Millicent St. Claire - Stop Cramming and Pulling All-Nighters

you knew how your brain worked you’d never pull one anyway! All you’re doing is blowing the darned thing out!

As an accelerative learning specialist, I help you get how your brain works and show you how to use it to learn anything – without blowing a fuse. The next time you think about camping out, overdosing on pizza and making love to your text books all night, try starting with three easy steps IN ADVANCE…

Be Active! – Reading and studying are typically a passive activities and bore the brain straight to sleep. To get excellent results, you’ve got to be ACTIVE as a learner. This means physically and mentally. Don’t just sit there like a slug – get your butt moving! That’s right – even when you’re studying! Before you start – and during a few breaks – do some Brain Gym exercises to get the body in the right state. A couch potato is doomed to a life of mediocrity and failure because the brain just can’t fully engage without some cooperation from the body.

Be Questioning! – Can you get an answer to a question never asked? Not in this lifetime. Asking the right questions sets the mind on a search to find the right answers. The mind is like a heat-seeking missile. If it knows its target, it will go straight to it and – bullseye! If not, it can’t possibly fulfill on the mission. You might start with some general questions like this: “What in this material do I need to know that will help me fulfill on the assignment?” or “How much of this material is relevant to my paper and do I need to find another source?” The brain has a way of knowing things and if you ask it the right questions, it’s like rubbing the magic lamp. If not, it’s like having an employee – your BEST employee – sitting around, picking his nose.
Be Purposeful! – Think about purpose (why the heck am I doing this in the first place?!) as a final destination. Programming your brain’s internal GPS system is the same thing as telling it where you want to go. If there is no final destination then the brain goes on vacation – at least every five minutes! Setting a purpose might be a simple as “My goal is to absorb what I need to know to pass tomorrow’s test,” or… “to be comfortable enough with the material to participate in discussion.” Take a few minutes to lock in the coordinates and check out the results!

These things may sound a little strange to you now, but these small ways of ‘getting ready’ will reap big benefits. Pretty soon, your brain will be working hard, so you don’t have to!

Smiles,
Millicent

PS. To find out more about BRAIN GYM…