family.

Another possible explanation, parents usually spend more money on the oldest sibling, simply because that child is the first one to require the extra expenses. For example, the oldest child would most likely be the first to want to take a class of some kind, get involved in sports, go to college, etc.

The theory that one of the researchers thinks is most accurate is called “niche partitioning”. Basically, the oldest child is given the most authority and responsibility, therefore the parents tend to see him as a surrogate parent to the younger siblings. This higher ranking then drives the later-born children to find their “niche” in the family.

Because older children already occupy the “disciplined and wise” niche, younger children have to find other roles to play. “So, younger siblings look for other things to be good at,” said Frank J. Sulloway, a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, Institute of Personality and Social Research. “It may be that that extra 2.3 points in IQ reflects an investment of time to get that, and the later-born is investing that time in something else and is getting 2.3 extra points in something else,” he added.

Given that each child is finding his or her own niche, the difference in IQ is nothing for parents to worry about, Sulloway said.

Brain is very similar to a muscle. Like muscles, brain also needs the right kind of exercise and nutrition. The more you use your brain in the right direction, the more you will enhance your ability to focus and think sharply. On the contrary, if you feed your brain the wrong chemicals you will harm its functioning and your thinking capabilities.
Listed below are 5 easy techniques to extract a little more of creativity from your gray cells.

1. Avoid Watching Television : This is perhaps very tough to convince people about. Many people including myself love to just sit in front of TV. Watching TV is not at all productive. It neither enhances your mental capability nor recharges your brain. It is very similar to having all energy drained out of your brain without reaping the benefits of exercise.

TV does make you feel tired after a few hours. Don’t you agree? Eyes hurt and crave for rest after you watch TV for a long time. You are not left with any energy and motivation to read a book.
A good way to relax is to read a book. If not a book, then listening to music is a great idea to relax. Whenever in the company of friends and family have a chat with them instead of watching television. This will utilize you mind more than when you watch television.

2. Work Out: Earlier, I used to think that reading a book is more useful than exercising. But over time I realized exercise is more helpful since it helps you learn more in the long run. A work out is a good way to cleanse your body and rejuvenate it. You will find that exercise helps you focus for longer periods of time.

3. Read books that stimulate thought: Fiction is what most prefer to read, but it is hardly useful for enhancing the thought process. Reading books which are mentally challenging will help you improve your ability to read and write. Classics will improve your vocabulary to think in English and may even change the pattern of your thinking. Never ignore the words you don’t understand. Look up for their meanings. Also put all your effort in understanding paragraphs which appear complicated. Read them again and again to understand the full depth. Cultivate this habit and you will soon be able to grasp any complicated matter.

I am sure that once you get hooked to stimulating books, you will no longer be tempted to read fiction. Learning and imbibing fresh ides is far more thrilling than reading a fiction novel.

4. Sleep Early, Rise Early: Insufficient sleep is the main cause of people not being able to focus for extended periods of time. Sleeping early and rising up early will keep you very fresh and active. Remaining awake till late in the night , you will end up waking up late and feeling lazy . Moreover, you ability to focus will also take a hit. Waking up early in the morning enhances your productivity and keeps you alert all through the day.

If you feel tired and sleepy, take a nap which is not longer than 20 minutes. Anything more will make you lethargic. Short naps do rejuvenate you.

5. Find Time to Introspect: We become so much involved in our daily life that we don’t find time for ourselves. Concentration reduces. Find time where in you are alone and can think about issues. This will help organize your thoughts and you can prioritize your tasks and duties. You will be able to make clear cut decisions and focus on the most important issues. You cluttered mind will be a lot more clear and you will know why you are doing activities when performing them.

All said and done, I am not advising that you do yoga or chant some mantra. Any technique that allows you to sit alone and think is good. Personally , I prefer talking a long walk all alone. Experiment and try out new methods to find out which one suits you the best.

Recommendation: I am sure you do appreciate the techniques that I have suggested above. Remember, it is more often that things which sound simple turn to be most relevant. The crucial part is to implement them for longer periods. Follow the above 5 and I am sure you will greatly enhance your mental abilities and ability to reproduce what you have imbibed. From time to time test your intelligence- you can take our test to estimate your progress.