A different approach towards studying

 Three studies

• Stephen* was a very competent and intelligent student. Stephen performed reasonably well from grade 1 to grade 3. His teacher then accepted another post at another school and he was replaced by another teacher. The new teacher forced the children to write unprepared quick tests every day for a period of time.

Stephen became very anxious about these tests and eventually told his father about it. He frequently failed these tests. However, if the same questions were asked in the classroom, Stephen could answer each one correctly. Stephen started to think negatively about himself and his studies.  His father then met with the teacher and it was decided to move him to a special class.

Stephens’s previous teacher returned to the school when he was grade 7.  Stephen expressed his wish to return to a standard class back with his previous teacher and he started to perform well again.

• Peter* suddenly began to fail his mathematics during his matric year. Maths was never a problem during his entire school career. His stress levels started to increase during matric, which caused his marks to drop significantly. He came to see me shortly before the final matric examinations.

We discovered that he did not need to pass mathematics in order to get his matric certificate, but he would not get exemption. Since he was not interested to go to university, he could fail mathematics and still pass matric. I suggested to him: accept and make peace with the fact that you are going to fail mathematics. Who cares anyway?  You don’t need to pass it.  However, I still want you to study for your mathematics.  Make it a personal challenge to see how close to a pass you can get, but accept that you will fail it. Peter’s tension about mathematics disappeared.

• Johnny* was a fellow student. I have studied theology during my first years of university. We had to learn to be able to read the Bible in its’ original languages, Hebrew and Greek. And, believe me: Greek is Greek! One of the toughest subjects ever.  However, we were hardworking and smart students and would study very hard before the exams.  Since we were smart and hardworking, we always got about 60% for our Greek.  Except Johnny. 

I specifically remember one morning before a Greek exam paper when we all gathered in a dorm room early in the morning to review our work.  The next moment Koos walked into the room, still busy wiping sleep from his eyes.  Good morning, guys.  Are we writing something today?  Needless to mention, our reaction to it and needless to mention that we all passed Greek with 60% or more. Except Johnny. He got 95% for the paper.

What is making the difference?

To learn or study is as easy as life itself. We have learned that it is difficult to learn or study. We have been taught to work hard, to put in a lot of effort and to revise our work over and over again.

When watching a movie, you’re relaxed, munching on popcorn, sipping a fizzy drink, and comfortably reclining back in your seat, effortlessly enjoying the movie. Back at home, you can almost recite the full story to anyone who wants to listen! If it were an exam, you would have had a distinction for this subject.  Is it that hard to learn or study?

Here are a few myths we believe about studying:

• There is no such thing as stupid or clever people

The first thing to understand is that there is no such thing as a stupid or intelligent person.

After the death of Albert Einstein, his brain was dissected.  Researches could not find any difference between his brain and the brain of anybody else.

• Relaxation

Have you ever observed achievers?  They seem to be relaxed and not bothered. When you are tense, you immediately lose concentration, retention and memory. Please have a look at my article on general anxiety disorder on my website: jorganharris.co.za. You will note that your attention and concentration will be affected when you are anxious.

It is rather difficult not to learn. Imagine how difficult it is to shut your five senses off and keep the status quo. To keep your eyes and ears shut and to maintain a low self-esteem if you did not learn anything! If you did not learn to walk as a child, you still would have crawled. It is indeed difficult not to learn.

• Try harder

You have heard the phrase: try with all your might, try harder, as hard as you can.  Unfortunately, we have all been brainwashed and indoctrinated with this idea all of our lives.  We have been told that in order to get ahead in this competitive world and society, we have to work harder than anyone else.  Try harder. At times, this effort seems to have paid off, and we do come out as a winner.  And then, there is Johnny.  He always seems relaxed, and exceeds our own best effort; we are likely to assume that people like him have more talent than we do. To us, working hard is a way of life, but then there is that person who doesn’t seem to care whether they make it or fail it. They seem to get so much reward for seemingly little effort.  What is their secret?   

• The effect of fighting

The successful person has learned to concentrate on essentials, and thereby avoid fighting everything else around them. They are not bothered by what other people think of them. They are however content in themselves and they are fighting nothing. Since the reptile brain is not activated, these people have more brain-power available to them. 

Very simply, the more up-tight and tense you become, the less brain power you have available for thinking and the less creative you will become. 

You don’t have anything to prove, do you?

• Mind over matter

The more your mind concentrates, the more your body relaxes. And the more your body relaxes, the more your mind concentrates.  You have already learned that the more relaxed you are, the more brain power is available for brain functioning.  Relaxation gives you more brain power and efficiency, and more energy is available for brain functioning.

• Loss of brain-power

You may force yourself to study for hours at your desk, the way your teachers and parents expected from you, but neither them nor you can force your brain to think. The more pressured or threatened you feel, the more your mind reflexes with a conditioned response, and your body responds and becomes involved in your automatic defences.  With maximum anxiety, you will be so completely up-tight, you will just not be able to think clearly and logically.  Hasn’t this exact thing happened to you in the past where you were so uptight, worried, tense or fearful that you could not remember the simplest things?

Your whole body is so focused on defence, that your thinking brain is progressively shut down for everything except that effort to direct your total defence for survival.   

• Granted:

When your life is at stake, if there is a threat to survival, on any level where you have to act first and think later, you have to rely on your conditioned responses for instantaneous action, for your thinking brain is far too slow. A good example is when you are driving your car and a taxi suddenly cuts in front of you, and you have to brake and slow down or take other evasive action to avoid an accident.  If you had to think first as to what to do, you would have already had the accident before you decided what to do.  What happens is you automatically and instinctively move your foot from the accelerator to the brake pedal, turn the steering wheel, and other actions, all in a split second. Trust your subconscious mind to work for you, as it was designed to take care of you in the very best possible ways.

The instinct for defence and survival is so imbedded into man’s brain, that at the least amount of threat, perceived or real, the human mind instantaneously mobilises some or all of its muscles and readjusts all organ functioning to prepare for battle or defence.  The thinking brain is progressively shut down for everything except that effort to direct your total defence for survival.    When your life is at stake, if there is a threat to survival, on any level, you must act first, and think later.

• Your brain does not recognise a negative word

You have learned from childhood how to program yourself with negative messages. You were often told:  don’t do this, or don’t do that.  Don’t fail your exams. 

Your subconscious mind doesn’t register the word not. When you say to yourself: I must not fail my exams, your subconscious will hear I must fail my exams.

As an example: don’t think of a pink elephant right now.  What are you thinking of?  The harder you try not to think of a pink elephant, the more the pink elephant will be on your mind.

A computer is a prototype of the human brain and almost works like the human brain except for the fact that the human brain is much more sophisticated than any computer. Even computers can’t respond to a negative message.  It is not possible to program your computer not to add 3 and 9.  You will not get an answer, and if you should get an answer, it will always be 12. As with a computer, you can only tell your brain what to do or think.

A classic example that vividly illustrates the impact of negative and positive suggestions is telling a young child: Don’t spill this glass of milk.  Invariably, within minutes, the milk ends up spilled as the child only hears the suggestion to spill the milk.

Tell your brain that you will succeed with your exams. As you are now thinking about success in a positive way, have you realised that you have now forgotten about the pink elephant?

• The fear of failure

The fear of failing is a terrible thing.  However, the real challenge is the fear itself!  It’s the fear that is the terrible thing.  The fear literally interfears!  The fear interferes in everything you are doing.  The fear creates all kinds of worries, doubts, tensions, pressures, and stresses.  It is not anything that you have been born with. You have been taught to fear and you have been very effectively conditioned to it.  All forms of fear are learned behaviour.  For when you were born, you had only one idea and that was to succeed, to live and to accomplish.  Whatever you have learned, can be unlearned, and then relearned in a different way.  Most of us are taught entirely too well in these negative ways.

• Allowing failure

You are much more likely to succeed if you allow yourself the privilege of failing and starting over, just the same as when you learned to walk.  In other words, it is okay to fail since it is really a success.  And if you do fail, you have learned what not to do.  When you learned how to walk, you fell down probably hundreds of times. Yet you persevered.  You were determined, got up and tried again and again until you succeeded.  And you did succeed.

Isn’t it amazing, that in adult life, we fall down and say: Oh well, I can’t do it anyway, so what’s the use?  And then give up. If you felt that way the very first time you were learning to take your first steps, we would still all be crawling.  You were not concerned about failure. 

• Peace

You can live your entire life in a relaxed way – in mind, body, soul and spirit. For the key to excellence is pleasure in what you are doing. You can and will achieve tremendous successes by being relaxed.   Relax so you can concentrate your mind and use your mind’s energy to its maximum advantage and capabilities. 

Relax and achieve 

Relax and live 

Relax and enjoy

In summary

Brilliant students: 

• believe in themselves;
• is not bothered about willpower and does things naturally;
• sees their learning experience as relevant;
• focuses on what they really want to do or achieve;
• is focused in the here-and-now;
• does not care about the past or the future. It’s about what they’re experiencing and learning in the here and now;
• is relaxed when they are busy studying;
• believes that they are absorbing so much more when relaxed, and are losing too much brain power and concentration when tense;
• is interested in the work they are studying. Research has pointed out that being interested in a subject is the greatest measure of success;
• enjoys their studies;
• uses all their senses in the learning process;
• gets a reward for their efforts;
• celebrates all successes, even the small ones;
• thinks in terms of success;
• has success and success only, in mind;
• does not pressurise themselves too hard. They are just themselves and they meet their needs in the here and now. They enjoy the learning experience;
• sleeps and relaxes enough.

An alternative idea

According to Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), people roughly fall into three categories – the Visuals, the Auditories and the Kinesthetics. (Read more about this on my website:  jorganharris.co.za in my article on NLP.

• The Visualsexperience their world in images or pictures. They remember in pictures and they describe their world in terms of images.

• The Auditoriesexperience their world in sound and they will react strongly to how you say something.

• The Kinesthetics experience their world based on their feelings, emotions, physical experiences, as well as smell and taste.

How have you been taught to study? If you think back to your school days – the classrooms were probably covered with the most beautiful educational posters.  These posters were helping students with a visual preference. Sometimes videos and voice recordings were shown and that was helpful to students with a visual as well as an auditory preference. Not much provision was being made for people with a kinesthetic preference. No wonder most learning difficulties happen to students with a kinesthetic preference. How do you teach someone with a preference for a feeling, a smell a relaxed body position or even a taste?

Study suggestions for students with the different preferred modalities

• The Visuals

Those with a Visual preference learn best through their eyes. They therefore respond best to what they see and they are studying by forming pictures in their mind.

They respond well to flow charts and diagrams and recall colours and forms easily. They learn faster since a picture is worth more than a thousand words.  They also learn best by moving their eyes upwards. People with a visual preference’s success come from the fact that they see the task and they go for it.

Suggestions for learning from those with a Visual preference:

–  use colourful pictures, diagrams and mindmaps;

–  keep your material above eye level;

–  use flashcards to help memorise key concepts;

–  watch videos and demonstrations;

–  sit up straight when studying.

• The Auditories

People with an auditory preference learn best through hearing. They therefore respond best to what they hear and repeat things for themselves out loud. They will first look sideways (as if they are looking at their ears) before they give a reply to a question.

They therefore remember best by moving their eyes in the direction of their ears and then to hear the answer. They respond well to voice recordings and any information in an auditory form.

Suggestions for people with an Auditory preference:

• keep your material right in front of you, almost as if in line with your ears and preferably a little bit to your left;
• repeat what you read out loud to yourself;
• participate in discussions – by engaging in study groups or class discussions they reinforce learning through conversations;
• listen to podcasts or lectures discussing of explaining the subject;
• use rhymes;
• play baroque music. Not only does it stimulate the Auditories, but Auditories can also be easily distracted by background noise that can be eliminated by the music;
• sit comfortably in order to be able to get into rhythm with the material you are studying.
• The Kinesthetics

Students with a Kinesthetic preference study best through their body. They therefore respond best to what they feel, sense, movement and their gut about a question. They will first look down to their right before they give you a reply to a question.

They recall best by moving their eyes to their dominant hand and then get a feeling about the answer.

Suggestions for students with a Kinesthetic preference:

–  Get your body as comfortable as possible. Many Kinesthetics may prefer to lie down on their bed to study;

–  ensure your environment is comfortable. A comfortable chair, the right temperature, etc. will help you here;

–  keep your material under eye level so you can get the feeling of the work;

–  set emotionally-driven goals – align your learning goals with your passions or things that matter to you on an emotional level;

–  apply concepts practically – learn by doing – apply theories and concepts in real-life situations;

–  visualise success in the subject you are studying;

–  fidget tools or stress balls will help with focus and channel restless energy;

–  while studying, you might become aware of certain feelings that arise as you focus on your study material.

Are you not doing well at school or university? You may not have addressed your modality of preference. What made you believe that you are not a good student? What made you believe that you are not that smart? Are you stressing too much?

Finally

• Stephen* began to believe more in himself. He got rid of those negative views. He studied in a way that suited and worked for him, made enough time for other activities and didn’t study too hard. He passed matric with a 65% average and is currently a student at a renowned institution.
• Peter* got 65% for his mathematics during the final exam, since he took all pressure off himself.
• Johnny*. Well, he became a professor of Greek.

* Not their real names, except Johnny. His real name is actually Koos.