This is part of a series covering my challenge of learning Arabic in 2 months. I’m using lots of Peak Performance techniques and sharing them along the way. The series is filed in the “Language Challenge” category.

The Holographic Mind

Scientists have shown that different parts of the brain are responsible for different activities. The frontal lobe is responsible for cognition, speech, problem solving and complex motor movements. The temporal lobe is responsible for visual and verbal memory, smell and hearing in different frequencies. And so on.

Subsequent neuro-scientific research into brain plasticity has found that despite this specialisation, there is a certain holographic quality to the brain, whereby if one area is damaged, it is possible to retrain the brain so that other parts of the brain take on that “job function”.  (See references below for further reading).

So, what does this have to do with learning Arabic?

From a broad perspective, it shows that different activities, such as reading, writing and speaking, are processed in different ways and that if you’re not terribly good at something, it’s possible to call in help from other parts of your brain. I suppose in some ways, you could say that ability is a learned response.

There is a lot going on in the brain and most of the time, it happens without us even being aware of it. Your brain helps you raise your arm to put food into your mouth. It helps you to feel outrage when you see an injustice happening. At some point, you trained it to do these things, but you didn’t necessarily do it consciously. Somehow, the brain has enough ways to communicate with all parts of itself that it takes what it experiences in the world through all your senses, and translates it into what you *expect* it to translate it into.

Over-using the mind through habit and repetition

I don’t remember the actual process by which I learnt to read, write and speak my first language. What I do remember is that by the age of 5, I was speaking a mixture of Hindi, Punjabi, Swahili and English and at that age, I had no idea that these were four different languages. My little child brain had taken the information being fed to me from the world around me and translated it into what little child me *expected* it to translate into.

Now, “people” say that adult brains are not as receptive as child brains and that learning a new language is not easy, even impossible, for an adult.

And yes, as we get older, we do over-use parts of our brains to the point that they encroach on the “brain space” for other activities. For example, a postman who has been delivering letters for 40 years will be an excellent reader but he processes what he reads in a different way to a poet who is also an excellent reader and has been writing for 40 years. The postman reads the words “Beechwood Close” and in his minds eye sees a task, a map, a route and immediately starts planning how to incorporate it into his round. The poet reads the words “Beechwood Close” and it becomes a different sensory experience as he creates his own story and emotions around them.

There are no such stories and emotions for the postman and the poet has no map or task in his mind. The areas that their brain considers non-essential (because they are rarely used) have weakened in size.

Because of the holographic and plastic nature of the brain, both the poet and postman can extend their mental reach into the areas that they have “forgotten” about through lack of use. All they need is a will and a way.

Using what you already know to help make what you don’t know something that you do know

I have not studied a language since I was at school. So certain areas of my mind need re-activation.

As a child, I simply took what was in front of me and allowed it to “do it’s thing” in my head. Adults are full of assumptions and presuppositions that kind of limit what they allow themselves to discover. Adults sometimes forget that they have an advantage – they can use their life-experience to tap into past experiences and know-how to make re-activation nice and simple.

Over time we all develop preferred ways of processing information. Identifying these optimum ways of processing information will accelerate my learning because I can concentrate on what I know works. Unlike a child trying to process everything in range, I gain the luxury of strategy and focus.

As you read the rest of this article, remember that your optimum ways of processing information may well be different from mine. As I describe what I am doing, look into yourself to see how you can capitalise on what you already do in order to make a new skill easier to achieve.

Reading

Technically, reading involves recognising shapes and associating a meaning to them. I do not need to know which lobes of my brain are doing this. It would be useful however to know how I am attaching meaning to the shapes I see.

I think of the word “Cat” (in English). With the eyes of my mind, I see a furry, smiley black cat that belongs to a witch. The word “cat” is superimposed on this image and I can spell “cat” by looking at the letters.

I think of the word “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” and with the eyes of my mind, I see Mary Poppins dancing around and singing. The word is easy to spell because again, it’s superimposed on this image and I can “see” it.

Now, I think of a word I have trouble spelling. “Stationary”. Or is it “Stationery”?? Bleugh. With the eyes of my mind, I see myself doing a spelling test at a recruitment agency for a Summer job that I don’t want. I’m bored, unhappy and for some reason, my success hinges on this stupid word. And you guessed it, this word is not superimposed on this image. It’s there, but it’s broken up with bits of it all over the “screen” and it’s a struggle to make the pieces fit.

From this, I know that in order to attach a meaning to a (correctly spelt) word, my mind needs to attach it to a “happy” picture. Knowing this, I can now take all these new Arabic words and phrases I am learning and make a conscious effort to attach them to a “happy picture” as I learn them. If I do it the way my mind wants me to do it, there’s a good chance it’ll work beautifully.

So now I find that when I think of an English word e.g. “yoghurt”, my English mind sees a strawberry flavoured Ski yoghurt. My Arabic mind however sees a yoghurt pot on a shelf in Spinney’s, a supermarket in the Sahara Mall in Sharjah. And SUCCESS!, the word superimposed on this image is the Arabic word for yoghurt, written in arabic!! Now, my fluency isn’t all that great yet and I do have to concentrate to spell the word out in Arabic – but the key thing is that it’s there and I CAN see it, read it and spell it.

By the way, my Hindi mind sees my Mum’s home-made yoghurt in a pan in the fridge. Interesting how the same word is represented by different images in the mind depending on the language I’m thinking in.

Try this one for yourself – what happens in your mind when you think about a word to spell? Do you see it the way I do or is it different for you? It can take a few tries to get used to noticing something that usually happens automatically and unconsciously, but stick with it.

Writing

Writing is the process by which your thoughts are made readable. This is a completely different skill-set from Reading.

In order to write, my mind has to:

1. Create the thought
2. Find words to represent that thought
3. Identify the grammatical structure for the sentence
4. Identify the spelling for the word

My vocabulary in Arabic is not quite up to getting past step 2 yet and Arabic grammatical structure is completely different from English. So currently the best way to write is through copying sentences in my tutorial book. And this is fine because what I am getting through this is fluidity and familiarity. My letters are becoming neater (thanks to a tip from a friend who advised me to write the letters as small as possible). I am also thinking about the grammatical structure of what I am copying. The typos in the book don’t help but it makes me happy that I am able to spot them!

Speaking

Speaking is the vocal translation of your thoughts. The steps involved are similar to that in Writing with the practical difference that speaking is more forgiving than writing. I am not studying Arabic to exam standard so I can afford to enjoy the fact that body language can do some of my talking for me. I do need to watch this though in case it makes me lazy. Ensuring I work on my speaking skills every day will help me keep pace with my growing vocabulary.

Speaking in an authentic accent is important to me. Ordinarily, I have an even London accent – but when I am upset, excited or emotional, my Croydon roots show themselves as a distinct South London flavour modifies my voice. This indicates to me that initial exposure to the sound of a language will set the tone of how I speak.

Unfortunately, my tutorial CD’s are atrocious for accent. They are spoken in the stilted, exaggerated way that is common in language CD’s – I’m mimicking these awful accents very well and it’s doing nothing for my street cred.  I am in urgent need for authentic youtubes or online radio etc where I can immerse my brain in the sound of the language. I’d be grateful for suggestions of suitable material online that I can listen to! Preferably the type of accent/style common in the UAE (Dubai).

My Routine – one month into the challenge

It’s now one month since I started my challenge. I know the entire alphabet and have basic vocabulary. I’ve been averaging about 4 hours study a week (plus review time). I’m satisfied with my progress so far but definitely need to step things up a notch now. My standard routine is:

• Reviewing what I learn – flash cards with new words and phrases that I can test myself on throughout the day. I’m training my brain to remember and repetition is a great trainer. Also, I know from having modelled people with excellent memories, that they have a habit (i.e. automatic activity) of thinking about and reviewing what they have learnt or read.
• Maintaining curiosity and interest – Reviewing my goals keeps me focused, especially on sunny days when it would be more fun to go for a bike ride.
• Remembering what I learn – Again, from my modelling work on people with excellent memories for what they read, I know that a fact that is made memorable will become memorable. The people I modelled unconsciously and automatically treat the things they read as items of intense interest (even on subjects that they don’t care about!). Intense interest equals curiosity. Curiosity equals questions. Questions equal analysis of the subject and cross-linkages to existing information they already know. Cross linkages equals reinforcement of what is currently being learnt. Even with something as standalone as a new language, there are cross-linkages to be made that makes remembering that much easier.
• Prioritising and giving myself room to grow – Some things come in time, Arabic grammar is one them. If a rule won’t go in quickly and easily, I don’t obsess about it. I know that continuing my study will bring me into contact with this rule again and again. The same way that constant exposure to a song has you knowing the lyrics without trying, I know that I will pick up whatever grammar rule is escaping me at this early stage.

Resources for further reading:

The Brain That Changes Itself, Norman Doidge -  amazon.co.uk | amazon.com

The Holographic Universe, Michael Talbot -  amazon.co.uk | amazon.com

The Britannica Guide to the Brain -  amazon.co.uk | amazon.com

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image: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/gul791
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This is part of a series covering my challenge of learning Arabic in 2 months. I’m using lots of Peak Performance techniques and sharing them along the way. The series is filed in the “Language Challenge” category.

What’s Eating You?

So far I have covered Peak Performance states, Goal Setting and the motivating importance of Curiosity. Now comes a peek into subconscious influences that direct our behaviour.

First a confession - As far as studying goes, I have been slacking off all week, fitting in a mini-break to Barcelona and catching up with friends. I may not have studied much Arabic but I have been paying attention to improving the way I process information for this task.

Reading, Writing and Speaking are separate brain functions but they are all open to being influenced by our thoughts. Our thoughts – and our beliefs about ourselves – shape our behaviour.

As we go through life, we subconsciously pick up lots of different ways of relating to ourselves, to others and even the things around us. This affects what we believe and how we approach things. It contributes to our uniqueness, making us feel our thoughts are a solid, fixed and intrinsic part of our personality.  Which they’re not.

In this article, I hope to show that through understanding and addressing what lies behind our thoughts, we can change our thoughts and shape ourselves to how we deserve to be.

Identifying beliefs behind our actions

Our beliefs about our abilities come from associations we’ve made through experiences we have lived through – either directly or indirectly through others. Some beliefs help us while others don’t.

To achieve peak performance in any given area, it’s useful to ensure that we are working with beliefs that support our goals. To do this, we first have to identify the beliefs (good and bad) that are having impact on the goal. This is what mine look like:

Goal: Reading
I was reading at the age of 3. My favourite place was in front of a book and I enjoyed the entire experience – turning pages, the mystery within them, following words with my finger, total absorption in the pretty pictures making up my own stories to go with them. I felt a genuine thrill combined with safety when I was reading and I still feel it now. I believe reading is desirable because I associate it with something good.

Goal: Writing
At school age about 8 and wasn’t allowed to write in ink until I could write neatly in pencil. All my friends managed it but not me. In the end I asked the teacher if I could give her an ink test page to prove I could do it. She agreed, I passed and became the proud owner of a fountain pen.  It’s a memory I did not even know I had until I started practising writing Arabic. I believe writing practice is a pain in the proverbial because I associate it with a teacher who kept saying “no”.

Goal: Speaking
Nothing jumps out at me for this goal. To me it feels like an activity much like going to buy a stamp for a letter – you do it when you need to, no fuss, no mess, just functional. I believe speaking is ordinary and everyday to the point where I have nothing else to say on the subject.

Goal: Remembering
I’m going to throw in memory too because I’m discovering associations with it relating to exams and the sheer impossibility of remembering useless dates and facts. I believe I can’t remember facts because I associate it with fear of failing an exam.

If you try identifying your own beliefs, you may find that you come up with several associations or that your beliefs are caught in some kind of a loop. Take it gently if that happens – take a break and look at the resources mentioned below to help yourself or find someone who can talk it through with you.

The impact of associations

As I go about learning to read, write and speak Arabic, these beliefs are affecting my behaviour. I am automatically giving priority to the reading aspects, feeling nervous and “on my best behaviour” about writing and not paying any attention to speaking – after all, I don’t actually need to speak it right now. I am also nervous about being able to remember what I learn. It feels as if I should only study concepts and outlines because I will forget the details anyway.

My associations and beliefs around:

• Reading… will help me so no need to worry about that.
• Writing… have a motivating quality to them so will help me by making me work harder.
• Speaking… will hinder me because I don’t view speaking as important. This means I won’t practice the words and won’t develop a good rhythm or accent. This will hurt my goal.
• Remembering… could lead to procrastination or even giving up. Because I’m strongly attached to the feeling of being unable to remember, there may well be self-hypnotic undermining of my own efforts to remember. This will hurt my goal.

Understanding the influence of my beliefs to this level of detail helps me to recognise the ways that some of my thoughts have the potential to hurt my goal.

Breaking unhelpful associations

To be at peak performance, I need to change the way I think about speaking and remembering. I can do this with logic or I can use a combination of NLP and EFT techniques. It doesn’t matter how I do it so long as I end up being able to see things in a different way.

The actual techniques I used need a detailed write-up and because I won’t be able to do them justice in this one article, I am planning a series of step-by-step tutorials on the subject of breaking unhelpful associations.

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In the meantime, if you want to get a start and read around the subject yourself, I recommend the following resources:

The NLP Workbook – I recommend this book to my clients as it’s suitable for beginners to NLP and also detailed enough to be valuable to practitioners too. The workbook format is practical and encourages you to put NLP into action yourself.

Try it on Everything – EFT DVD and companion book set.

Introduction to EFT Manual by Gary Craig, the founder of EFT.

Thoughts Support Success!

So, having broken the associations, I now find my thoughts are stronger and more supportive of my goals:

• Speaking seems more accessible and more vital in my goal of learning a language. I feel differently about it and practicing it every day actually feels more desirable… and attainable.
• Memory has placed itself in context. Exam pressure is no longer the first thing I think about. I’m more attuned to my successes and am remembering very clearly all the times I easily learnt things. Coincidentally (or not), I am noticing that in all these times I was highly motivated, interested and curious. Remember from previous parts of this series that intense focus and curiosity provide the ideal conditions for information to be stored in long-term memory.

When your thoughts are on your side, you’re automatically more attuned to following through because you’re not sabotaging yourself.

Next time I will be talking about the mental patterns of Reading, Writing and Speaking. If you enjoyed this article, please feel free to subscribe by RSS or email to receive updates.

Language Challenge Part 5 – Allowing the Brain to Read, Write and Speak

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