Hello Speed Reader or Soon-to-be Speed Reader,
A student in the speed reading
workshop this past weekend said after our notetaking discussion that she felt
like her head would explode if she took notes in this very different new way! I
told her that it was quite unlikely that her head would explode under any
circumstances and that she really didn't have anything to fear. She didn't seem
convinced. I noticed that during the reading and notetaking exercise that
followed, she drew her note taking line down the middle of her page, not
diagonally across the page as instructed.
The power of the conditioning in our lives
is so strong that many folks have very irrational fears about learning
something new. What harm would it have done to do it our way for a few minutes,
just to try out a process that presidents and world leaders and millions of
other people have tried? Conditioning breeds fear. Fear of trying something
different, fear of doing something unfamiliar. Even though her old notetaking
and reading methods weren't very good, I suspect that doing something familiar
felt safer.
Gabrielle Roth, author of the
book "Maps to Ecstasy," says,
"Fear is a vitally useful
emotion. It places you on alert, catalyzes your senses, and heightens your
awareness in the face of danger. Fear is your friend, the radar for your voyage
through life. It is a basic instinct of human survival - physical,
psychological, spiritual. We need to have an acute sense of what threatens our
well-being."
Unfortunately, the way our lives unfold, we
often don't fully acknowledge our fears and then we then become afraid of even
those things that could help us. Roth says, "I find that virtually
everyone is locked in fear; people are afraid of everything - losing their job,
losing their lover, losing their life; they're afraid of success, afraid of
being too happy, afraid of the truth, afraid of feeling, afraid of moving, of
changing."
How many of us have experienced the
tightening of the throat, neck, and lower back that accompanies an unreleased
fear? Unreleased fear stiffens the jaw, contracts the forehead and locks the
knees. And it stifles learning, keeps us from enjoying our work, and sabotages
relationships.
Roth says, "Fear writes its signature
all over the body, but we are all so used to it we've become desensitized to
the loud-and-clear message of our body language. And this pervasive fear simply
compounds itself; it paralyzes our life energy, seizes up our feelings. We're
so afraid of what we are going to lose, so painfully attached to what we have,
that we numb ourselves into a living death to shield us from the pain of real
living. By clinging to life as we have it, we deny ourselves a vibrant present
and future."
Fear keeps us from learning new things,
even those things that could change our lives.
When the immobilizing energy of unexpressed
fear is released, fear can be transformed into what Roth calls its
"natural dynamic partner," excitement. When we give appropriate
attention and expression to our fears as they arise, then the pent up energy
and the paralysis can be released. Roth says, "Fear properly channeled
yields wide-awake
engagement."
What if everyone was wide-awake and
engaged? If this happened, the face of the world - and our lives - would change
overnight.
If we were wide-awake and engaged, we would
have no fear of new things. We would learn everything and not fear that our
views and beliefs were being threatened.
If we were wide-awake and engaged, we would
enjoy our jobs, whatever they were, and see the bigger picture of who we serve
in those roles. A welder can be proud of his/her work. Without it, big things
fall down! A proud welder knows the weld is like a signature. An auto mechanic
keeps the world moving and can do things for people that a nuclear physicist
can't!
If we were wide-awake and engaged, we would
welcome those things that challenge our beliefs and the assumptions that we
have made about how the world works. We would welcome criticism and always be
looking for a new way to accomplish our goals and live harmoniously in the
world.
If we were wide-awake and engaged, we
wouldn't worry so much about always trying to do things that were in our
comfort zone. We would stretch, grow, and learn with ease, not shying away from
temporary frustration. In fact, we would welcome feelings of frustration, since
that would mean we are learning something new!
If we were wide-awake and engaged and
walked through the world with well-managed fear, we would love more freely,
give more readily, and embrace the iconic principle of "do no harm."
Experiment with this. Look at your own fear
response. Is it in proper proportion to the circumstances? Are you adequately
and appropriately expressing your fears? Are you afraid of those things that
could actually help you?
When learning something new and you feel
that familiar resistance or hesitance, always ask yourself: "Really now!
What harm could it do to try?!"
Let
us help you make it happen.
Jackie
President, Center for Lifelong Learning
PO Box 77316 | Seattle, WA 98177 | USA
Cell: (206) 755-9272
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