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      Basic form for you to copy for your first Mind Map (Level 3)

      On these sub-branches do exactly the same as you did in the first stage of this game: print, clearly, single key words on these waiting-to-be-filled branches. Use the main word on the branch to trigger your three new key words. Again, remember to use colour and images on these sub-branches.

      Congratulations! You have just completed your first basic Mind Map. You will notice that even at this early stage your Mind Map is brimming with symbols, codes, lines, words, colours, and images, and is already demonstrating all the basic guidelines you need in order to apply your brain most effectively and enjoyably. For a completed ‘master example’ of this exercise, see Plate 1.

      You are now more than ready to explore the exciting world of Mind Map applications and how they can add quality, effectiveness, and success to your personal, family, professional, and daily life.

       1.3 Your Daily Life Made More Successful with Mind Maps

      Now you have mastered the basics, it is time to introduce you to a range of the most popular and successful applications for Mind Maps in your daily life.

      You now know that Mind Maps have many advantages, including saving time, organizing and clarifying your thinking, generating new ideas, keeping track of things, dramatically improving memory and concentration, stimulating more of your brain, allowing you to keep your eye on the ‘whole picture’, and, very importantly, being fun to do!

      In this chapter I am going to put all these advantages to work for you.

      You will learn how to apply this master thinking technique to a whole range of the most important Life Skills including planning, shopping, studying, note-taking, coming to new realizations and awareness, and making presentations. You will then be able to Mind Map your way through any problem (Plate 2).

      Communication and Presentations Mind Map

      Being asked to make a speech or presentation is ranked as the number one fear on the planet – higher than the fear of snakes, spiders, rodents, war, disease, violence, and even death!

      Why?

      Because when making a speech or presentation we are both physically and mentally utterly exposed. There is no escaping the inevitable mistakes in front of the audience.

      Thus the dread.

      To deal with this dread, most people spend hours and days preparing written presentations that waste precious time and which often have the opposite effect to that desired.

      Because they are written in sentence form, and because we do not speak in this form, they become monotonous and boring. In addition, because you have to keep on looking down at the words, you lose contact with the audience. In further addition, because you have to keep looking back up at the audience you increase the probability that you will lose your place. On top of all this, because you have to hold the pages, you trap your extraordinarily expressive body in an immobile prison, thus losing more than 50% of your communication ability at the start.

      Mind Maps to the rescue!

      In the same way as you Mind Mapped ‘Fruit’, simply place the topic of the speech in the centre of the page, and radiate out the main key images and words you wish to address.

      When you have completed the Mind Map, number the central branches in the order in which they are to be presented, and highlight any major points or any major connections between the branches.

      You will be delighted to know that for making speeches, the standard rule is one key word or image for one-minute’s worth of speech on a topic you know well. Thus for a half-an-hour speech you need only a small Mind Map to complete your task more than successfully.

      The advantage of using a Mind Map for presentations, which millions of people in the business world now do, is that it keeps your mind constantly aware of the ‘whole picture,’ allows you to add and subtract information as the time for your presentation approaches, and guarantees that you will cover all the major points you wish to address. Your eyes will be able to make much more contact with your audience, your body will be a lot more free, and so will your mind.

      Presentation Mind Maps give you that ultimate freedom – the freedom to be yourself. And audiences appreciate nothing more than someone who is doing just that.

      For an example of a completed Mind Map on this subject, turn to Plate 3.

      Planning Family Events Mind Map

      A dear friend of mine uses Mind Maps to plan all her family’s daily, weekly, annual, and special events. Her Mind Maps appear in a place, commonly known as the community hub of the family and where they are increasingly to be found: on her fridge door!

      She, in her own words, will tell you how she uses them, what for, and what the advantages are.

      ‘Before I had heard about Tony and his Mind Maps, I was in chaos! I consider myself a pretty typical twenty-first century woman – I want it all! I am a wife, a mother, I have a career, I like to keep fit and I love my social life. Everything has equal importance and I enjoy all the demands and successes. And I certainly don’t want to miss out on anything, least of all any of my son’s important activities – be they studying for exams, attending a concert, helping him with his art project, or making sure his hair is cut in time for the school photo!

      However, I realized that wanting it all meant that I had to be super efficient in my organization at home. While packing my briefcase for the following day’s meetings, had I remembered to pick up the dry-cleaned suit for my husband’s important meeting the next day, or that the dog’s appointment with the vet was at 3.00 p.m. at precisely the same time as I had a meeting, so who was going to take him? And which day of the week was it in my son’s school schedule? If tomorrow was Wednesday, he needed his football boots and his piano music and would need to be picked up later than usual as he was in the school musical rehearsal and then when he came home he had homework to do before supper, bath and bed! Oh, and my mother was arriving for two days – must make sure the guest bed had clean sheets on and get in more food, and send off the deposit for our vacation or we would lose the reservation! And remember to call Susie to tell her that I can’t join her at the yoga class after all because of all of the above.

      Most of the time, we somehow muddled through (with frantic phone calls from the school about some vital

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