Unlock Your Brain's Potential: Learning How You Learn

Have you ever felt that you were trying to learn something that just wasn’t “sticking”? If so, ask yourself these questions:

• How many songs do you know or recognize from just a few notes?
• Do you remember the nursery rhymes you learned when you were a toddler?
• Have you ever noticed how easy it is to memorize the lyrics to a song you like?
• Have you ever wondered why? Perhaps, a better question is, “Why is it so easy to learn the lyrics to a song vs. just about anything else?”

What if someone told you, there were strategies that you could take to easily learn just about anything you ever imagined? Would you believe them? I know in my case, I wouldn’t have believed this when I was younger. When I was younger, I had convinced myself that I would always be a poor math student. It turns out though that, as I am proving to myself each day, math was something I was telling my brain it could not learn and NOT the other way around.

Like me, I am sure all of us have had a “nemesis” of a subject matter that we hate approaching because it's too hard. Worse yet, if we HAVE TO tackle this subject, any attempts at it will lead to stress, frustration, and failure. Frankly, you may as well say, "stress, frustration, and failure = can't learn." The good news is that beginning to understand how the brain works, and more importantly, how YOUR brain works, is the path to making learning just about anything a veritable breeze.

So, let’s get back to some of the first questions regarding music and our ability to remember songs. Why is this so easy? Well, it has everything to do with how our brains function. Take careful note of the “s” at the end of brains in the previous sentence. I say brains with an "s" because that is how as “learners” yes, we are ALL learners and should always be in “learning mode”, ought to imagine our “brain”. We ought to realize we have more than one brain in our heads, and that success at learning anything will hinge on bringing them all into play.

Let's dive further. I am sure that all of you have heard of “left” and “right” brained people. In fact, many of you may label yourselves as “left” or “right” brained(I'm creative or, I'm mathematical). Unfortunately, this is an inaccurate way to look at how we learn and labeling has likely led to one of two things:

1. When you attempt tasks that involve the “opposite” side of your brain, then you get frustrated, or perhaps even shut down entirely your capability or desire to learn.
2. You turn the task into something that will suit how you feel you learn best.

Now, again let’s look at the example of music. Why do we all, “left and right” brainers, seem to learn songs we like so easily? Well, it’s because music is something that engages ALL of our brains, or technically, our whole brain. When we listen to music with lyrics, especially music that does not induce stress, the following occurs.

1. Our cerebral cortex puts us in a state of receptiveness. In other words, we breath calmly/with regularity, our fight or flight instinct turns off.
2. Our middle brain then instigates an emotion…often one that can be sublimely overwhelming … happiness, excitement, etc. Think about the times when you may have been doing a mundane task like washing the dishes, a song comes on you like, and you almost instinctually start tapping your foot or shaking your hips and perhaps singing along. Your mood may also change from, “crap I hate doing dishes” to “let’s get the party started”.
3. Finally, (although it’s actually simultaneous) our (neo-cortex) “left” and “right” brain (the part that surrounds the middle) begin to “listen” to the words (left) and the melody (right) and begins creating “connections. The more connections, the deeper the memory, the better the recall.

So, what occurs when we listen to music, is that we incorporate our whole brain into the matter. Our experience is deep and the connections that are formed across the brain allow for quick and easy recall. A similar occurrence goes on when we meet people for the first time. In many cases, the circumstances in first meetings with people, defines how easily we remember them and their names in a future situation.

Now let’s consider situations where we have tried to learn something and perhaps failed, or didn’t grasp the content as well as we hoped. Consider how the three “brains” reacted in those situations. It’s unlikely we were relaxed and our breathing may have even been unknowingly irregular, emotionally we may have been tense, frustrated, and even fearful. What’s important here is to realize that these reactions by the first two areas of the brain heavily impact the capability of the left and/or right brain to create any substantial connections whatsoever. In fact, the connections may be very disparate and lead to a substantial inability to recall information very easily.

Now, what is the importance of this information? Well, it certainly speaks to the need for us to begin approaching anything that we want to learn in a much more holistic manner. It also speaks to how we ought to begin to frame training and change environments. Now that we know this, we ought to do the following when approaching something to learn.

1. Abandon the “I can’t learn this” mentality.
2. Abandon the I am “left or “right” brained labeling.
3. Identify the ways that we can reduce our sense of stress before trying to learn anything.
4. Engage in ways that encourage positive emotions when we try and learn something.
5. Identify methods of learning that incorporate both your left and right hemispheres to create more, broader, and deeper connections within your brain.

You may be doing or have done some of these things already. Please comment below on how you have developed your successful strategies for learning and how they may align to the concepts discussed here:

• What do you do before learning something new?
• How do you learn best?
• What do you find ineffective?
• Do you ever engage (teachbacks, discussions, etc.) with other people regarding what you are learning? If so, how?