Here is the exercise for Week 10 of The Master Key System explained. Enjoy!

The exercise for Week 9 of The Master Key System is here! The article will be posted soon.

The exercise for Week 8 of The Master Key System is one of the most important in the book. This teleseminar will explain why -- and also how you can use it to accomplish anything you wish to accomplish. Listen now. More importantly, use it! The article will be posted soon.

Here is the recording for the teleseminar held March 5, 2012 in which  we discussed and explained the exercise for Week 7 of The Master Key System. The article will be posted shortly.

With this, Week Six of The Master Key System, we are now one-quarter of the way through the book. It is beginning to get good now. If you've been following us, the first four exercises trained us to get into the "state" of relaxation and receptivity. We now know how to keep ourselves still, how to relax, how to quell our thoughts, and how to "let go" of discordant feelings. With Week Five, we began our studies into visualizing, a most important aspect of personal development. Hopefully, you've mastered Week Five's exercise -- and had some fun with it! If so, let's progress to Week Six… The Exercise in Week Six of The Master Key System 24. In order to cultivate the power of attention, bring a photograph with you to the same seat in the same room in the same position as heretofore. Examine it closely at least ten minutes: Note the expression of the eyes, the form of the features, the clothing, the way the hair is arranged — in fact, note every detail shown on the photograph carefully. Now cover it and close your eyes and try to see it mentally. If you can see every detail perfectly and can form a good mental image of the photograph, you are to be congratulated; if not repeat the process until you can. 25. This step is simply for the purpose of preparing the soil; next week we shall be ready to sow the seed. 26. It is by such exercises as these that you will finally be able to control your mental moods, your attitude, your consciousness. The Exercise for Week Six Explained This exercise will be building within you two important skills: attention to detail and the power to recall. In doing so, we will be building our ability to visualize. With a photograph in hand, take your seat in your usual place. (On the call, I explain the importance of having a place that you do these exercises.) Once you are there, get into the "state" as you learned in the first four exercises. Next, study the photograph. COver it and then recall it from memory. That's about it! Mr. Haanel's instructions are pretty easy and clear. The Benefits of the Exercise for Week Six As Haanel wrote, you will be cultivating your "power of attention." This is huge! It's your ability to look at something and notice details that not many other people do. By mastering this exercise, you will be learning a technique that could turn you into the next Sherlock Holmes. Along with that, you are training yourself to keep yourself in the "Now" rather than running on autopilot playing with the shibboleths in your mind. How many times have you met someone who just "wasn't there" with you? Thus, they didn't notice much -- if anything -- of what was occurring about them. How many times was that person you? Yes, we all get preoccupied at times. Sometimes we have a pressing concern on our mind. For too many people, though, this is a normal state of being. Even worse, they really have nothing on their mind! They're trapped with their shadows, never noticing anything around them. By taking the time to make note of the things around us, we begin to pay attention to all the things around us. Digging even deeper, as we develop this power of attention, as we study a problem or research something in which we're interested, we will see those details that others miss. Those details can then become the basis for our fortune! The examples of this happening are practically limitless. This exercise -- and skill -- is very important. Master it! Tips for the Best Practice of Week Six’s Exercise The best tip for mastering this exercise is to follow Haanel's instructions exactly: Use a photograph of a person. Do your best to use your same seat and place as you usually do. Notice every detail. Take your time with it. Practice until you get it right. That's it. Nothing fancy. It's funny how sometimes the more important exercises are the simplest ones. This is one of those times. It's simple, but oh so powerful. Until next week, please get for yourself the best of everything…

We made it! In reviewing the exercise for Week Five of The Master Key System -- "The Creative Mind" -- we've reached the fiftieth episode of these teleseminars. Exciting stuff! With this exercise, we move beyond the "foundation" laid out in the first four exercises. Now, we have our first "taste" of visualization. While it is not visualization proper, it is an exercise in focusing, concentrating, and creating mental pictures. I have found -- and my Master Key Coaching clients have found -- this exercise to be fun and helpful. I think you will, too. So, let's get on with it! The Exercise in Week Five of The Master Key System 29. Now, go to your room, take the same seat, the same position as heretofore, and mentally select a place which has pleasant associations. Make a complete mental picture of it — see the buildings, the grounds, the trees, friends, associations, everything complete. At first, you will find yourself thinking of everything under the sun, except the ideal upon which you desire to concentrate. But do not let that discourage you. Persistence will win, but persistence requires that you practice these exercises every day without fail. The Exercise for Week Five Explained Charles F. Haanel organised the exercises in The Master Key System perfectly. You will come to realize that as you explore them. The first four are what we have come to call the "foundation" exercises. They built the foundation upon which all of the subsequent exercises will be laid. These exercises are essential for getting you into the "state" so that you can easily do the remaining exercises and so that you will be receptive to the results that you are seeking. So, with the first four exercises mastered, we have this exercise for Week Five. As usual, you are to take your regular seat and assume the position that you have been mastering since Week One: sitting with your feet on the floor, your hands on your thighs, your back erect, your eyes closed. Once you are there, you are now to make a "complete mental picture" of a "place that has pleasant associations." That "place" can be anything you wish! Your childhood home. A farm you visited. A beach. A city. An office. Any place! The key is to make your mental picture "complete." You want the picture to be very detailed, very lush, and very realistic. You are aiming to such a detailed picture that it is almost a "virtual reality." Within this exercises, Haanel anticipates that it may be difficult for some people. Those people may not be very "visual" people. He does ask that we persevere, though. And we should! Haanel is building within you the ability to picture anything you wish in your mind. As we'll see, those pictures will be  very important. That's why for this exercise, Haanel is starting us with something simple: visualizing a place that we enjoy. That makes it an exercise that we will want to do! After all, it is fun to reminisce or fantasize about a pleasant place. The difference is that we are not doing either: we are visualizing and aiming to make the picture complete and detailed, to "see the buildings, the grounds, the trees, friends, associations, everything complete." Do your best and make your vision as complete as you can. With practice, you will be able to see it perfectly! The Benefits of the Exercise for Week Five Much like going to a gym will increase your ability to run longer or lift heavier items, this exercise will begin to awaken or it will strengthen your ability to create mental pictures. You will be able to almost lose yourself in the details of your mental images. That can be and will be a very powerful tool for you. This exercise will also begin to fire parts of your brain you may not have been "using" prior to this. Also, this exercise, when fully perfected, will just make you feel good. Seriously. I have heard time and time again from folks who do this exercises and actually feel themselves at the beach or on the farm. It's amazing!

Week Four of The Master Key System — "Reversing the Process — From Cause to Effect" — is the last exercise that builds the "foundation" upon which all the following exercises will be built. In this exercise, you will effectively master your ability to relax physically as well as mentally. You will master the control of you body and your emotions. You will learn to allow yourself to attain the "state" of physical and emotional control and well-being that will set you apart from the masses. In short, you will learn to be a master of yourself rather than a plaything of circumstances. You will see your intellect rule and over-ride your emotions, thus allowing you to cast aside feelings of fear, anxiety, anger, and any other emotion that serves no useful purpose. The Exercise in Week Four of The Master Key System 29. Last week I asked you to relax, to let go physically. This week, I am going to ask you to let go mentally. If you practiced the exercise given you last week fifteen or twenty minutes a day in accordance with the instructions, you can no doubt relax physically; and anyone who cannot consciously do this quickly and completely is not a master of himself. He has not obtained freedom; he is still a slave to conditions. But I shall assume that you have mastered the exercise and are ready to take the next step, which is mental freedom. 30. This week, after taking your usual position, remove all tension by completely relaxing, then mentally let go of all adverse conditions, such as hatred, anger, worry, jealousy, envy, sorrow, trouble, or disappointment of any kind. 31. You may say that you cannot “let go” of these things, but you can. You can do so by mentally determining to do so by voluntary intention and persistence. 32. The reason that some cannot do this is because they allow themselves to be controlled by the emotions instead of by their intellect. But the will guided by the intellect will gain the victory. You will not succeed the first time you try, but practice makes perfect, in this as in everything else, and you must succeed in dismissing, eliminating, and completely destroying these negative and destructive thoughts because they are the seed which is constantly germinating into discordant conditions of every conceivable kind and description. The Exercise for Week Four Explained The exercise for Week One was to keep your body still. That allowed you to gain control of your physical being. The exercise for Week Two was to inhibit your thoughts. That allowed you to gain control of your thoughts. The exercise for Week Three was to relax your physical body. That allowed you to achieve a physical state in which you can lose your tension at will. The exercise in Week Four brings all of those ideas into one grand exercise in which you will learn to achieve a state of physical and mental well-being — a state that is necessary for one to achieve if you wish to not only get great benefits from the rest of the exercises in The Master Key System, but from any other technique in personal development that you may wish to explore. Why is this so important? Haanel explains why in point #32: "…you must succeed in dismissing, eliminating, and completely destroying these negative and destructive thoughts because they are the seed which is constantly germinating into discordant conditions of every conceivable kind and description." You must learn to master "letting go" of the feeling and emotions that damage you more than you imagine. Remember that one of the main points of studying The Master Key System is to learn how to think, how to really and truly use your brain. Most people don't. They allow their emotions to sway them, to rule them. Fear rules people. Anger moves people. Jealousy sways people. We see these in operation every day in others. And generally, the result of these operations are not very good. In fact, they are destructive. Worse than that, those emotions enslave people in a web of shadows. Thus,

The first four exercises in The Master Key System are the ones that will build for us the foundation upon which the remaining twenty exercises -- and by extension, the results we will obtain with them -- will be built. The exercise for Week Three is very important -- more important than many people realize. You must master this exercise to not only take advantage of all of the exercises in The Master Key System, but also to take advantage of just about any other personal development techniques you may wish to explore. It is my hope that this teleseminar and article will make it clear why that is so. The Exercise 29. For your exercise this week, I will ask you to go one step further. I want you to not only be perfectly still, and inhibit all thought as far as possible, but relax. Let go. Let the muscles take their normal condition; this will remove all pressure from the nerves and eliminate that tension which so frequently produces physical exhaustion. 30. Physical relaxation is a voluntary exercise of the will and the exercise will be found to be of great value, as it enables the blood to circulate freely to and from the brain and body. 31. Tension leads to mental unrest and abnormal mental activity of the mind; it produces worry, care, fear, and anxiety. Relaxation is therefore an absolute necessity in order to allow the mental faculties to exercise the greatest freedom. 32. Make this exercise as thorough and complete as possible. Mentally determine that you will relax every muscle and nerve until you feel quiet and restful and at peace with yourself and the world. 33. The Solar Plexus will then be ready to function and you will be surprised at the result. The Exercise for Week Three Explained The exercise for Week Three of The Master Key System seems simple -- deceptively so. Mr. Haanel wrote that this week you are to "not only be perfectly still, and inhibit all thought as far as possible, but relax." Relax. In many of my responses to questions about The Master Key System, I type that word a lot. You see, it's the foundation of everything that we will be doing from this point onward. That's why this exercise is very important. Haanel explains why: "Tension leads to mental unrest and abnormal mental activity of the mind; it produces worry, care, fear, and anxiety. Relaxation is therefore an absolute necessity in order to allow the mental faculties to exercise the greatest freedom." In order for you to be able to benefit from the exercises in The Master Key System, in order for you to effectively use techniques from the personal development field, in order for you to truly acquire the mental fitness that you so desire, relaxation is the key. Being relaxed allows you to think clearly, to see truly, and to cogitate efficiently and purposely. It allows "things" to happen fluidly and easily. It brings to bear your entire mental arsenal and provides an alacrity that cannot be had otherwise. Mental tension leads to physical tension. Mental tension begets constricted thoughts, much like a zipper that is stuck: it may wiggle and perhaps move a space or two, but it doesn't flow and do what it is supposed to do. That's why this exercise is key. As Haanel states, physical relaxation is a "voluntary exercise of the will." It is something that we allow ourselves to be. No matter the surroundings or the situation, we either choose to be relaxed or we choose to not be relaxed. Thus, choose to allow yourself to fall into a state of relaxation. Allow yourself to become relaxed physically. Lose the tension that you may feel in your muscles, in your joints, on the surface of your skin. Allow it to drip from you. Relax. The Benefits of the Exercise for Week Three As one masters becoming relaxed, Haanel wrote that "The Solar Plexus will then be ready to function and you will be surprised at the result." Haanel explains the function of the Solar Plexus in The Master Key System, so I won't delve into that here.

The exercise for Week Two of The Master Key System is the one exercise for which I receive the most emails. It is also the one that frustrates the most people — and, unfortunately, causes many people to give up. I am happy to tell you that this exercise is much easier than you think it is. Also, the goal of the exercise is quite different than what you probably think it is. It is my hope that this explanation will assuage any frustrations that you've had and set you on the right track to mastering this exercise and getting the full benefits from it. The Exercise 30. Last week I gave you an exercise for the purpose of securing control of the physical body. If you have accomplished this you are ready to advance. This time you will begin to control your thought. Always take the same room, the same chair, and the same position, if possible. In some cases it is not convenient to take the same room. In this case simply make the best use of such conditions as may be available. Now be perfectly still as before, but inhibit all thought. This will give you control over all thoughts of care, worry, and fear, and will enable you to entertain only the kind of thoughts you desire. Continue this exercise until you gain complete mastery. 31. You will not be able to do this for more than a few moments at a time, but the exercise is valuable because it will be a very practical demonstration of the great number of thoughts which are constantly trying to gain access to your mental world. 32. Next week you will receive instructions for an exercise which may be a little more interesting, but it is necessary that you master this one first. The Exercise Explained Before I explain this exercise, I want you to read what the exercise is again. Now, here's what most people get wrong: Most people believe that the goal of this exercise is to "inhibit all thought." They think that they have to become some sort of super-yogi Zen master and have no thoughts for minutes, hours, days, weeks. It's not. Inhibiting your thoughts is not the goal of the exercise for Week Two. The goal for this exercise is stated by Mr. Haanel in point number 31: You will not be able to do this for more than a few moments at a time, but the exercise is valuable because it will be a very practical demonstration of the great number of thoughts which are constantly trying to gain access to your mental world. Most people go into this exercise trying to do their best to inhibit their thoughts for minutes. When they can barely do a couple of seconds, they get very frustrated. In that same point, though, Haanel explicitly states that you "will not be able to do this [inhibit thoughts] for more than a few moments at a time." Moments. Not seconds. Not minutes. Moments. One of the definitions of "moment" is "A brief, indefinite interval of time." It's a very short amount of time. Very short. It's, as the perhaps clichéd phrase goes, fleeting. Moments are here and then gone. Does that make sense? Does that now make the exercise doable? Easier? It should. Haanel in that same point tells us what the real goal of this exercise is: "[I]t will be a very practical demonstration of the great number of thoughts which are constantly trying to gain access to your mental world." This exercise is made to showcase just how much mental chatter is constantly bombarding us. That's it. Concurrent with that, it will also allow us to develop ways to stop those thoughts as they occur. When you do this exercise, you will inhibit your thoughts. You will only be able to do that for a moment or two before a thought creeps into your consciousness. "Hey! I think I got it … Doh!" Then you stop that thought and return to inhibiting your thoughts again. That will once again last for a couple of moments. And then … It goes on and on. So, your aim with this exercise is not to be Mr. or Ms. Zen Master. You don't have to worry about inhibiting your thoughts for minutes. Heck,

As we explore the exercise for Week One of The Master Key System, this marks the first in what will be a series for the next twenty-four weeks as we explore and explain each and every exercise in the book. While in the previous "cycle" we explicated thoroughly the body of the book with only glances at the exercises, for this cycle we will focus solely on the exercises. As you may know, I've often referred to the exercises in The Master Key System as the "meat and potatoes" of the book. Friedrich Nietzsche once remarked that all books could be reduced to one paragraph without losing any meaning. While I think that might be tough with The Master Key System, I've opined that it could be reduced to maybe five or six pages. That's because the ideas in the book are presented in many ways. You have the various "laws" (attraction, love, growth), the concepts of the "world without" and the "world within," the ideas of "cause and effect," and other such notions — and each is presented in different forms throughout the work. The real power of the book resides in the exercises. As Haanel often writes, it is "in the application alone that the value consists." By that he means that we should practice the exercises. Or, as I often say, it's not good enough to read the book and know the information, one must truly understand the material in order to experience the wonderful effects of this philosophy. So, for those reasons, for the next twenty-four weeks we will explore, explain, and make clear each and every exercise that Haanel gave us in The Master Key System. I am highly confident that you will benefit greatly from these teleseminars. If what I receive in my email is any indication, the vast amount of questions I receive all revolve around how to master an exercise. So, I hope that I help a lot of people — including you. To obtain the full benefit from these articles, teleseminars and exercises, I highly recommend that you get for yourself Charles F. Haanel's Complete Master Key Course. You'll not only get the best version of The Master Key System available anywhere, you'll get the entire philosophy of success — plus a whole lot more. Have a look; you'll be glad that you did. The Exercise 44. Now make the application: Select a room where you can be alone and undisturbed. Sit erect, comfortably, but do not lounge. Let your thoughts roam where they will but be perfectly still for fifteen minutes to half an hour. Continue this for three or four days or for a week until you secure full control of your physical being. 45. Many will find this extremely difficult; others will conquer with ease, but it is absolutely essential to secure complete control of the body before you are ready to progress. Next week you will receive instructions for the next step. In the meantime, you must have mastered this one. The Exercise Explained The first exercise that Haanel gives us and that we encounter is a seemingly easy one. It's one not to be taken lightly, though. As you'll see as we progress through the exercises week by week, each new exercise builds upon the one prior to it. In other words, by the time we reach Week Twenty-four, we will see a cumulative effect with the exercises. So, take each exercise seriously — and do master them as best you can, especially with the information you garner from these teleseminars and articles. For Week One, Haanel instructs us to sit comfortably and be "perfectly still" for fifteen minutes to half an hour. What's the purpose of this? As Haanel wrote, it's to "secure complete control of the body." This is very important. As we progress through the exercises, we'll be dealing mainly with the mental aspect of ourselves. In order to get to that point, we must first control our body, which may be a distraction from our mental pursuits. Now, this is a bit of a difference in thought from what we will come to know of Haanel's philosophy. You see, Haanel — and The Master Key System as well as the entire philosop...