I actually went over the notes again and “experienced” them that I started to absorb the information.
Most people are dominated by one or two of the three primary representational styles, being: auditory, visual or kinesthetic.
A rough average of how people learn is:
-50-60% of learning takes place via the most dominant representational style
-30-40% the next most dominant
-10-20% the least dominant
It can be quite frustrating in a marriage situation when one partner is visually dominant and one is auditory dominant. This is the case in my family. My wife is visual and sometimes has selective hearing when I'm talking. This is not a criticism – I can certainly be the same – it's quite natural. Often I will explain something and think that Sandra is listening and that she has got it. Later Sandra may claim not to know about it. It might be a lesson to me about my communication skills, or timing, but it certainly can create misunderstanding and communication breakdown. It can be quite frustrating, there's no doubt about it (we now have an agreement that if I want Sandra to take some action on what it is that I have said then I must write it down, or she repeats it back to me. It seems to work!).
My younger son is very kinesthetic. He used to have stories read to him, which he loved. But what he would do when the story was being read was play. He'd play with his cars, with his planes, whatever it might be, and he'd run around the room – but make no mistake – he knew every word that was being said at any time. He knew exactly where the story was up to. He was probably processing kinesthetically, and being auditory as well – he needed to be able to do some-thing whilst listening. Now it can be frustrating reading to a kid when you think he is not paying attention. “Pay attention, listen to the story! You wanted me to read to you, do you want to hear it or not?!” ... but he heard every word!
Many school teachers come across kinesthetic kids and in some instances they are labelled hyperactive. I have even heard of situations whereby children have been given drugs to calm them down! There are other ways of teaching these children. It is very important if you are a teacher to know whether your students are visual, auditory or kinesthetic. When teaching any group of people these three representational systems always need to be covered.
Exercise
Here's another exercise. Take a pencil, and once again in the space provided, write down why you decided to read this book. What is your expectation, what do you want out of this book? You could even ask your friends to have a glance at the book and see what they would get out of it. What I'm promoting here is to have a discussion with yourself, and others, to work out what reasons you have to read, study and do the exercises in this book. Whilst this may be difficult for you to do, I encourage you to share your reasons with someone. There's always quite a variety of reasons from all those involved.
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Let me now share with you what I'm going to cover – what my reason or aim is, for writing this book.
•Firstly I am going to show you how you can obtain relaxation and release stress quickly. To achieve this though there is one proviso, and that is – that you want to do it! If you do not really want to do it, then that probably means that you are not ready for it yet. I guess it's a bit like giving up smoking, if you don't really want to do it then you will not succeed in giving it up. The same with relaxation and releasing stress, there will be a “struggle” going on in your mind and you cannot possibly achieve relaxation unless you want to do it.
•Secondly I will cover accelerated learning skills. In fact what will happen with accelerated learning skills is that you can experience some of the skills by reading and doing the exercises in this book – we've already started. The “how to apply it” to things like study and work will also emerge. Of course the actual study you will need to do yourself!
•Thirdly, I will show you a way to achieve your goals faster. The goal can be whatever you like, for instance wanting to relieve pain, wanting more self-confidence, wanting to give up smoking or to release weight (we don't say lose weight any more because if you lose something you want to go and find it again), achieving success, increasing sales, controlling anger, overcoming insomnia, better communication, achieving a certain mark. Whatever your goal may be, you will find a way of achieving that goal faster – much faster than it took me when I first learned about how to do this, and we'll come to the reasons why.
Is the reason why you decided to read this book covered by the three points above? Look back to what you wrote down in the last exercise.
Questions and Answers
Will I be able to achieve all three?
Yes, you will. You will be able to achieve relaxation in 30 seconds. You will obtain a way to clarify and achieve a goal faster. Say if your goal is to obtain high distinctions in final exams or to release weight, then you'll be able to start working on it in this book. It could be your primary aim for reading this book and you will certainly be able to experience and obtain some accelerated learning skills.
How important is having a goal?
One of the things that the science of dreams has shown is that happiness is a journey. Happiness comes from moving towards a goal, not actually getting it.
To remain happy always have a goal that you are working towards. A famous guru describes the secret of happiness as “BE HAPPY”. In other words a verb – a doing word.
What about recall and memory can these be improved?
Yes, absolutely – that will be covered, in fact there will be some exercises on that. I will tell you about memory and how it occurs and how you'll be able to put information into the brain whereby you'll be able to recall more easily. Our memory is fantastic – it's recall that we need. To improve recall we need to take the correct action to ensure that the information goes to long term memory.
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