What You Never

Learned About Learning

by D r. S t e p h a n i e B u r n s
A special report from WealthBuildersReports.com

What You Never Learned About Learning

by Dr. Stephanie Burns
Introduction
When you open the box to start learning from The Wealth Builders Blueprint you WILL use the best strategies for learning and motivation you have on hand. The question is: How good are those strategies? Most adults still use the strategies and the mindset for learning they developed during their days in school. Except for the fortunate few who have had some cause to re-evaluate their learning strategies and acquire new ones, most adults produce poor results for all the effort they put into it. I have worked with more than 100,000 successful adults in all forms of learning events, and one thing I can say with a certainty is that it is a good thing that success does not solely depend upon being a good learner! In a number of studies I conducted when I first became fascinated by the behavior of adults in learning situations I discovered that many adults left school having LEARNED: To have poor concentration Ineffective reading and memory strategies To develop low self-esteem To have low expectations To be shy To be poorly coordinated To be depressed and stressed when learning To talk to themselves in demeaning and demoralizing ways To do things in ways that are fatiguing and perpetuate low energy To diminish successes and generalize failures To be forgetful These are not simply beliefs adults hold about themselves they manifest in their learning behavior. As an adult it is important that you recognize that these problems are a result of past experiences, not upon your capabilities. It is time to invest time in learning HOW to learn. You have magnificent learning equipment!

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We never learned about the nature of the learning process

Learning is a challenging process for both your body and the brain. It is NOT fun. Sure there are fun times in the process, but for the most part it is difficult. That is its nature. The learning process starts with the discovery of I dont even know what I dont know leading at times to a feeling of inadequacy or overwhelm. If we survive that onslaught we then have to navigate through the process of acquiring new information and behavior leading to many uncomfortable hours of boredom, frustration, confusion and even fear. If we have enough resilience for that process we then must willfully and consciously begin using the new information and behavior leading to an initial decrement in our performances, lack of coordination and concern for what other people will think. Learning is fraught with natural and normal pushes toward giving up. Achieving a learning result is an extraordinary event for an adult who has not been trained how to learn as an adult. As adults we have to have lessons on the nature of learning and understand it for the unique process it is, and we have to build up tolerances for the experience. Without this, quitting will far outweigh your learning successes.

We never learned 3 critical lessons for any successful learning

Learning is a process. It requires a sustained effort over time. There are three critical lessons that adult learners have to pay attention to if they are to get the best from their efforts. These are the lessons of preparation, motivation and highly effective learning strategies.

Preparation
The process of learning is different from other life activities. For instance, what you do to read a business report is different than if you had to learn from that report. What you do to sell something is different than the process of learning to sell something. Learning first requires that we access a state of mind and body that supports that process.

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When we were in school the external environment prepared us. The act of getting to school, walking to classes, settling in, being set up by a teacher were all rituals that help us as learners shift gears from whatever it was we were doing to the state we needed for learning. Adults, when they engage in independent study do not realize how important those preparations were to the quality of the result that was produced. To be successful in the learning process you will need to prepare yourself for that activity BEFORE you begin. This includes: Finding a quiet, or at least enjoyable, environment for learning. Setting up your learning space so you have everything at hand. Removing everything else that might be distracting, such as turning off incoming mail alarms, paperclips you fiddle with twisting into shapes, or food. Setting a time period and keeping to it dont go longer and dont stop short. You might use an alarm or hourglass. Making a plan for the session. What is your outcome? What is the best method to achieve that outcome? And, most importantly, how will you now if you have achieved it? In self-directed learning you have to PREPARE yourself!

Motivation
The issue of motivation, and its cousin procrastination, have been the focus of my work since the mid-90s. Having taught adults HOW to learn effectively for more than 10 years I was surprised to learn how many of my graduates still failed to achieve important and highly desired personal and professional goals that required some sort of learning. These goals were things such as learning to touch-type, to swim, to complete a university course, to speak a foreign language, to play a musical instrument, to read a book, and so on. The cause of the failure was not due to ineffective learning strategies. The issue was an inability to initiate and sustain learning actions over time. Lets face it, if you have a goal to learn to swim 500 meters, the only way you could possibly fail to achieve that goal is if you dont go to the pool or quit your sessions before any real progress is made!

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Importantly, the 11TH hour strategies you might use to complete a project are NOT useful when learning, yet a lot of adults resort to this after days or weeks of procrastinating. To achieve high quality learning results requires small amounts of action frequently and consistently taken over a long-ish period of time. There is just no way to do a lot of learning at one time. The question then is: What do you have to do to initiate the learning process again and again, and sustain it long enough for some learning to occur? The problem in a nutshell is this: when what we are doing is discomforting (frustrating, confusing, embarrassing, anxiety-provoking) our brain is going to do whatever it takes to resolve that discomfort and move us toward comfort. If you are learning to touch-type and getting more and more angry at the beep that sounds every time you make a mistake, your brain will intervene. It is going to save you from stress that it perceives to be bad for your survival its prime objective. The fastest way your brain can do this is to get you to stop the learning session, or not start it in the future if it has already stored the fact that this is stressful. It does this by providing you all kinds of excuses and rationale for stopping. If the excuse sounds believable enough, you will stop WITHOUT guilt which if you continued to feel would actually keep you going! But if you believe what you say to yourself you will stop. Ill do this later when I have more time. I dont really need to learn how to type. This is just a bad program, Ill buy a different one. and on and on. It is important to know that this is a natural process. People who are consistently good at achieving goals have a set of mental strategies to override the human behavior of seeking comfort. They know that boredom is NOT a reason to stop. The phenomenon of motivation and procrastination was the focus for my PhD studies and is the problem being solved in The Labyrinth online course I conduct for adults around the world. Adults see procrastination and avoidance as the single biggest problems they have in goals and life in general. As an adult, to achieve significant goals you will need to learn about the potentially negative influences your mind has when you are learning all in its attempt to save you from discomfort. Both my audio CD and my section of the workbook in The Wealth Builders Blueprint discuss the strategies you can begin to use to override these brain effects. In self-directed learning you have to MANAGE your motivation!

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Effective learning strategies

At one level I would advise you to look at what you had to do in school to learn effectively and be reminded about the types of activities you engaged in. You didnt just read, you studied! You took notes and reviewed them. You studied in short session daily in school, building knowledge and skills over time. You rehearsed answers in your mind, and you did lots of repetition. Adults, for the most part do none of these things. They listen to an audio book and thats that. They read professional books as if they were novels, leaving little or no memory of what was actually covered. So, let me say this: At a minimum you should remember what learning required in school and do more of that as an adult. At the other level I want to say that the strategies you learned in school were not as effective as we know they can be. There are some very smart people who have looked at learning strategies and accelerated both the speed and quality of learning. There are people who have rewritten the concept of reading, of studying, of remembering and of practicing. In this short piece I can only try to wake you up to the nature of learning. One of these few keys might just provide that wake up. There is nothing in the act of reading, or listening, that makes the information memorable. If you forget what you read you are normal. Stop thinking you are stupid. To make information or skills memorable you have to DO something to cause it to be memorable. Stop thinking you have a bad memory or that you are slow. Notes are critical for the kind of review that is critical for learning. And, so to is writing in the margins of your books. Take notes in a way that makes them unique use color, write big and small, use pictures and symbols, write backwards, stop writing on the lines of the paper. The brain is drawn to difference and you need to WANT to look at these notes and those books again. Stop being afraid to do things differently. Learning isnt free you have to DO something. Stop telling yourself you are stupid as your good enough excuse to avoid achieving your goals.

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Conclusion
There is so much that can be done to support adults being outstanding learners and achievers. It is distressing to me to meet adults with no confidence in their ability to get where it is they want to go simply because they have never been taught to learn effectively. This is such an easy problem to solve! I hope to meet you one day and share with you more of what I know. In the mean time, use all the resources you can find to improve your ability to learn and sustain motivation. Do this FIRST. Then everything will come easy! Go well, Stephanie Burns

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Now Discover the Burns Method for Adult Learning and Goal Achievement
Based on solid science, tested by thousands worldwide, with a track record of consistent, lifechanging results thats the Burns Method. What is your priority? Take a look at Dr. Burns online interactive courses on: Team and Leadership Communication Goal Achievement & Self-Leadership Giving Great Presentations Health and Fitness Software Design Youll find them all at:

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There is still more to explore at stephanieburns.com including: Overcoming Fear Successful Horsemanship Learning the Guitar Plus dozens of articles about Dr. Burns fascinating research and powerful tools for change.

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