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The BE FAST Method🔗

B - Belief🔗

If you don't believe you can or if you believe you can't, you're right.

Avoid mental blocks by believing you can do better.

Simple imagination exercise involving a lateral hand stretch:

  • stretch right hand to the back
  • close eyes and imagine stretching the hand 2-3-4 times as farther as you did the first time
  • open eyes and stretch again => you should go much further just by having altered your belief state

E - Exercise (as your body moves your brain grooves)🔗

Neural elasticity comes from a healthy body. An active lifestyle pays off.

A nice similitude between working out:

  • breaking the muscles out of the comfort zone (by activating them)
  • and then feeding them with the correct nutrients

and learning:

  • breaking the current state to go into superior states: joy, peace, happiness, fascination, curiosity
  • feeding the brain with new information

F - Forget (beginner's mindset)🔗

A common roadblock for learning is not adopting a beginner's mindset. If you think you already know something well enough you're less likely to pick up new information about the subject fast.

Your mind is like a parachute. It only works when it's open.

Forget what you already know about the subject.

Forget about anything that's not urgent and important. You can't multitask. If your brain is thinking about 4 different things, you're not fully present – so you won't learn.

Forget your limitations.

A - Active (learning is not a spectator's sport)🔗

Learning is more effective when you engage: ask better questions and take better notes.

You learn by creating information and being active in the process.

S - State (all learning is state dependent)🔗

Information combined with emotion becomes a long-term memory.

Therefore it is paramount to be in a superior mood when learning.

Fun fact: a lot of people don't remember what they learned in school because the umbrella emotion for most of them was boredom.

Improving state:

  • change your posture or your body or breathing
  • sit or stand the way you would if you were totally energized
  • think about how you’ll benefit from the information

Instead of being clever during the class, aim to be bewildered by the new information.

T - Teach (when you teach something you get to learn it twice)🔗

Learn with the intention of teaching it to somebody else.

Pretend you had to give a presentation of what you've learned today:

  • you'd ask better questions
  • you'd take more detailed notes
  • you'd pay closer attention