Imagine you have a computer at home
And this computer is linked to another two computers.
And let’s say you wanted to search for a file named ‘monkey’.
If you initiated a search, guess what you’d get?
You’d get what you searched for: Namely all the files named ‘monkey.’
So if you have no files named ‘monkey’, you’d get zero responses.
Now let’s suppose you tried to do the same thing when you were online.
Let’s just say you typed in the word ‘monkey’ on Google
You know what happens next, don’t you?
You get 186,000,000 responses.
That’s 18.6 million responses
But that’s not the cool part. The cool part, is that the responses are visual, and textual, and there are thousands of variations on the topics. Topics that range from what monkeys eat. To where they live. To how monkey are connected with spiritualism. If you can think of the word ‘monkey’, and think of another word that’s not even remotely connected to ‘monkey’, you’ll find it on Google.
Smarter people are not smarter.
They have a database in their brain.
A database consisting of millions of ideas, concepts, and learning beyond what the average Joe seems to have.
Because of that database…
A smart person can answer questions out of left-field.
A smart person can literally see things that others can’t see.
A smart person is able to take completely disconnected situations, memories and learning and merge them together to make sense instantly.
So will reading a million books make you smarter?
Yes it will. A lot smarter than you are right now.
But just having a database is not enough.
Google has a database. But that’s not enough.
What makes Google smarter, is the ability to recognise the pattern of the keywords.
So that when you type in keywords, Google brings up a close match to what you’re supposedly looking for.
And it also brings up several matches that you hadn’t considered.
Your brain works in a similar fashion
When you have a problem to solve, and you put that problem to your conscious brain, it does a brain-wide search. It brings up connected and disconnected memories, situations and learning.
Which means that that if you spend six years reading up on ‘monkeys’, your brain is more than likely to make hundreds of connections with ‘monkeys’ and something random—like ‘coffee.’
This random mix is what we refer to as um, creativity Most people who appear smarter work in this manner
Someone asks them a question. Or put forward a challenge of sorts.
And their brain races wildly through their personal database.
Linking connected and random memories, situations and learning.
And it comes up with a superb answer.
And their audience is astounded at how smart they are.
But in the end it’s the database.
If their database can’t access data on ‘monkey’, then it accesses nothing.
And it makes them look very chimp-like, doesn’t it?
Note: The obvious graphic to put at the top of this post would be a real monkey. But because I can access the term ‘monkey’ in my brain, I can think of soft toys, or dunces, or bananas. Or a zillion other things. Spend some time thinking of the word ‘monkey.’ You’ll be amazed at how many associations you have with this single word.
And in on my journey in the world of advertising, I ran into a creative director called Adi Pocha.
Adi hired me to write 30-second commercial scripts for clients.
Now I’m not really sure why he hired me.
Because frankly, I didn’t have any real skills in copywriting.
Well I thought I had, but now I know that I didn’t.
What’s worse is that I’d never written a thirty-second commercial in my life. (And Adi knew it).
As you can imagine, I was totally at sea, when I was given my first assignment
Two days later, Adi asked if I’d written anything.
I told him I hadn’t.
“I can’t seem to get it done,” I said morosely.
And Adi turned to me and said these golden words
“If you and I go onto the street, and I pull up an uneducated person, give them twenty rupees—and ask them to write a commercial, what will they say?” he asked.
” That they can’t write a commercial,” I answered, matter of factly.
“So that uneducated person says, they can’t. And you say you can’t. So what’s the difference between you and that uneducated person?” Adi asked.
“Any body can say the word ‘can’t‘.
You were hired, because you should give it a shot. And make the mistakes. And then learn from your mistakes.”
And then I was commanded to go and write three sets of commercials.
Can’t do this. Can’t do that.
If everyone on the planet has a talent, it’s the ability to say the word ‘can’t’.
It stops us from improving our lives, and harnessing the enormous power of our brains.
It stops us from improving our weaknesses.
But surely we should work on our strengths and not our weaknesses...
That statement is only half true.
There are situations in business and life, when working on your weaknesses are counter-productive.
But this isn’t weakness myth isn’t true for learning.
We were all weak at learning to walk.
We were all weak at learning to talk.
We were all weak at learning to drive.
We were all weak at things that we take for granted today.
Learning isn’t a matter of weakness or strength.
It’s a matter of the teacher. And the willingness of the student. And the simplicity of the code.
Your job is to seek out the teacher.
To be the willing student.
To find a code, a system that’s simple to crack.
And suddenly the ‘can’t’ factor disappears.
Suddenly, you’re not like everyone else.
Suddenly the word ‘can’t exists, but you know there’s a way out.
And you’re willing to take that way out.
If there’s one talent you don’t want to have it’s this one: The talent of saying ‘I can’t’
Adi would not be pleased.
Arthur Benjamin does some amazing feats of brain magic.
He holds an entire audience in awe multiplying numbers such as 57,683 x 57,683.
And says funny words like ‘cookie fission’. Add ‘kerry’ to ‘fission.’ And then ‘rev up’, and add that to ‘fission.’
He has no problem squaring numbers faster than calculators.
In fact he squares two digit numbers, three digit numbers, and four digit numbers like we say ‘three square equals nine’.
He’s able to tell you which day of the month you were born on, based on the year and the date.
And that’s just some of the crazy mathematical stuff he does (and yes, he does it live!)
But is Art Benjamin a liar?
Because he tellls us he’s not a genius.
He says he’s using a method. And when someone says the word ‘method’, it means they’re using a series of steps.
So Art Benjamin is saying he’s not a genius.
Liar!
Susan Polgar, the first female grandmaster in chess says something similar.
Her words are: “You’re in total control of your own destiny. I really believe that if you put your mind to it, and you really want it, you can achieve it. Whatever it is.”
Liar!
Andy Bell is the holder of the title of World Memory Champion
In twenty minutes he has to remember the sequence of ten decks of cards. That’s 520 cards. And he has to remember every card, in its correct sequence. No matter how many cards are fired at him, Andy remembers them perfectly. Everyone correct, and in the right order.
Again, Andy says he has a method. “As I child”, he says, “I had conventionally good memory. But once you learn a technique, like the location method I use, it takes everything beyond what you can possibly do naturally. I think I have the same mental equipment as everyone else. So it’s something anyone can do.”
Liar!
So here’s the irony of so-called genius.
The really smart people say they’re not smart.
They say they have a method. A code. A system.
That they’re like everyone else.
Conventional. Regular. Not genius-like at all.
All liars.
Including the biggest one of them all: Albert Einstein who said, “I am not smarter than anyone else. I’m just more curious.”
Yeah, right!
Note: To watch the video of Arthur Benjamin doing his mathemagic act, you’ll need to go online to: https://brainaudit.com/?p=49
When you look around you and see talented people you may run into a common misconception.
You may believe that those considered ‘talented’ or ‘creative’ require less practice.
Makes sense, huh?
If you’re already talented, where’s the need for practice?
You already have what it takes.
Your brain is genetically engineered towards your talent.
You should be coasting downhill, while the others struggle.
Yet the evidence all around you, points to the exact opposite situation.
The top athletes in the world practice long hours.
The top artists in the world seem to be stuck to their palettes.
The best speakers go over their material, time after time, after time.
The best figure skaters do their routines hypnotically.
In fact, when research was done on the top figure skaters, here’s what the researchers found.
They found that the mark of the top skater is the ability to do their spins and jumps.
And that the absolute crème da la crème skaters did more jumps and spins, when practicing.
The researchers found that the slightly lower-ranked skaters did just a little less practice.
And took more breaks in between their jumps and spins.
Less practice, eh?
And yet we strongly believe that talent is inborn.
Because if talent were indeed inborn, then where’s the need to practice?
Where’s the need to do yet another jump and turn?
Surely even at the highest level of sport, one figure skater would be so overloaded with talent, that it would be impossible for others to catch up. Surely it would be impossible, no matter how many hours of practice their competition puts in.
Talent or creativity is the result of many, many hours of frustrating practice.
Because when we have courses, like say Article Writing for instance, I can tell you who’ll be the star of the course.
I can tell you within days of the course beginning, who’ll write better articles than anyone else.
I can tell you, even without knowing that person’s background, or capability, or any so-called talent.
I can tell you based on momentum.
The ones who consistently write better, faster, and with more panache are those who practice.
Day in, day out. Week in, week out.
The momentum builds on itself.
Suddenly patterns emerge.
Suddenly the achievement is higher.
Suddenly the pats on the back increase.
But is momentum alone enough to create a factor of skill?
Obviously not.
However, it is one of the most critical factors, as compared to everything else.
Because whom would you rather believe?
The perception of the average person on the street—who believes in inborn talent?
Or the figure skater doing yet one more practice jump and turn?
If you learned to ride a bicycle, there’s a pretty good chance you fell.
And fell down a lot.
I sure did.
What’s worse is I learned to ride on hills, with red mud.
And that means there was a good chance of losing control on the slopes. And grazing your feet, hands and face rather badly.
Plus I rode in the age without helmets. And without all those fancy shin guards, and knee-guards.
Logically, I should have never learned to ride a bicycle.
Logically, the lack of balance should have driven me nuts.
Logically, the number of band-aids and bandages should have made me give up.
Logically, my brain should have figured out, that the bike was trying to kill me.
But like you, I had a bicycle moment
For days on end, there was no respite from the falling.
Then suddenly in one second, I had a moment: The Bicycle Moment.
Suddenly I could balance. Suddenly I could ride. Suddenly it didn’t make sense why I was struggling so much.
Bicycle moments are seen everywhere.
Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philamornic Orchestra, talks about the fact when he got a pianist to stop playing on ‘two buttocks’. And got the young pianist to lift ‘one buttock.’ And there was a gasp from the audience.
You see the pianist had already practiced enough.
He’d already fallen many, many times.
But when that ‘one buttock’ moment arrived, it was his ‘bicycle moment.’
From that moment on, that pianist was no longer the same person.
But there are several issues that stop us from reaching the ‘bicycle moment’
Issue 1: We don’t get an A grade in advance.
Issue 2: If we are given an A, then what’s the need to improve?
Issue 3: The tiny critiques set us back. Make us nervous. Less prone to risk—and more prone to never reaching our potential.
So let’s look at each issue separately
Issue 1: We don’t get an A grade in advance.
The reason I learned to ride a bike, is because all my friends could. It wasn’t like I needed to play Chopin’s Prelude No.6.
Every kid around me was having fun racing down the road on their bicycle.
It would be silly, even stupid for me not to learn how to ride.
My father could ride a bicycle. So could my mother. So could my uncles. And my grandmother.
Man, if there was talent in my family, it was bicycle riding, eh?
So I had an A in advance.
I had to ride. So I did.
But more importantly, I was expected to ride. It’s not like my parents, friends, and critics said, “You’re not genetically supposed to ride a bike. You’re not talented enough.”
You’d sound like a dope if you told someone something like that.
But look at what they do when you sit down to learn a skill.
They say: “Our family doesn’t have a mind for business. Our family can’t draw a straight line. Our family can’t do this, and can’t do that.”
Like hell you can’t.
There’s no family that’s genetically developed to achieve any skill. Not a single family on this planet. And yet, family after family happily hops onto a bicycle and rides away. Isn’t that amazing?
So if we know that we’re going to be able to achieve the grade, then hey, magically we achieve it.
Issue 2: If we are given an A, then what’s the need to improve?
Good question. Because we know for a fact that humans are lazy.
Now there’s one thing that trumps laziness. It’s called pride.
Your ego is bigger and stronger than laziness. In a boxing match, your ego would KO laziness out for the count in thirteen seconds.
When teaching someone something, you never appeal to their sense of achievement.
You appeal to their sense of ego.
And again, to reference Benjamin Zander…
He decided to give every single student an A. No matter what they did during the year, the student would get an A. Of course, this seemed unfair. Should the slacker get an A, even though another student has put in ten times the effort? But there was a catch.
The student had to write a letter to Benjamin at the start of the year.
The student has to say how the year would pan out, and why the student would deserve the A.
And the letter had to be handed in at the start of the year, explaining in full detail how the year would look. And why they’d end up as an A student.
Ego kicks in.
It’s why kids learn to cycle despite the falls.
If my friend can learn, so can I. I’ll take the grazes and the wounds, and get right back on my bike, thank you.
Using ego as a tool sounds almost too simple to be true. But hey, it’s true.
And sure, ego leads to over-confidence. And there’s where a mentor comes into play.
A mentor who critiques enough, but not too much.
Which takes us to the third issue: The tiny critiques set us back. Make us nervous. Less prone to risk—and more prone to never reaching our potential. How do we not let the critiques drive us crazy?
It’s the mentor that’s always at fault.
Mentoring is a skill that needs mentoring. As teachers we need to go to the right ‘teaching school.’ But few of us ever do.
And so we don’t learn how to teach our students.
But here’s how students learn.
Students are like three-year old kids.
They can only grapple one letter of the alphabet at a time.
As a teacher, you can see the entire alphabet. Write it out. Understand the grammar. Understand the subtelties of the language.
The student can’t.
To them, the single letter of the alphabet is like climbing a mountain.
So when we knock the student off that mountain, it’s shattering to their ego.
This is more in the case of adults than kids.
Kids are like bicycle-riders. They don’t care.
Adults are wimps. They feel hurt, upset, angry, frustrated.
As a teacher, we need to understand this concept of ‘each letter of the alphabet.’
We need to get the student to work on one tiny part. One little part of the mountain. And then the next and the next.
But inevitably, we’ll run into impatience.
So we need to prepare for impatience in advance.
The student needs to write the ‘letter’ to us in advance.
The letter should outline that they’ll learn in little bits; master than bit; then move ahead.
The ego has kicked in again. Now they’ll want to live up to the letter.
They’ll know that climbing the mountain is hard work, but they’ll do it because they’ve promised to do it.
In little bits.
The more confident they get, the faster they’ll climb.
Then the critiques will seem like just another dumping of snow. Not an avalanche.
This is the core of what makes the ‘bicycle moment’ work:
1) The A Grade in Advance
2) The usage of ego in training.
3) Tiny bits of training. And mastery of those tiny bits.
It’s how I learned to ride a bicycle.
It’s how you learned to ride a bicycle.
And how we all have our bicycle moments.
Feel free to ask questions.
I do want to answer them 🙂
I may have heard Chopin’s Prelude No.4 a least a dozen times.
Or may have never heard it at all.
I couldn’t tell you for sure, you see.
Because there’s all this classical music playing in the background when I go to hotels. And to airports.
And I’m not paying attention.
But there was this one time I did pay attention
You see, I was listening to a presentation given by Benjamin Zander.
And Benjamin Zander didn’t just play Chopin’s Prelude No.4.
He patterned it for me (and everyone else, of course) 😉
So how did he pattern Prelude No.4?
Well he brought my attention to the composer.
And to the music he was about to play.
And then he played it.
And I went through the first phase of patterning: recognition.
I was hearing Prelude No.4 for the first time ever.
Or rather, actually listening to Prelude No.4, for the first time.
Then Msieu Zander did something magical
He repeated the music.
Over and over.
And recognition seeped into my classical-music-starved brain.
And we moved quickly to the layering
Suddenly I wasn’t just listening to the music.
I was being shown specific notes.
Why one note made me feel happy.
Why the other note made me feel sad.
Why the Prelude seems to be struggling. Almost hitting bad notes.
How the Prelude hits so-called bad notes, and then hits the note we’ve been waiting for.
How that note gives me a sense of ‘aha, finally.’
And why that 2 minute Prelude is now an integral part of me.
If I heard it on the street. Or at an airport. Or at a hotel, I’d stop.
And listen. And understand. And try to find more layering in that pattern I know so well.
And it’s only because Benjamin Zander slowed down the pattern for me.
But he only slowed down the pattern for Prelude No.4.
I’m on my own for Prelude No.5. 🙁
Note:As a result of this one presentation, I went and bought over 80 classical pieces from iTunes. All Chopin, for starters. And to date, I’ve heard the same set over 30 times in less than five weeks. I put it on each morning as I’m writing articles, and imagine I’m this great pianist. I type faster when the music speeds up. And slow down when the music slows down. My life is richer because of Benjamin Zander’s presentation. And because he took the time to slow down the pattern for me.
To see Benjamin Zander’s presentation click here.
