Do you own the secret-weapon for concentration, learning and memory improvement?
Many are called; few are chosen is a clich. It applies to our secret weapon because owning MI (Mental-Imagery), is not the same as using it for super-success and personal growth.
Can you instantly see yourself in your minds-eye smiling as they hand you a fancy diploma, or shaking your hand to congratulate you on promotion to divisional v.p.?
All healthy folks are hardwired to use their conscious mind to create specific mental-movies of their choice. In fact we have attended to mental-imagery all our lives. It is called Daydreaming, Night-dreaming, and Creative Imagination.
Geniuses call it intuition; religious folks identify the results as miracles; the rest of us see it as inspirations to quantum-leaps of discovery.
Two Kinds of MI (Mental Imagery)
Interviewing thousands of graduates, the feedback is: 98.6% of MI is subconscious and involuntary. It just happens to us randomly and fortuitously.
The second, infinitesimal MI, is consciously placed in our minds-eye by a personal decision; we will it to appear. Few and far between.
Heres why you should care: MI is either ANTs Automatic Negative Thoughts, or APTs, Automatic Positive Thoughts. Some neuroscientific studies conclude we have over two-hundred ANTs, compared to less than five APTs.
So What?
Mental Imagery has a direct effect on our chosen behaviors. We tend to do what we imagine, what we see on the movie-screen of our mind.
We are unaware of MIs because they are faster than Speedy Gonzalez, last only a second at a time, but return repetitiously as mostly negative feedback. They are like visual roadmaps steering us to where our non-conscious mind directs us to go.
Uncontrolled, our typical MI is negative and disturbing of our comfort-zone. Can you picture yourself shooting the basketball, and completely missing the hoop and backboard? It does not have to be a Championship game, just important to you
You freak-out, curse the ball and hoop, and ultimately the ANTs make their appearance. Dumb SOB, are you handicapped? - you hear in your mind. What now happens is your anger activates your Sympathetic Nervous System, and you get a killer dose of Adrenalin (Epinephrine), and sail into chronic stress.
If you carefully watch sports or your own environment the ANTs make the screamer much worse, and actually program him/her to fail a second and a third time. Why?
The mental-movies we play on the movie-screen of our mind is our roadmap to our actions and behaviors. Remember the power of mental-imagery directly affects our decisions and behavioral options. We cannot see straight.
Mutisensory Training Rules
Published August, 2006 in Current Biology, is a great article by Professor Aaron Seitz of Boston University, and the scientists at UCLA. It has the hot, catchy title of Multisensory Training.
Profound conclusion: when you engage more than one of you gross senses, you gain faster improvement in learning and memory. Do not stick to just a single sense to learn optimally.
Example: After you finish reading, the second step to Master-Learning is reading aloud your personal summary-review of the book, report, or article. This gives it stickiness for lonB68g-term memory.
Why?
You are using two of your gross senses vision and auditory. How much better? Up to 28% in our research. Want to double it? Simultaneously read aloud, while you write a synopsis of the text you study.
This time you have actively involved vision, auditory and touch (kinesthetic), the Big Three senses. Your memory will 2x by moving from a single sense perception, to a multisensory system. Perceive means to comprehend, understand or digest. If you can figure a way to add the sense of smell or taste you improve even more.
Conscious or Unconscious
When we feel anxious, stressed or afraid, or angry, ashamed, and embarrassed, our brain responds to these negative feelings with ANTs. It creates at a non-conscious level, a new mental-movie of death, destruction and disaster; it wipes out our positive goals, hopes and burning desire.
Remember, it kicks in automatically using memories of previous failure, rejection, and loss. Old programming is the most powerful, and turns us into robots of negativity.
How?
It shows us pictures and mental-movies of how we should react and we follow- through like a pet dog performing its trained tricks.
Substitution
The secret of APTs Automatic Positive thoughts is consciously substituting them for the non-conscious ANTs. First, mentally say-and-hear the two-words Cancel/Cancel whenever a ANT offers you negative feedback in the form of MI or negative feelings.
You know how to instantly program your Still, Small Mental Voice, to repeat the phrase Cancel/Cancel - three-times in a row. We call it Sub-Vox, Subvocalization, or stream-of consciousness. It is the same voice that narrates in your minds-ear every text or story you read. Do it how hear the words Cancel/Cancel!
You got it! That is your Target Affirmation to defeat ANTs; repeat with emotion 3x.
Mental-Movies
The second step to eliminating ANTs is by substituting new, positive Mental-Imagery in their place. Do it now! Instantly picture yourself on a sunny beach, cozying up to noisy waves of the beautiful ocean. Feel the warm sun on your skin, and be aware of the wide smile on your face of deep relaxation.
You can change your MI in a millisecond; it takes awareness, attention and a desire. Nothing to it, right? The results are amazing small changes lead to Massive-Reactions, said Dr. Edward Lorenz of MIT.
If it is so easy, how come you never attempted it before?
Answer: there are two ways we human-beans learn. The first is by Practice (repetition). Unfortunately, you have been practicing ANTs.
The second learning system is by Coaching and now you have no excuse for creating chronic stress in your life you have just been coached in Substitution.
Last point we specifically learn by Observation, Trial5A1-And-Error or Lecture. Figure it out have you been using your natural gifts and talents to learn or ignoring your powerful MI skills?
See ya,
copyright 2006
H. Bernard Wechsler
www.Speedlearning.org
hbw@speedlearning.org
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Author of Speed Reading For Professionals, published by Barron's; former business partner of Evelyn Wood, creator of Speed Reading, graduating 4 million, including the White House Staff of four U.S. Presidents.
http://www.Speedlearning.org hbw@speedlearning.org
Brian Tracy
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