the brain needs to take in, understand and remember new verbal information.
‘The use of increasingly complex and sophisticated language structures, and the units (vocabulary) which make up those structures, is one of the defining characteristics of evolutionary advance and development. The training and nurturing of your skill in this area is your natural right, your own responsibility, and a rare opportunity. If you grasp it, it will provide you with exceptional benefits. Claim it. Accept it. Develop it!’
Tony Buzan
Ironically the baby’s love of learning is accompanied by something that most adults think is not acceptable or permissible, but which forms the foundation-stone in the development of Verbal Intelligence. It is the next ‘Baby Secret’.
Making Mistakes / ‘Failing’
Does the baby make mistakes?
Yes!
More than the average adult learner?
Many more!
How can it be that a super-learner like the baby makes more mistakes than the average adult, who does not learn so fast?
Because the baby knows the secret: making mistakes and experiencing ‘failures’ is one of the fastest ways to accelerate your learning.
If you don’t make mistakes it means that you have not tried. If you do not try you will never learn.
The baby has hit upon the secret that if you combine your love of learning with creativity and taking risks, you will not only make more mistakes than most other people, you will have many more successes.
All research shows that the world’s great geniuses simply carried on using this Baby Success Formula. They wrote millions of words, painted millions of brush strokes, composed millions of notes, and formulated millions of ideas. They then discarded much of it, and kept the best!
‘Language is the dress of thought.’
Samuel Johnson
There is one other secret principle at which the baby is a world champion:
Persistence
Combined with the love of learning and the making of mistakes, the baby realizes that without persistence, no progress is ever made.
Just think of how many times a baby sometimes tries to pronounce a complex word before getting it finally right; it is sometimes hundreds of ‘failures’.
Does the baby go into a sulk and think something like ‘What’s the point?! I’ve tried thousands of times and still can’t get this bloody word! This language-learning lark is too hard; it’s not for me – I give up!’ Of course not.
The baby uses each mistake as a platform for the next attempt. While doing this it makes a game of the whole thing, relishing the process, and always keeping its eye on the inevitable success of the goal.
‘Language is the armoury of the human mind.’
Coleridge
You are now ready to enter the playground!
Verbal Workout
Word Puzzle Number 3
| tustea | __ __ __ __ XX |
| lapcita | __ __ __ __ X __ X |
| lacyrit | __ __ XX __ __ __ |
| hubog | __ __ __ XX |
Clue: Makes you happy and fit __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
Verbal Intelligence Tip
Always answer the easiest questions first, no matter where they are in the list or linear order you have in front of you.
Why?
Because answering the easiest questions first will allow you to ‘get one under your belt’, your para-conscious brain will realize that there is already less to do than when you started, and this will significantly reduce stress, while simultaneously boosting your confidence.
Secondly, answering these questions first will establish a habit in your brain – the habit of success. And success breeds success!
Word Puzzle Number 4
Insert the word that completes the first word and begins the second.
(Clue: finish)
T R (__ __ __) I V E
Mimic the Best
In exactly the same way that a baby copies those people it considers to be the most powerful and successful (its parents!), copy those experts, public figures, actors, sports personalities or people from your own profession whom you consider to be ‘Top of the Pops’ in the imaginative use of words, as well as in range and clarity.
Make a point of observing and studying them, noting especially interesting words that they use, as well as their methods of delivery.
Play with Words
Remember that one of the baby’s most powerful learning tools is ‘play’. Apply this to the development of your own vocabulary. Mix sections of different words to come up with startling new words and meanings, and enjoy the freedom this gives you. Make up doggerel verse, rhymes and palindromes (phrases that read the same both forwards and backwards – ‘Madam, I’m Adam’ for example!).
Shakespeare, one of the highest Verbal Intelligences the planet has ever known, loved to play with words, and as a result added over 200 new words and expressions that are now common to the global language. Try to catch up with him!
It was this freedom of mind and ability to create that gave rise to the study of Holanthropy, the discipline that arose from my own frustration at not being able to find any discipline in which I could study the whole (Greek ‘holos’) human-being (Greek ‘anthropos’).
Another new word you might enjoy comes from a friend of mine and a teacher of Holanthropy, Lex McKee. A lover of words as well as a musician and artist, Lex had been very happy with the word onomatopoeic (a word whose sound imitates that of the noise or action it describes, such as ‘buzz’). However, he suddenly realized that this word applied only to sound, and as he was also an artist, he wanted a word that appealed also to the sense of vision. He simply took ‘onomatopoeic’, and pasted on to it a preliminary ‘v’, thus creating ‘vonomatopoeic’ – a word meaning ‘sounding and looking like the thing described!
Alphabet fridge magnets are the perfect fun way to explore and make up new words and meanings. What’s more, the entire family can join in, creating more and more words on that wonderful public notice and message board that is many people’s fridge door!
Look
