Connecting to the domain of personal growth and self development, Chris Brogan, professional speaker, community and social media guru and author of the New York Times bestseller "Trust Agents", on his website has done a review of a book by Nick Morgan, "Give Your Speech, Change the World: How to Move Your Audience to Action." The reason I bring it up here on my blog is much symmetry between Chris' topic and the topic of recent posts here on my blog - learning and learning techniques.

Both speaking and learning we acquire and practice naturally, almost effortlessly. Therefore, learning to speak and to learn appears rather superfluous at first sight, or even an oxymoron when it comes to learning to learn. We are not sure what to expect of it, or we are outright skeptical. However, when we do give it a try in spite of everything, our reactions are frequently along the lines of Chris Brogan's reaction to Nick Morgan's book about speaking - "well, I took tons from it, and you might, too, either as a beginner or someone with some speeches under your belt."

By all means, read Nick Morgan's book, and at the same time give learning about learning a try too - you might find yourself taking tons from it. Yes, there is a difference between (just) learning and learning (consciously) - "Learn Consciously, Rock Your World: How To Move Yourself Confidently In The Direction Of Your Dreams."

Personal growth (self development, personal development) and success often require learning. Learning can be expensive, but some of the things needed for success we can learn from cats, for free.

Stretch

Cats are so much more advanced, stretching-wise. Humans, myself included, if they stretch at all, don't stretch enough. Stretching is free and therefore doesn't have commercial appeal. Imagine watching as many commercials for stretching as for drinks and cars - there would be a whole lot more stretching going on. Well, in the absence of commercials, watch the cats, and before long you'll stretch more.

Breathe Right

Do you know among mammals, humans are the only species that breathes through the mouth at the slightest effort? Horses, cheetahs and, yes, cats still breathe through their nostrils even at full stretch, such as when racing at top speed. But many humans switch to breathing through their mouth at the slightest effort, such as when lacing their shoes or climbing a flight of stairs. If you want vibrant energy, take a hint from your cat (or from your neighbor's cat), breathe through your nostrils. Make deep breathing exercises an integral part of your habits. Rediscover there's more to your nose than to serve as support for seeing glasses.

In A Heartbeat

Cats' ability to go from sound asleep to ready to pounce in a heartbeat, is amazing. As if they had their paw permanently on an on-off switch somewhere inside. Don't you just wish you knew their secret? To sleep a lot? Hm-mm, something to think about.

Hold No Grudges

Like people, cats have great talent for showing disapproval when upset, but unlike some people, cats do not hold grudges. To forgive and move on is easy for cats because cats are not upset with people, only with peoples' behavior. Behavior is much easier to forgive than people. Cats know instinctively that people are not their behaviors - an important lesson we can learn from cats.

Do you know other stuff we could or should learn from cats? Please let me know - I'd be happy to post an expanded "Life Enhancers We Can Learn From Cats" with your comments.

If you want a better life, but are willing to do more than just hope and actually create your own future, and if you like simple changes that come with big benefits, take a look at a tool, in fact, a solution that is Simple, Legal, Inexpensive, Good For You, Practical And Works Every Time

Make a change in how you learn - not in what you learn, but in how you learn - is among the easiest and most profitable changes you can make in life. The initial investment is small and the potential benefit infinite. It is like finding gold in a field of gold that has not previously been mined for gold. Among the best little known secrets around, it beats artificial life sweeteners by (s)miles.

The skill of learning is often overlooked because we take learning for granted. The first thing we do when we come into this life, right after taking our first breath, is learning. If you're like me, chances are you got so busy learning, you never stopped. You never even stopped to learn how to learn - a mistake, because the difference in learning versus learning the right way is enormous. At least it's what I found from personal experience. I used to think learning about learning was an oxymoron. Now I know it can be the difference between a life and an extraordinary life.

How You Learn Determines Everything

How you learn determines what you know. What you know leads to what you do and don't do in life - the choices you make. What you do (and refrain from doing) produces the results in life. The sum of your results added up, are your life. Therefore, change how you learn and you change your life! Simple, legal, inexpensive, lasting, good for you, good for others, works every time and never fails.

What Is Learning, Anyway?

All learning involves teaching. In an ideal world the teacher is an actual person in an actual classroom. In the real world the teacher often has no face and the lessons, as well as the exams, just happen. In fact, much learning is achieved in this way, when there is no-one around but you and you find yourself both teacher and student at the same time.

Take a minute to imagine. Does the teacher know about both the teaching and the learning? How are you teaching yourself - what are your teaching style and method? What would you teach? Are you - the student - hungry to learn and explore? Is there joy and harmony between the teacher and the student? To take your life to a whole new level, simply make your vision real - create the best teacher-student interaction you're capable of. It's within your control.

What We Learn

What we learn typically consists of learning about the world around us, then about life, then about success, and lastly, about ourselves.

While closely entwined and operating together in harmony, the basic areas of learning - the world, life, success and ourselves - are also separate entities, each subject to its own rules and regulations as it were. You can achieve great progress in one area of learning while remaining utterly stuck and confused in another. There are people who "know everything" but achieve little, as well as people who "know nothing" yet possess the midas touch. It is difficult also to achieve balance, as evidenced by stories of rich and famous disasters - people who are successful in one area of their lives, sometimes exceedingly so, yet unable to transfer success to other areas of their life.

Learn (And Do) More By Learning Less

The first step to a better life is to stop all learning ... with the exception of the learning needed, if any, for doing great things (specifically, what you believe are great things). The best way to achieve a truly great life is to do excellent work. The best way to do excellent work is to love what you do. Resolve to work primarily for the sensation you have while working. If you are still looking for what you love to do, limit your learning to what's needed to find it. Learn to ask the right questions. If you knew today were the last day of your life, would you still go with the plans you had for today? If the answer is "No" for too many days in a row, it might be time to make changes. Do not settle. Keep looking. Do not lose faith.

Learn less and let go. Let go of what you can hold on with your hands, and of what you can hold on with your mind, but never ever let go of your faith and never ever let go with your heart. Your heart already knows what you truly want to become.

Happy new learning and happy new life!

Relevant Quotes

• “The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.” – Vincent Lombardi
• “Anything less than a conscious commitment to the important is an unconscious commitment to the unimportant.” – Steven Covey
• “The whole course of things is to teach us faith.” – Emerson
• "You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him to find it within himself." – Galileo
• "Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils." – Hector Berlioz

Related Blogs, Blog Posts

• http://commadot.com/the-curse-of-knowledge/

Even though learning science has over time produced a wide range of learning strategies and learning techniques, the principle of mapping your world is difficult to explain. But it's important, because your map of the world plays a key role in shaping your life, and ignoring it can cause you great harm.

Invisible To The Naked Eye

Personal maps of the world are invisible to the naked eye, hence extra difficult to learn about. Like thoughts, they are real, but invisible. You might have heard of the assertion that 80% of winning is psychology, or of the inner game of golf (or of tennis, etc.), or of psychological make-up or blueprint of the mind. All these things refer to the same thing - to the inner map of the world all humans carry inside themselves, each their own. Learning to "see" the map of the world within is a bit like learning to view 3D illusion art, or to ride a bicycle. Once you get it, it gets easier and easier.

Blueprint Of Your Life

Your map of the world acts as the blueprint to your life. To the degree that it depicts the world as it really is, or as you wish it were, it leads you to construct your life on solid ground, or on wishful thinking. Regardless of whether you believe in it or not, your map of the world holds the key to what comes to (your) mind when you hear the word "God" (or Allah, Buddha, Krishna, _____), or any other word for that matter (ever noticed how people, when asked to draw a tree, all "see" different trees?), whether life has a purpose or not, whether happiness is the reward of virtue or a virtue itself, what is cool and what is uncool, whether time exists outside of the now, whether you are the creator or the victim of circumstances, what you value and what you despise, what you value most in life, whether miracles are real or fake, whether your life is written in the stars or made in the moments of your decisions, what is right and what is wrong, whether failure exists or not, whether forgiveness must be earned or has been granted, how you respond to praise and to criticism, whether truth exists or must be created, whether life is made of choices or of obligations, whether you follow your bliss or something else instead, whether love is a noun or a verb, whether angels exist or not, whether you have invisible helpers or are all by yourself, whether life is a party or difficult, and whether any of this matters or not. Only one person can locate, see and read your map - you. But regardless of whether you see it or not, it's there. And plays a big part in your life.

If You Were In Charge

If you were in charge of the space program, or of Virgin Galactic's upcoming space travel, would you send astronauts into space without an accurate map?

Not, if you’re a sane person, for a sane person wouldn’t dream of going into space without an accurate map. Yet many sane people don't think twice before sending themselves, and sometimes their families and kids with them, into life equipped with only a map they know little or nothing about. With predictable results.

The seemingly irrational behavior, quite simply, stems from the fact that while "visible" maps are very much part of basic education, the "invisible" personal maps which people carry in their minds are not. In this way everyone learns about one type of maps, but not about the other, even though of equal or greater importance. But basic education is not to blame, for it does not deal with how we are made, its primary goal is only to render us functional, regardless of how we are made. Learning about "invisible" maps takes you beyond mere function, and requires understanding of how your personal map is created in the first place, and if you don't like it, how to change it.

Imagine yourself in London. You buy a map of London, but are mistakenly sold a map of Boston. You're in the right place with the wrong map. The same thing happens to people on life's journey equipped with a map inside that does not conform to the outer world. They might as well carry a map from another planet. Not doing anything wrong, they nevertheless keep getting lost. Doubting their ability to function they grow frustrated, angry, stressed, depressed, or worse. Doing right with wrong results is not fun! Because they can seemingly not achieve long-term goals, they may escape into instant gratification provided by food, alcohol, drugs (legal and illegal), gambling and sex, jeopardizing their health, finances, reputation and marriages in the process. But when they are handed the right map, everything changes. This is what "Mapping Your World" is all about - learning to be in the right place with the right map.

Your Map – Uniquely Yours

Your inner map – the personal map of the world that you carry within – is ...

• The most important map of all.
• With you day and night, 7/24.
• Your guide at the darkest hours, and during the brightest moments alike.
• Directly or indirectly determines your life and destiny.
• Real, whether you believe it or not. If you don’t consciously build your own map, your mind “in the back of your mind” creates its own. Not necessarily a good or a bad thing, it’s just the way it is – a basic need, like breathing.

You can build your map of the world with information that pops into to your mind, or that others work to pop into your mind, or – last but hopefully not least – that you decide to pop into your mind yourself.

Imagine Taking A Trip

Imagine yourself preparing for a trip around the world. You’d likely use a variety of sources – people, internet, books, libraries – and you’d sift through the information, retaining some, eliminating some. As you begin your trip, you’d continuously adjust your map based on actual experience and discovery.

The same outline applies to the creative process of the map you carry on the inside. Many begin their life journey completely unaware, inadvertently guided to nowhere, into dead end streets, in circles, or worse.

The Choice Is Yours

You have no control at all over your mind’s decision to create the map it needs to function – the decision was made even before you were born. However, you have full control over the creative process, and about the quality of the map. Since it will guide you through the rest of your life, which map would you rather carry inside:

• A map of the world as it is (continuously updated with new information)
• A map of the world as it could, should or would be, if only __________________  (fill the blank)

All it takes is conscious awareness and, like all learning, practice, practice, practice - a small price to pay for a big difference!

Note: For an amazing collection of maps, visit http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/

QUOTES

• What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly. - Richard Bach
• There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread. - Mahatma Gandhi
• The learners will inherit the world. The learned will be beautifully equipped for a world that no longer exists. - Anonymous
• As human beings, our greatness lays not so much in being able to remake the world as being able to remake ourselves. - Mahatma Gandhi
• If you give a boy a hammer, the whole world becomes a nail. - Unknown
• The mind remembers what the mind does, not what the world does. - James Jenkins
• Keep in mind, the mind with which you remember is the same mind with which you forget. - Beat Schindler
• Change your thoughts and you change your world. - Norman Vincent Peale
• The world is but a canvas to the imagination. - Henry David Thoreau
• The outer world of circumstance shapes itself to the inner world of thought. - James Allen
• Great men are they who see that spiritual thought is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
• My grievances hide the light of the world. - A Course In Miracles
• Success, recognition, and conformity are the bywords of the modern world where everyone seems to crave the anesthetizing security of being identified with the majority. - Martin Luther King
• We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the world. Except for children, who don’t know enough not to ask the important questions, few of us spend much time wondering why nature is the way it is. - Carl Sagan
• The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible. - Albert Einstein
• There are only two ways to see the world. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. -  Albert Einstein
• We do not see things as they are, but as we are. - Immanuel Kant
• The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows. – Sydney J. Harris

You are no doubt reading this article for one of two reasons. Reason one, you feel stuck in some way – in which case you can bank on it, the Beattitude System will help you to “destuckify” – or reason two, while happily cruising along you’re proactively looking to turbo-charge your life, or some aspects of it. Either way, you will we glad to have found your way here.

Sometimes you’re in the zone where good things just happen naturally, and detours and bottlenecks are nothing but temporary setbacks. But other times things don’t go your way, you feel lost or are stuck without a paddle up the famous creek.

Take your cellphone. You're not really interested in how it works (provided it does its job), but when it breaks down you suspect something wrong inside. So it is with learning. As long as it produces hoped-for results, you're okay. But when a pattern of disappointments appears - abandoned dreams, broken promises, missed exams, unfulfilling work, relationships gone bad, living paycheck to paycheck, etc. - you conclude something is wrong inside. Should it ever get thus far, here is how it works inside. Everything you learned, you learned in one of three ways.

The Instinctive Way

The “instinctive” learning we share with “lower forms of life” such as plants and animals. Equipped with instinct only, plants and animals, sometimes in cooperation with each other, perform feats that puzzle the snobbiest of scientists. Instinct is a tremendous force in humans, too, but it is also vastly underrated and under-utilized. Creation does not short change man. In fact, man is especially blessed with the capacity to learn and know.

The "A Little Asleep At The Steering Wheel" Way

The "subconscious" learning we also share with animals, to a degree. As indicated by the label, subconscious learning takes place while you are a little asleep at the steering wheel. It has the potential to lead you to enlightenment, as well as to superstition, or to love, as well as to fear, or to happiness, as well as to despair.

Conscious

Conscious learning leads to knowledge for the sole purpose of getting you to the object of your imagination (regardless of the object itself). It is a uniquely human feature to be created with the ability to emulate creation itself and freely create in turn. Think about it, every book, chair and chewing gum – everything mankind created and takes for granted – was created in imagination first, before it was created by whatever process subsequently chosen. Ironically, but key to the creative process, conscious learning is also the door to understanding how to still consciousness. When I speak about stilling consciousness - equivalent to giving up resistance and struggle - some resist the idea. In doing so they add more resistance to their lives, not less, and struggle even harder than before. Only in stillness, when the "noise within" is reduced or switched off, are we open to receive.

The learning covered here at the Beattitude blog, is the “conscious learning.” It is aligned with conscious living and thus fits into the scope of Beattitude and The Beattitude System. Given the complexity of the topic – learning styles, methods, materials, etc. – we’ll chunk it up into article-size pieces. The typical learning pattern (ref. illustration) will serve as the template for the series of articles on learning, starting with today’s “Learning To Learn.”

Learning To Learn

In the arts, in sports and in sciences learning starts with the basics. Bet when it comes to learning itself, we tend to bypass the basics and go straight to "the real thing." Because learning about learning is generally considered an oxymoron, it is mostly taught in ways akin to learning to swim where the student is thrown in at the deep end to see what happens. It saves time, but is not very effective as, clearly, many later "drown" in divorce, indebtedness, addiction, drugs (legal and not), loneliness or worse.

What Would You Teach Yourself?

What if you had the knowledge and the skills of the world’s best teachers, what would you teach yourself? Sit back for a moment and imagine yourself the teacher. Do you see a hungry, highly focused student? Does the student’s body language shout interest and participation? Is there joy, harmony and anticipation? Do you look into the eyes of a student eager to learn and explore? It might be reality, or a distant dream, but for teaching yourself and propel student performance, your task is to make it real.

Learning Involves Teaching

When you boil it down to essentials, the best teachers are Authority, Repetition, Intensity and Timing. When all four come together, the lesson is learned for life. As a youngster I ran after a ball onto the road and into the side of a passing taxi. A fraction of a second earlier would have had me run into the front of the taxi, with potentially fatal consequence. As it was, I simply bounced off the vehicle’s metal frame. Stunned, reduced to the sorry mistake-maker I had just been, I was about to regain my footing by the time the taxi driver had made his way out of his vehicle. I expected him to enquire, in a concerned tone, whether I was alright – as anyone in my known world would have. Instead, he smacked a good one onto the left side of my face, yelled “Never, ever, ever, ever do this again!”, turned, and left. In teaching terms, the perfect storm – authority (grown-up, driver), repetition (in my mind I repeated the man’s words over and over), intensity and timing working together. Five minutes later, coming from another person, the smack and words wouldn’t have worked as well, if at all.

The Perfect Teaching Storm

The story illustrates the awesome power in teaching when it's done right. The trick, of course, is to create perfect teaching storms "at will," rather than sit there and wait for it to happen. In learning at will the teacher and the student are the same person - you. It requires you to be a great teacher and eager student at the same time. A tall order, for teaching is complex.

Right To Teach Is Earned, Not Given

To begin with, you don't "have" the right to teach, it's a right that must be earned. It requires a bridge, as it were, between you and to the student. Your goal is to create an environment in which both the teacher and the student are learners. You want to teach, and the student wants to learn, not for knowledge, but for action.

At Will Learning Eliminates Waste

Much education never grows bigger than the brain cells it briefly occupies in the mind of the student, and is wasted. But with conscious "at will" learning - where you are both teacher and student - authority is high and confidence reigns. In this way what's learned can be directly applied to everyday life and work, and waste is eliminated.

Note: remember learning is important, but from whom you learn is even more important (ref. earlier article).

Coclusion

For true success in life, simply reduce the amount of stuff that enters your mind while you're a little asleep at the steering wheel, while increasing the amount of stuff you truly know by conscious learning. Good luck and happy learning!

If you would like to talk further about your own learning style, just post a comment. I’ll be happy to write back and get a dialog going.

QUOTES

• "Ideas are changed not by will, but by other ideas." – Maxwell Waltz
• "Imagination is the preview of life’s coming attractions." – Albert Einstein
• "Imagination rules the world." – Napoleon Bonaparte
• "The world is but a canvas to the imagination." - Henry David Thoreau
• "Maybe reality isn't all I imagine it to be." - Anonymous
• "I see no dividing line between imagination and reality." - Federico Fellini
• "We can live out of our imagination instead of our memory." -  Stephen Covey
• "Everything you can imagine is real." - Pablo Picasso
• "Imagination is more important than knowledge." - Albert Einstein
• "If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." -  Henry David Thoreau
• "There are many ways to be free. One way is to transcend reality by imagination." – Anais Nin
• "All of us invent ourselves. Some of us just have more imagination than others." - Cher
• "Saddle your dreams afore you ride ‘em." - Mary Webb