Ditch your Negative Avatars
I have been on an “accelerating learning” binge this morning. And here is the grand finale. To build the capacity to learn faster, we need a strong starting point. Something to push off from. Why? To make a strong commitment to the learning challenge at hand.
Here is the tip - you cannot do this while you are berating yourself. That weakens you. And yet, we are all hardwired to do that. From time to time, we all say to ourselves “Boy, am I a loser, or what?” Or we dwell on a failure or failures from our childhood. To be blunt, we need to cut that out. It weakens our capacity to commit to learning.
Here are a few exercises that can help you do this.
- Practice expressing gratefulness. To yourself and to others. Being grateful puts you in a great position to look to the future instead of dwell on the past.
- Repeat positive messages to yourself. Tell yourself “Good job!” when you do a good job. And btw, do this to others too. Repetition builds stronger mental pathways.
- Don’t accept negative conclusions without a fight. We are all hardwired to give up a tough fight. To cut and run when things seem really scary. It is a survival mechanism. But this gets out of control and is often out of place in the modern world. Stand and fight broad negative conclusions.
How did I figure the above out? I didn’t. I just happened read it in Entrepreneur by Nadia Goodman and agree with it.
And why do I agree? Because I have learned that thinking about something (like positivity) changes the neural structure of the brain to cause us to become that thing. Think of it this way - thinking about exercise is enough to make your muscles stronger. Thinking about getting smarter (and how to get there) will in itself make you smarter. That is the power of thinking.
It is all because of dendrites. Because of dendrites
The more ways you learn a fact, the better your chances are at remembering it.
Why? Because repeated encounters with the fact create new dendrites connected to the neuron in your brain that uses that fact. From schooleforlife.com. So get those dendrites growing around the facts you need to learn!
BTW, this way of thinking provides us with some insights into how to communicate more effectively as well. Like dealing with the amydala, cortisol, etc.