Zen and the Art of Studying

Have you ever seen a masterpiece and wonder how anyone can produce something seemingly without effort? Some artists are gifted. Me, I’m more of a paint-by-numbers kind of person. Give me a good guide to follow and I can make a pretty picture. Studying for a test is an art. Some people are simply gifted and can make it look easy. The rest of us, however, need a little guide to help us get the best results:

Prepare for success. Where you study is almost as important as what you study. If your study environment is poorly prepared, your studying will be less productive. Make sure you have a location that is accessible, comfortable, well-lit and free of distractions. Your study space should be about just that—studying. Turn of your cell phone, turn off the television, get off your bed and find a clean desk/table to use.Avoid studying in the cafeteria or at the mall and avoid studying on your bed—it’s for sleeping, not studying.

Time is of the essence. Your time is precious and it must be treated so. Budget your time so that all relevant material may be studied before a big test. Set a study schedule and stick to it. Having a set time of the day to study helps create a mental routine for better retention. Don’t forget to give yourself regular breaks—non-stop studying leads to diminished results.

Know your tools. Like a good handyman, a good student needs to know his/her tools. The internet offers many resources for test preparation techniques and study aids. Don’t spend forever looking at all of them; find one or two that are most helpful and refer to them as necessary. Most textbooks include review sections and “Potential Test Questions”. These sections provide a good guideline for what to study in preparation for a test. Don’t forget teachers and/or classmates. Teachers may provide insight into what material is important and your classmates might offer a different perspective on the material.

Go from weak to strong. Areas of the material where you struggle need extra attention—study those areas first. The material where you are strongest will require less time and can be reviewed closer to test time.

The mind goes where the body takes it. If you don’t treat your body with care, your good study habits could all be for naught. Eating right and getting enough sleep helps your mind stay alert and better able to retain information. Regular exercise also keeps your mind/body relationship in tip-top shape.

Relax. Of course it sounds simple, but it is one of the most overlooked aspects of test preparation. Remember, you are not alone and you are not the first, nor last, person to ever be tested. Tests are just that—tests. They are not potential death sentences or the last chance at salvation. Tests are a part of life and life goes on. (How’s that for Zen?)

http://www.test-preparation.ca/study-center/zen-and-the-art-of-studying/

Nice thought by Neale Donald Walsch

On this day of your life, Penelope Josefine [or you],

I believe God (or whatever you believe in) wants you to know...

..that if you are going to fuss over things, it is important

to pick your battles.

The ideal, of course, would be to "fuss" over nothing.

But given that we are all human, that may not be possible.

What is possible is picking much more carefully the things

that we are prepared to make a fuss over.

Ask yourself: "How much difference will this make when

I'm 85?" If you think it will matter then, let it matter now.

If you make everything matter now, you may not get to

be 85.

Love, Your Friend....

Neale

Can I Have YOUR Attention Please? A Skill That is Key To Doing Effective NLP Work

While getting good with NLP involves learning many skills, there is one communication skill you must master. It is called "Response Attentiveness" …

Its something that every good story teller, hypnotist, trainer and communicator can do with ease. Can you? Before I get into that, answer me a question, what time is it there where you are?

Response attentiveness means you get a response when you ask for someones attention. The two questions above, and the second being a specific "do something" action are both examples of asking and hopefully getting for your attention. Did you answer "yes" to my first question or go "don't know, you haven't told me yet what response attentiveness is!" and did you check the clock on your computer, watch or phone or find yourself wondering .. "why is Tom asking me this?".

You see when you are asking and getting someone's attention, when you do it intentionally and with a more useful purpose than than the basic example above, you get to effect what a person will experience and feel. And if you want to be a great story teller, change agent, coach or hypnotist then getting and keeping peoples attention and having them follow your suggestion/invitations/instructions is essential.

Think about it ..

Having your listener follow along and DO what you are asking of them is important to doing effective change, coaching, hypnosis and persuasion work. Yet this is something I've noted many NLPers seem to rush through in the process of "applying a technique". There is no point starting your conversation, doing a "deepener", running someone through a fast phobia technique or decision destroyer IF you don't have their attention and if they are not doing what you are asking of them. So if you find you are telling a narrative or giving an instruction but the person is not following along then DON'T proceed and just continue on, STOP, loop back and get their attention. Do whatever you need to, to have them sync up with your request.

Have you ever heard a trainer at start of a talk ask the audience "how many people here are x?" and if they get little response they will rebuke the audience and say "People, this is yes … (head nodding up and down) .. and this is no (head moving side to side) .. so let's try that again, how many people here are X?", and then the audience responds actively. That is an example of response attentiveness at work.

Many times something which you think "didn't work", was as a result of you not having your listener's attention rather than the NLP technique etc was ineffective. You can do as many fast phobia routines as you want or have someone change the way they look at a specific memory but if they fail to follow along and do what you say as you guide them through it then it can easily appear that it "didn't work."

So what do you do? Simply test and find out if they have been following along ..

Check this out for yourself. Next time you don't get the result you expected for some use of the technology .. test to see if the person you were relating/working with was following along or were you racing several steps beyond where they were? And so they never went through the change/instruction process with you?

Making it Practical:
Theory is nice, but as Yoga Bear said the difference between theory and practice is in theory there is no difference but in practice there is!

So let's take this simple concept and go apply it in the real world.

First, if you don't know if you are able to get and hold people's attention at will then you need to start tracking that. Pay attention next time BEFORE you speak if you have the person's attention. How do you know? Well you can observe a behavioral indicator that tells you "you have my attention". That could be the person is looking directly at you, head slightly forward or tilted to one side etc .. eyebrows elevated etc saying "your turn" or "I'm listening" …

For example I was at a wedding recently and when the groom got up to deliver his speech, nearly 120 people continued to talk over him as if he wasn't there! It was the first time at a wedding I'd ever see anything like that happen. Here was the groom, giving the "speech of his life" and half the audience weren't talking right over him!

Afterward he was confused as to how that happened and assumed that "the audience must of been bored of hearing speeches" But the real answer was because he started talking before he got their attention. You have to have people's attention first before you start having them follow a story, do an action etc.

Another speaker got up, who did know how to pick up the audiences attention and before he started talking he non verbally picked up the attention of the audience by simply stopping at the podium, while everyone was still talking, extended his energy out and quickly picked up the attention of the entire room by moving his eyes over each table, until a noisy post wedding dinner room came to a complete silence …. and THEN he began to talk.

If you already good at gathering people's attention then practice holding that attention for 1, 2, 5, 30 minutes and see if how well you can have others engrossed and actively following what you are saying and have them demonstrate via different responses that you have their complete attention. You can do this by asking them a question, pausing mid sentence and have them do a forced mind reading (where they finish your sentence for you) or watch their eye accessing ques as you have them follow you through a story that has them access different sensory systems. Be creative. And have fun.

The more ways you have of gathering someone's attention and then keeping it the more powerful a communicator you will become.

From NLP Times

Quote of the day :O)

I believe luck is preparation meeting opportunity. If you hadn't been prepared when the opportunity came along, you wouldn't have been 'lucky.'

Oprah