I have been researching how the brain learns for the last 35 years. From my research, I have concluded that learning is not related to school or college. In fact, learning is what your brain does starting from birth and ending with death as your brain develops tools to cope with the surrounding environment.
In school they place a body of knowledge onto an existing learning system. In some subjects your brain will readily accept it and you will make good progress but when your brain struggles to accept the information it will cause you to struggle with the subject.
Our learning can be categorized in two ways: Academic intelligence and emotional intelligence. If these two are not synchronised then learning is a challenge for us.
Schools are experts in academic intelligence but greatly lack in imparting tools to help us develop emotional intelligence.
In this blog I want to discuss self control which is one of the five domains of emotional Intelligence and is probably the most powerful tool in your armour.
Self-control is a set of behavior’s which:
- Accepts the reality that the only thing in life that you can successfully change and control is yourself.
- Keeps in check all self-destructive, addictive, obsessive, compulsive, irrational, and unacceptable behavior’s you have from time to time
- Gives you a sense of personal mastery, autonomy, and competency over your own life.
- Is under your control and power to direct and orchestrate with no need for interference or manipulation from others.
- Makes you the master of your own destiny, because it keeps in check those barriers and obstacles that can threaten your overall success in life.
- Is a middle ground between perfectionism and laxity in self care.
- Results in your life having a balance and focus by helping you to cope with new challenges in life as they come.
- Is the foundation of your mental health and gives you the power to accept personal responsibility for your life.
- It keeps your life in moderation, helping you to avoid extremes in any direction.
- Is the focus of the efforts to let go of the uncontrollable and unchangeable in your life so that you can concentrate on yourself.
- It eliminates the need for you to be manipulative, helpless, intimidating, over dependent or a caretaker of others.
- It helps you to be detached from others and to keep your relationships with others in a healthy balance of give and take.
- It reflects your inner desire to grow up into a mature, responsible adult.
If you read these carefully and reflect on them you will I think agree the importance of Emotional Intelligence
The importance of self control and self talk in revision
One of the more frequently faced challenges experienced by athletes is how to improve their performance. They express frustration that they often possess identical, if not superior, physical attributes to their competition, yet they’re consistently being out performed by that competition. In many of these cases the factor that separates their performance from the competitions has been found to be rooted in their belief system.
In other words they are operating with a limiting belief as to their athletic ability and level of performance they are capable of achieving. Yet it is well documented that an individual’s core beliefs in any given area of their life will ultimately determine the reality they draw into their life-positive, negative or remain stagnant. This applies to you when you revise. For example do you say to yourself “I didn’t understand the topic in class so why should I revise it?”
If you do, then this is an example of your negative beliefs at work.
Limiting Beliefs
So how does one go about changing a limiting belief to a positive one — one that will result in improving your performance?
It has been established by psychologists and neuroscientists that every person in the world carries on an ongoing dialog, or self-talk, of between 150 and 300 words a minute. This works out to between 45,000 and 51,000 thoughts a day. Most of out self-talk is harmless thoughts that serve our daily activities like, “I need to stop at the shop.” The danger is when inner dialogue takes on a negative connotation such as, “I’ll never be good at this topic”, “I don’t have the mental toughness to re-learn all of this,” or “I’ll never be that good at English or Mathematics.”
The ongoing negative reinforcement created by habitual negative self-talk results in the creation of a limiting belief(s) that goes on to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Beliefs — positive or negative — are literally etched into our brain in comfortable grooves or neural pathways. Incoming data from our senses travel on these neural pathways on the way to interpretation in the brain. Therefore, if you desire to change an un-resourceful/limiting belief into an empowering belief, you must rewire the negative neural track created in the brain.
The Power of Affirmations
This can be accomplished in precisely the same way the tracks were created: by using self-talk or, more specifically affirmations.
An affirmation is a statement of fact or belief — positive or negative — that will lead toward the end result you expect. Anything that follows the phrase “I am,” such as “I am good enough to get a higher grade in this subject “, “I am in control of my thoughts” or “I can focus on what I am doing” is an affirmation.
The simplicity of affirmations often causes them to be overlooked. Nonetheless, affirmations are the power behind high performers in every field of life and they are regularly used by athletes.
The process for changing a limiting belief to a resourceful belief using affirmations is a simple one. First, identify the areas of your life which are not working to your satisfaction.
Next, write out the affirmations that represent things the way you desire them to be, they will be the vehicle for creating new resourceful/positive pathways.
Basic to formulating a new self-suggestion is that your affirmation is short and to the point — simple enough that a five year old child will understand it — and is always stated in the positive.
Further, your affirmation should be stated in the present tense — as if it has already happened, for example, “I am strong in Science or Mathematics.”
Now you are ready to begin your daily (minimum) reprogramming process:
- Sit upright in a comfortable chair.
- Close your eyes and take a couple of minutes to progressively relax.
- Release your body’s tight sharp focus on the physical world by taking yourself to an even deeper level of relaxation.
- Speak your affirmation aloud from five to twenty times (depending on the time you have and the number of beliefs you are reprogramming).
By speaking your affirmation aloud you are down-stepping your thoughts to the brains electrical network to speech, and you are involving more of your brain by including two more of your senses: auditory and kinesthetic.
It is important that you trust this process and give your affirmation(s) time to achieve their desired outcome.
Worry or self-doubt as to whether your affirmations are working only conveys to your subconscious worry and the belief that your desire may not come to pass or the affirmation may not succeed.
Be patient, success is on the way.
In other words, follow the path of winners.
