We all need to learn new things every now and then. Currently this could be even more important than usual – the world economy is shifting fast and old ways of working may no longer be available.
I remember years ago hearing Richard Bandler (one of the founders of NLP) say that when he wanted to learn a new language, he would “re-baby”.
He didn’t explain exactly how he did that but the gist of it was that babies learn instinctively. They’ve got no built-in references and they can learn Cantonese or Russian just as easily as they can learn English.
Babies are curious and eager to learn but, as we get older and wiser, we unlearn how to do the most effective learning methods we’ve ever used.
Weird but true.
Adopt a beginner’s mindset
Do your best to set aside all the preconceptions and assumptions you’d normally make about the process you want to learn.
That’s often easier said than done but you can certainly get most of the way there by asking – childlike – one simple question over and over and over again until you get to the fundamental part.
That question is just one word: “Why?”
It opens up so many possibilities.
Your first few answers will almost certainly be superficial, “adult” type answers. That’s normal.
But keep asking and you’ll drill down to the actual basics.
As part of the process, you’ll also manage to “unlearn” things so that you can put them out of your mind, maybe forever, maybe just long enough to be able to work on your learning project.
Which will help to declutter your mind and allow you to learn afresh.
Keep hydrated
You probably know that you’re supposed to drink 8 glasses of water a day.
And you may even have tried it and gone to the toilet more often than you ever imagined possible.
But you almost certainly need to drink more – preferably water, ideally not soda (full sugar or diet), be careful with caffeinated drinks.
Work up to the 8 glasses a day, setting up reminders if you need to remember to do it.
Adopt an alternative viewpoint
You probably know someone who almost automatically takes the opposite point of view, almost for the “fun” of seeing how other people react.
Alternative viewpoints are how we learn.
If scientists didn’t regularly challenge the accepted points of view, we would never have progressed as a species.
How would someone else tackle this? What would they do and say?
If you can find someone to do this exercise with, with you or the other person playing devil’s advocate you’ll discover new ways to look at the idea and sky rocket your learning in the process.
I admire Edward de Bono for figuring out this skill and writing books to help people do it but it’s not a technique I’m personally comfortable using. But I’ve met people who use it and they normally get to an excellent answer quicker than I do.
If you’re able to think laterally, it’s a great technique for learning new ways to do things.
Talk to someone younger than you
This can be called reverse mentoring but it’s basically another way of getting a less biased point of view.
Young people haven’t got all the preconceptions that we acquire as we get older.
Which can be infuriating at times when they ask why we’d doing things a certain way and we struggle to answer with anything much more than “because”.
Opening your mind using a younger person as the catalyst works really nicely as well as helping to keep you younger. You’ll often discover ways to do things you’d never have thought of on your own and whilst some of those ways may be more complicated (because they don’t know all the shortcuts you know) others will be satisfyingly quicker and easier.
Choose the road less travelled
The conventional way of doing things is just that – convention.
If we had to reinvent the computer keyboard nowadays, there’ s no way we’d use the layout we’ve all learned and grown used to. It’s slow because it was designed to slow typists down to stop them jamming the keys on their typewriters.
But better layouts such as the Dvorak keyboard aren’t used (although if you’re feeling nasty you could always set a computer to that layout) and we’re stuck with the QWERTY layout.
The same goes for all sorts of other roads less travelled in all sorts of subjects – Vedic maths is quicker than regular maths, that kind of thing.
So look for an alternative way to do whatever it is you’re trying to do – that’s easy with Google to help you – and see whether it helps you to learn more effectively and efficiently.
Get your subconscious onboard
Our subconscious mind looks after the majority of things our body does. Which includes learning.
But – like the conscious part of you – it can get stuck in it’s ways. That’s why we have so many hang-ups – because they’re what we’ve learned to do, so we use them as shortcuts, even if they’re not totally in our best interests.
Hypnosis talks directly to your subconscious mind and can help re-set how you learn things so that you learn quicker and easier than you ever thought possible. Even if you’re the human equivalent of an old dog trying to learn new tricks.
If that sounds interesting, click this link to download a track and start listening straight away.
I remember years ago hearing Richard Bandler (one of the founders of NLP) say that when he wanted to learn a new language, he would “re-baby”.
