Look out your window and what’s the first thing you see? A leaf glistening? A wind bent tree? Or do you see an unkempt garbage can with litter nearby?

Have you considered how your attention to beauty can cut you a pathway across a difficult day? Likely as many pictures of beauty exist out there – as there are colors, shapes and textures. Loveliness, an expression of your brain’s aesthetic response to life, takes an awareness on your part, though, before it can transform your day.

You can cut a neural pathway through a difficult area of life, by focusing your attention on snapshots of beauty throughout your day. The brain uses your aesthetic focus as a sort of magnificent oasis in the face of madness from the world swirling around us.

We each possess an innate neurology of beauty, created from genes at birth and further developed and shaped by your perspectives. Your multiple intelligences , for example, link you to beauty in ways that can add well being and motivation for living - even when storm clouds linger in one area or another of your day. How does it work?

Beauty enters your mind as an asset whenever you throw a winning solution to a particular problem that disadvantages you. Let’s say you feel disrespected in a relationship. Beauty can help you make new decisions that add winning benefits for your next meeting with that person. Start by focusing more on one beautiful visual that you value, and your mind will create more serotonin, a chemical that enables you to overwrite mental scripts by rewriting your innate worth and value. Read the amazing story of an Amish community near where I live, rewired for beauty recently to forgive a man who broke into their school and murdered their children.

Their mental rewiring for the beauty of God, of forgiveness, and of life, activated more of your intelligences, and helped this community spot splendor in their surroundings, in spite of intense suffering from loss. That’s also how the mind operates in your favor, and hands you that Eureka solution when you need it most. Beauty can transform the most difficult part of your day and can add new shades of color with a zest for living.

Think of your home as a castle for a moment, and let’s look at how beauty could lift your day and boost your spirit for new solutions in … say … a difficult relationship, or health problem.

First, play inspirational music, and your mind opens to vibrant colors of leaves, and possibly even closer friendships to enjoy. For instance, I’m playing NPR classical station at the moment, and the orchestra moves my brain waves to capture new quiet for thought. If you saw these waves through an EEG you’d see them shift from fast to slower with this music.

Next, come down to my lower floor, and see an oak tree in the backyard, where a black capped, Peregrine falcon sat recently, and watched me work. Visualize the wonder of its 40 inch wingspan. He’s not there today – but I still see his saucy stance whenever I look for beauty out that window.

From my front window you’d see a Japanese Lilac I planted when my daughter and son-in-law married last summer. It’s leaves fell last week but it looks strong and ready to embrace a winter.

Move next to my side window and take in a young neighbor’s Canadian flag - flying alongside an American flag, as a symbol for our friendship and for my Canadian birth.

When I stand in my back window, and see the winding creek, I laugh. For awhile the small bridge kept tipping into the rising waters each time it rained. On one occasion I almost fell in - trying to retrieve the deceptively heavy bridge. Have you noticed beauty at times comes through laughter?

Windows from my home show how to open exquisite views from your castle cottage. The mind becomes a castle when you draw from the beauty of many perspectives. Look out a window for some form of beauty and see splendor in your view.

If you know the person in charge of international holidays, I’d like to propose a yearly celebration to repair our aging brains. Call it “Reboot Your Brain Day,” or something similar, but it would show Mother Nature’s fountain of fixes for the human brain. We’d start with showcasing chemical and electrical systems that nurture and sustain brain cells.

For instance, I’d hire a few gifted musicians to show how favorite tunes can move and track your brain waves into better moods and creative adventures. Don Campbell could come to tell us how to …”Tap the power of music to strengthen the mind and unlock the creative spirit.”

I’d enlist sleep experts too. They’d show how we stay awake better during the day, by sleeping better at night. I’d enlist Gilio Tononi’s ideas from the University of Wisconsin-Madison to help the brain rewire during a good sleep.

My global holiday would also gather respected comedians to help us link laughter and intelligence to liven up a boring calendar. It’s easily done – whenever we laugh together to improve the chemical and nerve cell communications across the brain. Scientists see it like data flows between high-performance computers, routers and servers to fly magically across the internet. Laughter adds the high-performance parts to healthy brains.

Then, an Olympian star would lead us in a series of movements that draw from kinesthetic intelligence. The idea is to improve mental function in every area of our lives. It could be done from deep breathing exercises to taking up a fun new sport. Encouragement to take on a kinesthetic adventure to boost the brain’s output through a fun new routine that fits into what you already like to do.

Finally, an naturalistic expert would stop by to help unlock naturalistic parts for a healthier brain. It could happen through showing nature as the playground for the mind it was intended to be, to rethinking how rivers near you impact a fix for the brain.

By the way, who’s in charge of creating international holidays anyway? Think they’d go for in one day a year to reboot the brain for global benefits?

Without question, some of the best do-it-yourself materials out there are created and sustained by boomers. But have you ever wondered why the self-help industry benefits some readers far more than others? Steve Pavlina attributes it to over- promising and under-delivering in this fast growing market. What do you think?

At Scientific American.com, Michael, Shermer accuses the $8-5 billion-a-year business of doing little more than pushing people from their victim states on one hand, toward empowerment on the other, while making them feel guilty in between. Is that your experience?

Look at popular leaders and topics behind this thriving market, and it’s clear that boomers launched an explosion of self-tools. They certainly benefited business, as evident in the fact that the industry doubled its digits in the last 10 years. It’s also obvious, that many improve their personal lives through tactics and insights found in self-help materials.

Less clear, though, are methods used to wire and reboot boomers’ brains through these popular renewal practices. Here are a few tips that could increase your benefits from self-help tools you use to improve your quality of life.

First, think of self help as a sort of research… where benefits come as you draw more from your intrapersonal intelligence resources - to transfer what you read into how you live. It’s often a bit like becoming the person you’d like others to see in you.

For instance, Let’s say you start your day with a new idea to improve health, diet or learning. Try the suggested tactic, and then watch for a few positive results, or at least look for clues that some improvement followed, say, by that afternoon. If you eat less sugar, look for more energy within the next few hours. Following a philharmonic performance, expect to create an aha moment of your own, inspired by music but expressed in what you’d most enjoy doing.

Try on suggestions that resonate from self-tools, but then watch for concrete evidence of new growth - within a time frame you set. Self-help works for those who act after they read, more than for those who read and merely criticize the concepts.

When self-help strategies bring smart people together, stubborn problems often find solutions. If you are counting troubles instead of counting sheep, for instance, another boomer out there might have figured a sleep solution that could work well tonight – one that’s worth a try.

Second, start with some of the more popular self-help books, which include … Living in the Light by Shakti Gawain, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey… You can Heal your Life, by Louise hay … The Universal Heart by Stephanie Dowrick … Intimacy and Solitude by Stephen Dowrick. Move from the wider ideas in popular books, to tips about hobbies you do, problems you face, or dreams you hold.

Critics tell us that self-help books perpetuate a denial of life with its troubles, and keep readers in a state of unrealistic hope for a better future, in spite of futile problems they face. Encouragers see more a spirit of hope and possibilities, that heal the world we live in now, and spark value and hope into what we’ll face tomorrow. Any insights from your intrapersonal intelligence, that could inspire the rest of us to improve ours?

Yesterday I spilled wood stain onto my counter top, and when I looked down to find a huge brown puddle splashed onto the beige granite surface, it quite frankly surprised me.

I’d been holding a paint tray next to a cupboard as I refinished its door. Images of a terrific new look my kitchen would soon sport - captured my full attention, and the fact that my counter top was being ruined at the same time - simply went unnoticed.

Our lives are shaped by images that preoccupy our minds – and our brains are rewired by the things we do in a day.

When I saw the spilled paint as a result of letting go of one part of my brain - I refocused on balancing a paint tray while I worked. It happens all the time – we let one part of the brain go – to use another part - and I am glad we’re not all holding paint trays over my counter when it happens.

An enlightened mind tends to open more parts of the brain in unified ways, and we can all learn to do it. I like to think of it as weaving together multiple intelligences that help us cope with life. It’s also a brain’s way of capturing adventure beyond the ordinary, and it can happen with any ordinary activity – even when you stain a cupboard. Think of it as a camera of sorts, that zooms in on a close-up one minute, and catches colorful images in its wider lens, the next.

Whenever we zoom in and out in synchrony with our day, we get more from the brain. Start simply by being aware of your brain’s extravagant parts - for any interest you follow. For instance … while I’m no carpenter, I do like to refresh my surroundings with art and multiple intelligences, that add more zip to what I do.

Here are unique intelligences I used:

1. Spatial intelligence helped me to choose the color and to paint evenly.
2. Kinesthetic intelligence allowed me to move - paint - and think of new blogs like this one at the same time.
3. Naturalistic intelligence kicked in when yellow finches sang to me while I painted next to a window open to their Niger Seed feeder.
4. Mathematical intelligence reminded me to number the 16 cupboard doors I removed - and to line them up in order, so they’d be easier to replace.
5. Interpersonal intelligence helped me to imagine the artistic pleasure friends will get the next time we lunch together in my cozy kitchen.
6. Intrapersonal intelligence helped me to reflect on why it’s important in a busy day – to stop and refinish cupboards for a fresher look.
7. Musical intelligence inspired my project… from classical music that moved my brainwaves while I painted.
8. Linguistic intelligence reminded me to read directions on the can’s label - as a way to get better results from the particular wood stain I used.

If you’re ever in the area… stop by and see my results. By the way, what intelligences are you using today … to turn an ordinary event into an extraordinary adventure?