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.

What do you expect from sports anyway? Are you in top mental form for your next golf game? Or do you give a tennis opponent a run for her money? You may be a fast- skilled - strong -and experienced tennis player or golfer … or you may have just played your first game. In either case, if you expect more from your brain -you’ll be surprised how it kicks in for new smooth and controlled shots that can land your scores in a winner’s circle.

In spite of a recent bout with cancer, Marjorie Brewer at 60, still swings a driver like a pro and putts like a metronome. She’s out four times a week, near the grounds of her new senior living residence. People far younger struggle to keep up - and it’s a good game when you can. In one of the persistent mysteries of an aging brain, Marjorie found there are tremendous health care benefits to doing what she loves most – golf. But I see far more than bodily health in Marjorie’s high-performance mind. What she expects - she lands with precision again and again.

At 58, Murray Jensen expected golf to help his brain to slow the effects of cardiovascular disease, which is central to many of the symptoms of old age. Murray’s doctor tells him that he seems to be slowing or delaying and likely even preventing many mental changes that could result from his frail health.

By expecting your brain to be fast and strong and alert, you actually build new neuron pathways to make that happen. Did you know the brain demands 21 percent of the entire oxygen to your body? Not surprisingly, when you move more, you enrich that supply and add to your brain’s potential.

At Brain Boomer … we’ll look at ways that you can optimize your brainpower, and improve your sports’ scores, far more than most people realize. For example, my team won the recent District Rotary Annual Golf Tournament and New York, and we did it by expecting serotonin - the brain’s well-being hormone, to improve our golf scores to 4 under par.

Serotonin can open new ideas and possibilities for you, when you need it most. This hormone for well-being is essential to a good game and it is increased to the brain when you simply expect it to help you out. We deliberately built more serotonin - by wishing others well when they were walking to the tee - by imaging great shots whenever we went into a swing - and by refusing to focus on the mistakes of a bad shot, in favor of the lesson learned for the next controlled swing.

Can you see how sports may be good for your brain - but a high performance brain is delightfully good for your scores? What’s been your experience?