It’s about Time

Time to look forwards.

There’s a new Quest course on its way and in the way of Quest, graduates assist the new students. It’s too good an opportunity to miss. The assistants on my course were fantastic and I’m still in touch with most of them. They were an important part of the experience.

Time to pass on what I’ve learned.

It’s also time to refresh what I thought I’d picked up originally because as these things go, you generally miss things first time around. It’s why I like watching films more than once. Subsequent viewings are when you pick up the intricacies of the complex plot. Or the finesse in the special effects.

So even though I’m now the proud possessor of a certificate that proclaims me to be a master wizard, there’s always more to learn.

Time for new beginnings.

Time for fun.

It’s a matter of perspective
© Tony Burkinshaw 2012

Journey’s End?

It occurs to me that the course last the weekend may contain more benefit than I had imagined. Even though life is more than full of its unfair share of challenges, I’ve still warily taken on, in a semi-volunteering style, the role of leader for the next period of putting learning into practice until the start of the module that I’m not certain I’ll be attending.

In itself this is an improvement because until recently, I was certain that I wouldn’t be attending it at all.

Anything more than nothing is progress.

Not only that, I posted yesterday’s 100 word habit on my PostsOfHypnoticSuggestion blog and got back comments from bloggers I’ve not heard from since writing went by the wayside just as last year’s turbulence hit.

It was really nice to know I’d been missed.

It seems that the end of my journey to Master Practitioner could be the start of something more than a qualification.

Somewhat Zen
© Tony Burkinshaw 2014

Dancing to someone else’s tune

I love my job.
That’s something I feel very fortunate to be able to say and in no small part that’s down to leaping that leap of faith and trusting there was a path out there. Somewhere.
It took a bit of finding but thanks to multiple strands weaving their magic carpet threads, I found the right combination of both circumstance and people.
Here I am.
I’m on a train returning from the City, with a day of one to one coaching successfully done and more to come tomorrow. There’s a lot to cover in 2 days and the material’s dry enough at the best of times. So with an exam to top it all off on Wednesday, the pressure is firmly on my client. Top bloke by the way.
According to those in the know, including him, I’ve done well to keep him engaged for the full day. Apparently that’s a pretty difficult task. It’s a good job no-one told me, I might have found it difficult too, just to carry on the tradition.
The trick is to provide as much of that engagement in a language that reflects the soundtrack of his world, not mine. After all, I already know it, so what’s the point of regurgitating tricky information in a way that only makes sense to me?
The clues were everywhere. Office decor, his demeanor, the way he spoke, the language he used. The signed music posters, guitar cases and desktop PC speakers were the final  confirmation, as if confirmation were needed.
Introduce the source material so the theme plays out loud and clear. One sound bite at a time. Check that he hears what’s said and it sounds OK to him. Does it ring true? Can he replay it back to me? Only bring in the new layers of information when he can work it in harmony with what he’s already heard.
In short, whereas I would have painted the detail that fits into the picture, (if you see what I mean), I listened to what he was hearing and once I’d found the right notes, we danced the day to his tune.

Learning to Reduce Stress

You know how I write a monthly column for ‘Only Peterborough’ magazine? It’s the Understanding You, mental-health well-being column. Well, this is the article I wrote for the November edition. I thought you might like it.

It’s about my other interest in life, helping people learn how to learn.

These days, qualification never ceases and people have to take  professional qualifications for much of their career.

All of a sudden, you find yourself trying to use the same study methods you used at school or University except this time you’re also trying to hold down a career, keep a family happy, not to mention earn a living and desperately search for that mythical work-life balance.

Strangely enough, almost no-one gets taught how to learn.

How to use the way you, as an individual, relate to the world and other people. Take the way you do the things you love. You just do them. It just happens. It flows. And all the effort is worthwhile.

What I do is uncover these aspects of you and show you how to use them to learn everything in that same way. Learning becomes fun again – no matter what the subject matter.

Anyway. Here’s a high-level version of that other side of what I do.

Learning to Reduce Stress

Have you ever seen a toddler achieve some mighty task such as saying a new word, taking their first steps, kicking a ball. Notice that immense concentration followed by the pure joy and delight at learning something new. The human brain is designed for learning and not just in early childhood. Constant challenge can keep it functioning at is best.

So why as we settle into the new academic year or undertake professional qualifications can learning become such a challenge, filling so many of us with anxiety and self-doubt?

Given the choice we’d rather find something that grabs our attention and feeds our preference for mastering things we enjoy. Think about the huge variation in what people choose to learn. Some learn a sport, others become XBox experts, yet more will learn to cook, surf, speak another language, make clothes, take photos, design apps for iPads (other good tablets are available); the list is endless.

But when we’re required to learn, we revert back to our early days of homework and find ourselves trying to learn in that same way again. Without meaning to, we end up recreating a classroom every time we have to ‘study’ whether it suits our learning style or not.  Add in the expectation of having to pass and it’s no wonder that taking exams becomes one of the most stressful things you can do.

So what is the alternative? Uncover what you do when you’re learning something you enjoy and then learn everything else in that same way. If you delight in being with others, then learn in groups or with friends; if you love to sing or play guitar, put it to music. Colours, movement, sounds or shapes, even textures and smells can all be built in to help you learn the way your brain prefers to learn.

It can take a little time and may need some guidance. But once you’ve found your way, learning ceases to be a chore and you just might feel that burst of pure delight at achieving something new once more.

Related:

Only Peterborough Magazine: website

Tony Burkinshaw Cognitive Hypnotherapy: Learning & Memory Coach

…and if it’s all too much: Mindfulness Meditation mp3

Mindful of the Stress

Confused? Perhaps not.

How do you know that you know what you know is something that you know and yet you can be just as certain that you know that you know what you don’t know is, well, something that you don’t?

There must be something about the essence of recall that enables you to recognise that it is either certain or uncertain, otherwise you’d have to cross check every memory every time you recalled it in order to determine whether it is something you’ve recalled correctly or not.

As it turns out, it has a lot to do with how you decide to store information in the first place so that the qualities of know and don’t know, certain and uncertain, are encoded into the memory itself.

Once you recognise this and learn how you personally encode known information for quick and easy recall, you can encode brand new information in the same manner as everything else you absolutely know.

Done properly, your brain can’t tell the difference and stores this new knowledge in the same manner as all other information that you already know that you know and therefore can easily recall.

Fascinating.

I’m learning how to spread the word.

This just might turn out to have been one of the most useful skills I learned for my hybridised career.

Want to know more?

http://www.cognitivehypnotherapy.org

Click here for my therapy website

Up or down? Are you sure?
© Tony Burkinshaw 2013