Your mind processes millions of pieces of information every single moment, and is the most powerful bio-computer on the planet.
Everything you have ever read or even heard is stored as a multi-sensory recording in the unconscious mind.
If you want to become smarter, you need to bring more balance between the two parts of your mind and the two sides of your brain.
You Can Learn Anything
You are a natural-born learner.
We have all been programmed to believe certain things about how smart we are, how smart it is good to be, and what we are and aren’t capable of learning. These unconscious programs are like hypnotic suggestions, limiting our behaviour until they become self-fulfilling prophecies.
There are only three reasons people fail to learn new things – they are in an unproductive state of mind, they are using an ineffective strategy, or they give up too soon.
All human behaviour is the product of our neuro-physiological states – that is, the sum total of everything that is going on with us at any one time. What state we are in at any given moment is down to a combination of how we are physically, how we are emotionally and how we are psychologically.
The human nervous system cannot tell the difference between a real and a vividly imagined experience.
What’s School Got to Do with Getting Smarter?
For better and for worse, our parents and teachers were powerful hypnotists.
Schools were not designed to make you smarter – they were designed to prepare you for life in an industrial society that is no longer prevalent in much of the world.
Many brilliant people think they are not because they have been judged against a particular view of the mind that thinks academic conformity is more important than real world success.
Pretty much everyone is carrying some baggage around with them about learning. You can reduce that baggage and open your mind back up to learning through the process known as ‘Havening’.
You have massive potential.
It’s never too late to have a smarter childhood.
The Easy Way to Boost Your Concentration
Many of the most successful and creative people throughout history have experienced symptoms currently associated with ADD and ADHD.
Different patterns of attention may have evolved from the varying needs of society over time. Each pattern of attention is designed to work well within the particular society from which it evolved.
There are two types of concentration – active and passive. Active concentration is high energy and is ideal for performance-type activities. Passive concentration is more relaxed, and allows for a bigger-picture absorption of what’s really going on.
You can choose which kind of concentration to bring to each major task throughout your day.
Unleash Your Inner Genius
IQ tests were designed to measure someone’s current skill level, not their innate capacity for learning.
There are many intelligences, although in school we have learned to focus primarily on language skills and mathematical, sequential thinking.
Life is made up primarily of skills which can be learned, not abilities or talents which we are born with. By recognizing this fact and approaching learning new things accordingly, you will find yourself able to learn and grow even in areas that you had previously thought were beyond you.
You have not even begun to tap into your true potential.
Accelerating the Learning Curve
There are three levels of learning – gathering information, gaining a deeper understanding, and real world application. Each level of learning is best accomplished by utilizing a particular learning strategy.
To gain a deeper understanding of the material you are learning, utilize chunking. You can chunk a difficult subject down into easy-to-learn, bite-size ‘chunks’; you can also take something that has a lot of separate parts and ‘chunk up’ to a core idea or phrase.
Mind mapping is a simple but effective way to combine chunking with whole brain learning by creating a visual representation of a topic or subject. It is useful as a way of gaining a deeper understanding of any topic, either for review or to prepare for a presentation or exam.
To be able to quickly apply what you are learning in the real world, find an expert and use the modelling technique to quickly integrate their skills into your muscle memory.
The Secrets of a Supercharged Memory
Everything you see, hear and feel is permanently stored in your memory. The only question is access.
In order to access memories more easily, it is important to remember that memory is not a filing system, but an associative trigger system.
You can strengthen your memory through practice. In particular, practise remembering things using one sensory system at a time.
You can make anything more memorable by using imagery that is exaggerated, moving, sexual, bizarrely humorous and multi-sensory.
Use repetition and association to remember names.
Maths Myths and Spelling Secrets
If we fear numbers, it’s because we were taught to fear them at school – usually by other people who grew up fearing numbers.
It’s easier to add from left to right than from right to left.
Multiplication is just a shortcut for addition.
Once you have memorized your times tables from 1 to 12, you can multiply any number in the world, no matter how large.
Estimation is the key to real world maths – all you need to do is practise rounding up and rounding down to make the maths as simple as possible.
Spelling is easy if you do it visually, not by sounding words out.
Once you can spell a word backwards, you will be able to spell it for ever!
You are Creative!
The creative force is available to all of us, once we learn to harness it and put it to use. Whatever it is you do and no matter your personality, you are creative!
When we are young, we naturally think outside the box. As we become more ‘educated’, we need to be more deliberate in separating out our capacities for creative, practical and critical thinking.
You can learn to evoke your creativity at will.
Solve Problems Like a Genius
When you tap into the genius and creativity of your mind, solving even the most difficult problems becomes possible.
Asking better questions will always lead to better answers. The seven most important questions you can ask are what, when, where, who, how, why and what if.
It is often easier to solve a problem from the perspective of the future. You can take advantage of this fact by imagining yourself in the future now and seeing how much you already know about what to do.
Sometimes, the best way to solve a problem isn’t by looking at it in a different way, it’s by looking at it through different eyes.
How to Make Smarter Decisions
The power to make decisions is one of the greatest powers we all have. Our decisions determine both the quality and the direction of our lives.
A single really good decision is likely to be more productive than a series of average ones.
Most people who procrastinate aren’t lazy – they’re afraid of failing. You can mitigate your fear of failing by always calculating the upside and downside of any decision.
One of the keys to making good decisions is being in a good state. If you are upset, nervous, angry or frightened, it’s not a good time to make a decision.
At some level, we intuitively know the difference between a good decision and a bad decision. By looking deeper into those differences, we can train our intuition to make good decisions more often and avoid the bad ones.
Staying Sharp at Any Age
When it comes to your brain, the rule of thumb is the same as when it comes to the musculature of your body – use it or lose it!
The brain will adapt and change in response to specific challenges, in the same way as the muscles in the body will develop and strengthen in response to the physical demands of exercise and athletic challenges. This ability is called ‘neuroplasticity’.
The number one way to get your whole brain switched on and active is solving simple calculations at a high speed.
Physical exercise is a key to optimal brain functioning.
Certain patterns of movement balance up left and right brain functioning, ensuring that your brain is ‘switched on’.
