You are a potential genius.

You have the mental capacity to be, have and do

anything you really want in life. By harnessing your amazing mental powers, you can
accomplish any goal, overcome any obstacle, and solve any problem. We are learning
more today about the incredible potential of your brain that has ever been learned
before in human history, and all of it is good. The bottom line of the research
that is now pouring in from all sides is that you have amazing powers that you have
not yet begun to use. When you learn to use your brain power to its full potential,
the things you will be able to accomplish will be far beyond anything you've ever
done in the past. According to the Stanford Brain Institute, the average person
gets by with about 2% of their mental potential. For some reason, most of us are
keeping our mental capacities in reserve, saving them up for some great need at a
later time. Your goal in life, your responsibility to yourself, is to become
everything you are capable of becoming in the information age. This means that your
obligation to yourself must be to develop your mental abilities to the highest
degree possible. And wonderfully enough, much of the pioneering work and research
has already been done. What you will learn in this course is tested, proven and
practical. It works for anyone, anywhere, and under any set of circumstances. You
are now able to get the bottom line results of decades of trial and error, and you
will be learning proven techniques that will work for you as soon as you apply
them. Your brain is an incredibly complex and capable piece of equipment, but it
comes without an owner's manual. It is only today that we are learning how it works
and how to get the best out of it. Your brain is like a supercomputer that's been
delivered to you fully installed, but with no instructions on how to operate it.
For maximum effectiveness, this course will show you how. Here's the first
breakthrough in our knowledge of the brain. It is a discovery that you actually
have three brains, rather than just one. Each of these brains has evolved after the
other. At the base of your skull, you have a rather primitive brain, what is called
the reptilian brain. It keeps you breathing and it keeps your heart beating. It
tells you to fight or run when danger threatens. It also controls some of your more
primitive instincts, like your sense of territory, which is why you start feeling
angry or uncomfortable when someone moves too close to you. The next to evolve was
your middle brain, a type of brain that mammals also possess. We call this the
mammalian brain. For this reason, only recently have we realized how important this
middle brain is to learning. Your middle brain controls your hormonal system, your
health and immune system, your sexuality, your emotions, and an important part of
your long term memory. The fact that your emotions and your long term memory are
both controlled from the same middle brain explains something that we have all
observed. When something involves strong emotions, it is usually very well
remembered. You probably remember your first kiss, for example, or where you were
when you heard someone significant had died. This also means that enjoyment and fun
are important elements in learning because they involve positive emotions. Now,
make a fist with your hand. Wrap your hand over the top of this fist. If your wrist
represents your primitive brain, then the fist is your middle brain. And the hand
wrapped over it represents your new brain. This third brain, your new brain, or
neocortex, is truly extraordinary. The good news is that this brain has all the
capacity you will ever need to learn and remember anything you want, so long as you
know how. The incredible capacity of your brain has only recently been realized.
You have about 100 billion brain cells. This is a number that is almost impossible
to visualize. It's 20 times the entire population of the world. A brain cell looks
like a miniature octopus. The cell is in the middle. Branching out from that are
tiny threads. Each time something touches or reaches one of your senses of sight,
sound or touch, it creates a thought or impression. It travels out from a brain
cell and along one of the little branch like threads. These threads are called
dendrites, from a greek word meaning branch. Then the thought crosses over to
another brain cell along its branch. The process continues with perhaps thousands
or millions of brain cells being connected in sequence. Like a string of Christmas
lights all lighting up one after the other. This split second mental chain reaction
is conducted by electrical activity. Each time this chain reaction takes place, new
connections form between brain cells. Some of these connections become permanent.
That is why you can remember so many things without conscious effort, like riding a
bicycle or driving a car. Here's the key point. It's not really the number of brain
cells you have. It's the number of connections you make between those brain cells
that determines how useful your brain becomes or how intelligent you really are.
The big news from brain scientists over the last ten or 15 years is that
intelligence is not fixed. You become more intelligent the more you use your brain
and the more stimulation you give your mind. Because the more you use your brain,
the more connections you make between your brain cells, the greater is your
potential for intelligent thought. You literally expand your brain through use. In
a real sense, you are the architect of your own brain power. You can develop your
own intelligence, except for an injury or major illness. You don't lose brain
capacity as you grow older. As long as you keep learning and seeking new
experiences through hobbies, reading, work, sports, art, music, and so on, you
continue to stay alive and alert. Your brain thrives on novelty, and it only
declines with a lack of stimulation. The more you use your brain, the better it
gets at virtually any age. On the other hand, the less you use it, the fewer brain
cell connections you will make, and eventually your brain's capability will
decline. The motto is use it or lose it, and the choice is always yours. Now
imagine that you're looking down on the top of your head and are able to see
through your skull to the thinking brain within. What you would see is that the
thinking brain, or neocortex, consists of two distinct halves. These are the
cerebral hemispheres of your brain. The two halves are connected by a rich bundle
of nerves called the corpus callosum. Each hemisphere, or half, of the brain, tends
to have its own style of processing information for learning. The left brain, for
example, is the linear, logical, practical brain. It is responsible for speech,
step by step logic and numbers. Your right brain, on the other hand, is the
creative, musical, emotional brain. It's responsible for melodies, patterns, and
intuitions or feelings. Your left brain sees individual details. Your right brain
sees the whole picture all at once. People who are more left brained or linear
prefer a slow, step by step buildup of information. Others, more right brained
people, prefer and need to see the big picture of the subject and have an overview
so they can see where it all leads to. They need to see the picture of the jigsaw
on the side of the box before they can begin assembling the pieces. This person is
called a more global type of learner. When you listen to a song, the left brain
will basically be attending to the words while the right brain will be attending to
the music. In addition, the emotional center of your brain, your limbic system,
will be engaged. In other words, when a song is playing and you're paying attention
to it, your whole brain is actively involved. Now think how comparatively easy it
is to learn the words of a song. You probably already know dozens, maybe hundreds
of songs from the past, yet you made very little conscious effort to learn them.
Sometimes you can hear the first chords of a song that was playing when you were a
teenager, and you will immediately remember the time, the place, the person you
were with, and what was happening, and a whole lot of other things. This is because
your brain was fully engaged when you were taking in the song and experiencing the
emotions simultaneously, the conditions under which you easily learned song after
song were that you were relaxed and stress free. In accelerated learning
techniques, you will discover how to create the same kind of learning environment
so that you learn other subjects at an equally rapid rate, without stress or
fatigue. A simple way to explain the difference between linear and global thinking
would be to imagine someone you know. A total linear approach would be for you to
build up the image of the person step by step. You would first look at the hair,
then the forehead, the eyebrows, the nose, the mouth, the chin, and so on, one by
one. It's a slow, logical buildup of information in sequence. Of course, you don't
do that. You glance at the person and instantly your capacity for global thinking
enables you to see the pattern that represents that person's appearance. The result
is that you immediately recognize the person. And here's the problem that arises in
formal education. Most traditional educational materials rely too heavily on the
linear presentation or slow, detailed buildup of information. The more global
learners, most people get frustrated. They can't see where it's all leading to, so
they get bored and switch off. Most of your formal learning experiences have tended
to be based on the type of instruction that linear learners most enjoy. This is
unfortunate for people who like intuitive right brain thinking, school rarely
enables them to achieve their full potential. It's also sad for those who rely on a
linear type
of thinking as well. They have not been given the chance to develop more creative
and intuitive styles of thinking. Have you ever had a situation where you are
absolutely stuck with something new you are reading, you are unable to retain it.
You are unable to maintain interest and concentration while you read. Try looking
at the way you are approaching it. Can you identify your approach as linear or
global? If you are a global learner, by using pictures, colored pens and pencils, a
learning map, or a poster, you will be able to represent the material to yourself
and learn it far faster. We will cover this in subsequent sessions. Understanding
how your brain works is an absolutely essential part of accelerating your learning.
Information. Entering your brain travels to the middle brain. The middle brain acts
as a sort of central switchboard. It has a small appendage called the reticular
cortex. If it decides that incoming information is worthwhile or important, it
switches that information up to your thinking brain where you notice it. This
reticular cortex within your middle brain is not only a switchboard for incoming
information, it's also the part of your brain that controls your emotions. When the
new information is transmitted to you in ways that appeal positively to your
emotions, you can learn well and remember easily. When what you are learning
includes color picture games, and musical accompaniment, your emotions become
engaged positively and you learn faster and better. The teachers and instructors
that you remember the most were almost invariably the ones who are enthusiastic.
Enthusiasm has emotional appeal, however, when negative emotions of fear, doubt,
worry, or anxiety are present, your middle brain may suppress incoming information.
If you're under stress, information may never even reach your thinking brain it
just gets filtered out. This is what happens when your mind goes blank. Stress
involves, however, not only the worries and concerns that you are conscious of.
Very often, people with poor previous experiences of learning feel unconsciously
threatened by new learning experiences. This could happen to you. It becomes a
vicious circle because when you feel you are poor at learning, you feel threatened.
And because you feel under threat, your thinking brain receives less information,
and you do learn less effectively. If you feel insecure, less of your brain's
potential is available. That's why when you're worried, you may suddenly come to
realize that you've been staring at the page without taking it in. This is why you
need to get into a calm, positive mood before you start learning. For you to
function at your best, you must become actively involved in the entire learning
process. Your entire brain, both left and right hemispheres, and your limbic,
mammalian, and neocortex parts of your brain must all be involved in the way you
approach and absorb new ideas throughout your life. You've often been exposed to a
single piece of information just once and have remembered it for many years, if not
forever. This was a case when your whole brain was functioning at its best. In the
following sessions, you will learn method after method, each of which you can use
to enhance your intelligence and accelerate your learning ability. By the time you
are finished, not only will you be amazed at how good a student you are, but you
will be delighted at the newfound pleasure that you derive from learning virtually
anything you want, anytime you want to learn it. Now let's look at some of the
specific reasons, why and how you can begin to function at exceptional levels.
Almost everything you've learned, you learn effortlessly and without trying. You
learned it through conversation, discussion, self directed reading, fun play, and
interaction with others. You learned many of your work related skills on the job as
a result of experience, feedback, self analysis, and personal application. These
are all examples of informal learning. It's not uncommon for children playing on
the street in multilingual neighborhoods to learn two, three, and four languages by
the age of five or six, without effort. They were so busy playing with their
friends and involved in communicating with them that they never even thought that
they were learning languages. Think for a moment about the things that you feel you
were really good at, both at home and at work. How did you become good at these
things? What were the various things that you did that enabled you to advance so
rapidly? How exactly did you learn to become competent, skilled or proficient in
each of these areas? One of the great secrets of success is to find out what works
and do more of it. The law of cause and effect says that there is a cause effect
relationship that explains everything that happens to you. When you begin to
identify your dominant intelligences and your particular learning style, and you
apply them to learning other skills and abilities, your learning will accelerate
overnight. The one thing you can conclude is that you are already a very good
learner. You have had to be throughout life. No one is born with the ability to
walk, talk, function as a member of complex family relationships, create budgets,
set schedules, count, sell, manage people, run a machine, use electric utensils,
drive a car, read a paper, or anything else. These are all things that you had to
learn by a process of trial and error. And the remarkable thing is that you learn
them almost effortlessly. In fact, you probably forget when and how you learn most
of those things. Now, you might say that that sort of learning isn't the problem.
It's the sort of learning that involves textbooks, lectures, computers, and
training rooms that is the challenge for you. It is your experience with formal
learning, as opposed to informal learning, that has caused you to question your
ability. This is the heart of the issue. Most of your learning has been informal
learning. It's been based on exploration, and you've done it pretty successfully.
In fact, most of the important things that you have learned in life, you have
learned informally. To use a simple analogy, if you have the three numbers of a
combination lock, having opened a combination lock once, you can open that or any
other combination lock if you have the correct numbers, but if you don't have the
right numbers, or if you have the right numbers but they're in the wrong sequence,
you can spin the dial of the lock indefinitely and not get it open. This is the
situation most people are in with regard to learning. To go back to the example of
informal learning, you will probably remember that this type of learning involves
discussing things with others, asking lots of questions, a process of trial and
error where you experiment with new information and ideas, getting other people's
reactions, watching and practicing, and getting some fun out of the process along
the way. The preschool child learns just like he uses all his senses. He is free of
stress. He has individual attention from the teacher, he is encouraged continuously
and he learns faster than at any other time of his life. Many adult skills are also
learned in a similar way through trial and error, talking to others and asking
questions. It's the formal learning process that tends to give us problems. Why?
Because formal learning does not come naturally to most people. Its largely based
on textbooks, lectures and study methods and we need to be taught how to do it. In
a way formal learning is a bit unnatural in terms of how we learn best and most
effectively. Its natural for example to dance but you need some training to be able
to do a formal dance like a quick step or a waltz. Formal learning is necessary
whenever youre confronted with the need to learn a large complex subject with a
structured body of information. You simply can't take it in in a random and
haphazard way. In addition, preschool and primary school children usually learn
with a lot of love and encouragement. They explore, they learn through games and
they work on cooperative projects involving lots of different activities. It's
fast, effective and fun. Then the rules change, they go off to primary school.
There is a sharp divide between the way they learned up till now and the way
they're expected to learn in the future. Now they sit in rows. They are taught as a
group and are expected to be quiet during the class. There is less group
involvement, they are taught in more limited ways and surprise, surprise, it
doesn't seem to work as well as informal learning used to do. In one study, 95% of
children tested between the ages of four and seven were found to be highly
creative, intelligent, curious and interested in the world around them. After
several years of traditional schooling, only 7% of the same children at age 15 were
found to still be highly creative and intelligent. Those early years of schooling,
using a model based on the prussian system of 1830, turned the whole business of
learning from an exciting, exhilarating experience to a boring, frustrating
exercise that children only looked forward to getting out of as soon as possible.
Why is formal learning more difficult? First, formal learning concentrates on books
and lectures. These methods are effective and necessary, but by themselves they're
not enough for many people. You may remember being bored out of your head in
school. I certainly do. Many people, as we'll see, don't learn well unless they can
add more natural ways to learn to the conventional and formal methods of teaching.
This course will teach you a variety of more natural ways for you to learn and to
take in new information. The second reason formal learning is more difficult for
most people is that many books and lectures are written in a step by step academic
style. This style often comes
across as artificial and boring. It's hard for you to concentrate because the
material does not hold your attention. But fortunately, there are many ways you can
restructure this type of formal learning situation so that it becomes more fun and
enjoyable and far more effective. The third reason formal learning is more
difficult than informal learning is because most of it requires you to work in
large groups without much interaction or one on one teaching. This reduces the
amount of individual attention, which is such a successful feature of most informal
learning. The preschool child usually has the individual attention of his parents
or another caring adult. The person at work usually has the individual attention of
his or her boss and colleagues as he or she trains to do the job. The big problem
most people have today is that they equate learning with formal study type learning
because they were never taught to learn from books, lectures, and training
sessions. Many people lack confidence in their ability to learn formally. They then
conclude, quite wrongly, that they are poor learners. The law of belief says that
whatever you believe with feeling becomes your reality. The starting point of
becoming a genius is for you to believe that you have the capacity to learn
anything you want and to learn it at a rapid rate. Your attitude toward your
ability to learn will be more important than all the methods and techniques that
you can possibly learn in this program. If you absolutely, positively believe that
you have unlimited capacity, that will become your reality. It's a shame that so
many people left school with so many bad memories and experiences. They started out
into adult life wanting never to have to be exposed to education again. But unless
these people change their thinking about themselves and their capacities, they have
no future in the information age. According to the research, they will work at low
wage jobs marked by continued periods of unemployment and underemployment. You have
to become a positive, optimistic, enthusiastic learner if you want to achieve
everything that is possible for you. The power of positive expectations on your
life and your future is quite incredible. If you expect to win, you most often
will. If you expect to succeed, you will ultimately be a big success. If you expect
to learn how to learn easily and well, then there is really nothing that can hold
you back from doing it. The great breakthrough in psychology was the discovery that
the amount of your potential that you use is largely determined by your self
concept, by the way you think and feel about yourself. If you believe yourself to
be an outstanding person capable of tremendous accomplishments, then that will
become true for you. You will walk, talk, and act as if you had the qualities that
you believe you have. On the other hand, if you are like most people and you are
plagued by fears and doubts about your own abilities, these doubts will act as
breaks on your potential. They will hold you back and cause you to sell yourself
short, to settle for far less than you are really capable of. Your levels of
performance and personal effectiveness are determined by your self image, your self
esteem, and your self concept. As you begin to think about yourself in a more
positive way, you begin to accomplish even more. When we say that you can
dramatically increase your intelligence so that you function at genius or
exceptional levels, your first instinct may be to reject the notion. After all,
you've been going on the same way for many years. The idea that you could increase
your intelligence and your functional mental ability two, three, four times or more
is too incredible for most people to even imagine. But here's another analogy. If
you decide you want to learn to type with a typewriter or keyboard, there are two
ways that you can do it. You can use the hunt and peck method, where you
concentrate on the keyboard and you peck out the words with your forefingers one by
one. With this method and a little luck and persistence, you might get your typing
speed up to around eight to ten words per minute. However, if you are serious about
being an excellent typist, you could take one of the many touch typing courses that
are available. If you practiced 1 hour per day for 30 days, putting your fingers on
the proper keys and following the instructions in the course, you could get your
typing speed up to 30, 40, and even 50 words per minute. A good friend of mine took
a typing course during the summer when he was 15 years old. Ever since then, he's
continued to practice typing and now types 120 words per minute. He can type
virtually as fast as he can formulate words in his mind, and he can type with his
eyes closed. And he types perfectly without mistakes. Most secretaries and typists
can produce 50, 60, and 70 words per minute without mistakes as well. Does this
mean that they are five or six or seven times as intelligent as the person using
the hunt and peck method who is typing perhaps ten words per minute? Of course not.
It simply means that they have learned how to type properly. The same principle
applies to using your intelligence. By learning to learn and practicing accelerated
learning techniques until they become habitual, you'll gradually increase your
ability to learn, remember, and apply by hundreds of percents. Intelligence is not
just a matter of IQ. Although IQ is one way of measuring intelligence among large
groups of people, intelligence is more a way of acting. If you act intelligently,
you are intelligent. If you act stupidly, you are stupid irrespective of your iq.
Now, if you agree that a person who acts intelligently is intelligent, your next
question might be, what, then would be an intelligent way of acting? And the answer
is simple. Every time that you do something that moves you toward a goal that is
important to you, you are behaving intelligently. Every time that you do something
that moves you away from a goal that is important to you or doesn't help you at
all, you are acting stupidly. Intelligence is relevant only to your own self
selected goals and ambitions. Your level of intelligence is determined by what you
do relative to what you want to have and become. What is an intelligent person? An
intelligent person is one who works continuously and consistently on activities
that move them ever closer to their goals. On the other hand, a stupid person is a
person who either has no goals or who engages in activities that are contrary to
achieving those goals. A person who wants to be financially secure and respected in
his or her profession is one who works steadily to become better and better at
their job and who applies their talents and abilities in the very best way to get
the job done fast. This is an intelligent person. Every time you learn and practice
something new and different that you can use to achieve your goals faster, you are
acting with the very highest of intelligence. In fact, the more things that you do
that are consistent with your goals, the smarter you become. Some of the most
controversial scientific work being done today is in the area of intelligence and
how intelligence is related to success. Based on more than 50 years of independent
testing and surveys, authors Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray have concluded
in their book the Bell Curve that there is a strong correlation between the success
that a person achieves in life and their level of intelligence. The smarter you
are, the more successful you will be. If you increase your intelligence, you will
increase your potential for success at whatever you do. Of course, these findings
are a restatement of the obvious. Weve entered into the information age, where
knowledge is the primary source of value. The person who develops the capacity to
learn and apply more knowledge is going to be more valuable than the person who
does not. In the age of manpower, people with greater physical strength were able
to accomplish greater physical feats. In the age of mind power, however, people
with greater mental strength are going to be able to accomplish greater mental
feats and tasks. What this means is that you must do everything possible to enhance
your intelligence, to become smarter and more competent at what you do.
Fortunately, as I said in the last session. Intelligence is not a fixed quantity.
It is like a muscle. Just as you can build your muscles by pumping physical iron,
you can build your mental muscles by pumping mental iron. By learning how your
brain works, and then by using your brain to its full capacity, you can become
increasingly intelligent over time. The most important breakthrough work in the
field of intelligence has been done by Doctor Howard Gardner of Harvard University.
His research shows that you have not just one intelligence, but at least seven
intelligences. Each of your intelligences is of similar importance in reaching your
full human potential. Your intelligences are really your natural talents, which you
have to a greater or lesser extent. The first of the seven intelligences, and the
most common, is linguistic intelligence, or talent with language and words. This is
the ability to speak or write well. Some people just have the gift of the gab, or
they can write well. Many people like to read good novels or even write poetry.
They have good linguistic intelligence. The second type is mathematical and logical
intelligence, or talent with math, logic, and systems. This is the ability to deal
well with numbers and to think logically. You probably know people who perhaps
don't think of themselves as particularly intelligent, but who are razor sharp on
adding up the odds on a bet or calculating percentages on sports scores. Engineers,
scientists, and accountants would be very high in this intelligence. The
third type of intelligence is visual spatial intelligence, or visual talent. This
is the ability to visualize how things will eventually look in advance of them
coming into reality, or to imagine things in your mind's eye in advance of creating
them. Designers, architects, and artists would be examples of people with high
levels of visual and spatial intelligence. You use this intelligence, by the way,
whenever you use your sense of direction, or whenever you navigate or draw a
picture. The fourth type of intelligence is musical intelligence or talent with
music. This is the ability to create and interpret music. It's the ability to keep
rhythm. Most of us have a good basic musical intelligence, and we can all develop
it to a higher extent. Think how helpful it is for you to learn a jingle or a
rhyme. For example, do you remember 30 days, half September, April, June and
November? Or the song for remembering the Alphabet? The fifth type of intelligence
is bodily or physical intelligence. You use this intelligence when you move well,
run, dance, build and construct something. All arts and crafts use this
intelligence. Many people who are physically talented at sports or good with their
hands don't recognize that they are showing a very high form of intelligence. This
form of intelligence is of equal value to the other intelligences. Think of the
kind of money earned by sports stars who are absolute geniuses in terms of physical
and bodily intelligence. The 6th form of intelligence you might have is
interpersonal or social talent. This is the ability to communicate well and to get
along with others. Many people have a superb ability to make people feel at ease,
to read others emotions, and to be sympathetic to the feelings of others. This is
also a vital human intelligence. This talent is used to the full when you are being
a good parent, a supportive colleague, or a good teacher. And by the way, this is
the highest paid intelligence in America. It is used by salespeople, managers,
entertainers, public speakers, courtroom lawyers, and anyone who makes a living by
influencing other people in any way, and it is very seldom ever measured or graded
in school. The 7th form of intelligence is intrapersonal intelligence or inner
control. This is an ability for quiet, objective self analysis. This intelligence
enables you to understand your own behavior and feelings. You use this intelligence
to create your own goals and plans and to study your own successes and mistakes as
a guide to future improvement. Doctor Howard Gardner has proposed that the
definition of intelligence really should be the ability to create useful products
and to solve everyday problems. Previously, intelligence was defined much more
narrowly. It was mostly related to academic performance. Yet academic subjects are
largely taught through just two intelligences, the linguistic and mathematical.
Logical academic success is indeed one way of demonstrating intelligence in the
real world. However, it is far from the only way. You become a genius by learning
how to use all of your intelligences in the areas of your life that are important
to you. People today are learning math through songs, chants and jingles. They are
learning by physically handling counters, by actually picturing the patterns that
numbers make, or by working together in pairs through imagery, through colored
charts and diagrams. And they are loving it. People are learning to write really
creatively by using learning maps, which you will hear about later. They are making
vivid mental pictures before they start writing. They are acting parts of their
stories, and they are seeing the value of working in pairs. In the sessions ahead,
you will learn how to unlock more and more of your intelligences to ensure that you
learn how to learn in ways that suit your unique mix of capabilities.