Patterning is simply a factor of:
1) Recognition.
2) Repetition.
3) Layering.
Recognition comes first
Imagine you’re in a city you’ve never been to before. Around you are cobbled stone streets. Hey, you’re in Rome.
But you’re hopelessly lost. The summer sun has long set, and you desperately want to get back to the hotel. But you can’t figure out where you are. This situation, as you’ve already worked out is a lack of recognition.
Of course, you know what comes next
You go back to the same cobblestone area the next day. And the day after. And then suddenly, you’re not even thinking about the way back to the hotel. Ah, but you are. Your brain has worked out a temporary map. And the repetition has helped you to get back.
Layering of course, is something we don’t pay attention to, at all
But it’s layering that really makes the difference. You see, recognition and repetition are core parts of your learning. But layering takes it to another level.
The first time you were lost, you didn’t see the beautiful flowering tree
Or the green paint on the window. You didn’t see that pizza place around the corner. But now you do. Your brain is beautifully layering colour, odour, sound, texture and tons of other stuff, that you’d find impossible to explain. And in a way impossible to re-create.
How do we know that we couldn’t re-create it all?
Because if someone told you to simply draw the scene, you’d only be able to re-create some of the scene. You’d miss out on many elements. You’ll miss out that faded poster on the wall. You’ll miss the ornately carved park bench. You’ll wonder how you didn’t see the bright red post box.
And if someone were to take you on this magical mystery tour...
The tour of the faded poster. The ornately carved park bench. And the bright red post box.
Then you’d enter the first phase: Recognition.
Of course, you’d see it again and again: Repetition.
And you’d start to recognise details. Far more details would enter your brain every single time. Aha!: Layering.
Now add recognition, repetition and layering at high speed.
And you have patterning.
Patterns are why you see a chair and know it’s a chair.
Why you listen to Chopin’s Prelude No.4 you’d remember it, if it was played to you again and again.
Why you see a child, and know it’s not your child.
That’s patterning.
Which is why you could recognise the Rubik’s Cube at the top of this page.
Your brain had seen it enough times, to tell you that it was indeed not any old cube.
But a Rubik’s cube.
And if that picture wasn’t of an actual cube, but a cake designed like a Rubik’s Cube.
Or furniture. Or just about anything. You’d still recognise the pattern.
Aha, you’re a genius.
Recognise the pattern.
And you’ve cracked the code.
But there’s still more work to be done.
It’s not enough to recognise a pattern. Or to crack a code.
But let’s leave it for another post, shall we?
For now I’d love it if you had any life stories, or comments or questions.
Feel free to fill in the comments box.
You’re in your friend’s kitchen.
And you see a chair.
And you sit down on that chair.
How do you know it’s safe to sit on that chair?
But even more interestingly, how do you know it’s a chair in the first instance?
Your brain worked out the pattern, didn’t it?
It figured out, that if the chair looked like a chair, then it must be a chair.
The chair you picked may be orange, and you’ve never sat in an orange chair before, but hey the brain still sees it as a chair.
And even if the chair didn’t have four legs. Even if it had just one central beam, your brain still sees the chair as a chair.
This is the simplicity of patterning
You see the chair. You sit on it.
A five-month old baby sees it.
And slams into it. Bumps into it. Stares at it.
Isn’t sure what to do with it.
The patterns are clear in your brain. The patterns ain’t that clear in the brain of that baby.
Which brings us to why some people seem so talented
They just see patterns we don’t see (not yet, anyway!)
But here’s the really frustrating part.
If you ask a ‘talented’ person what they’re seeing, they can’t explain what’s really happening.
So if you asked the famous artist Picasso, what patterns he saw before he drew a masterpiece, he may not have been able to give you an answer. And yet, he was seeing patterns.
But patterns at such high speed that most talented people can’t tell you what they’re seeing.
These um, talented people simply draw, or sing, or dance.
They can’t describe to you the pattern (in most cases).
So how do we know it’s a pattern after all?
Because of the repetition.
Picasso’s first drawing may not look exactly like the next, but try as he may, the next drawing will have an overlap of the first.
A dancer may do a completely different dance routine, but hey, there’s the style coming through. And what is style, but a pattern?
Artists, dancers, heck even criminals follow a pattern.
But because we can’t see the pattern at normal speed, we think it’s talent.
Yes, you have a talent for spotting a chair.
Yes, you have a talent for sitting down on a chair.
But can you explain that talent to me?
No you can’t.
Because it’s happening too fast in your brain.
And that’s exactly what’s happening in the brains of so-called talented people.
But let’s do the impossible in the posts to follow, shall we?
Let’s slow down patterns so that you can see them.
Aha…now that would be something eh?
Then the so-called talent wouldn’t be so magical after all.
But how do we slow things down? That’s the question.
And yes, there’s an answer.
Amazing as it may sound, there’s a simple, logical answer.
But hey, that answer will come in another post.
For now, look around and see your magnificent brain. And how it seems to recognise patterns all the time.
You are indeed talented at recognising patterns.
But we’ll go one step further. We’ll do stuff that seems impossible.
Like draw cartoons. Or write jokes. Or do things that seem um, quite out of your current league.
Watch this space.
And feel free to ask questions. Your questions will help me. 🙂
Have you ever seen an seven-year old child playing the piano?
Then listen to the same eight-year old playing the piano.
And then that child struggles on to become a nine-year old playing the piano.
And then he moves on to ten.
And then suddenly at eleven, something magical happens
The clunky sound disappears from the playing.
Suddenly, there’s flow and rhythm.
And you sit up in awe, saying: “What a talented child.”
And you’d be wrong.
Because talent has little or nothing to do with it.
Ben Zander, celebrated conductor of orchestras, and trainer shows you exactly what’s happening from the age of seven, eight, to nine, then on to ten. And finally what happens when the child becomes eleven?
The teacher hasn’t changed.
The method of teaching hasn’t changed.
So what did change?
Why does the child begin to play like a dream?
It’s a factor of impulses, says Ben Zander.
When they first start playing, children put an impulse on every note.
When they continue playing, children then put an impulse on every second note.
And if they persist, they then put an impulse on every fourth note.
And by the time they’re ten (and four years into training), they put an impulse on every eight note.
And then it happens…
The eleven year old plays music that makes you sit back in awe.
But what’s really happening?
Layering. That’s what’s happening.
When we learn a language, we learn to recognise sound.
Then we learn a word. Or two.
Then we’re able to string a sentence.
Then we’re able to add grammar, and make the sentence grammatically correct.
Finally we have enough layering, to not exactly pay attention to every word.
Every impulse.
We speak languages.
We rarely turn to an eleven-year old and say: Oooh, you speak such fine English.
You must be soooo talented in English.
And yet, English is a difficult language to learn. But learn it we all do.
The point is: If we’d given up speaking in our first year, or second year, or third year, we’d lose the ability to learn the language. The layering has to happen. Otherwise, we stop learning.
People consider talent to be innate.
But a core part of talent is mere layering.
One over the other, over the other.
And suddenly a child plays the piano with mastery.
We speak languages fluently.
And an ex-cartoonist (that’s me) starts talking about marketing and brain stuff.
We fail to become talented because we fail to layer.
We’re stuck at the basic impulses, instead of progressing onwards.
We’re just seven year olds hacking away at the piano.
That’s all we are!
Note:Look at this video (yes again). Because by the time you get to 2:30, you’ll see how Ben Zander explains the concept so eloquently. Yup, 2 minutes and thirty seconds should show you all you need to see. But watch the full video if you wish to, as well (I’ve watched it no less than eight times already) As you can see, I’m layering too 🙂
We all believe that Einstein was talented.
He wasn’t.
He just hit his forehead a lot.
The Slap On The Forehead: What does it mean?
Einstein wasn’t talented. He developed pattern recognition. He worked out a pattern.
Once you see the clarity of the pattern, it’s like night and day. You’re not bumbling around in the dark. Suddenly everything seems easy. In fact, you wonder why everyone else doesn’t see it the same way. Why are they bumbling in the dark, you wonder.
Every ‘talented’ person has had this ‘aha-moment’ several times in their life. They are doing something—often something disconnected to their ability—and then it hits them. The pattern becomes super-clear.
And they hit their forehead.
That hitting of forehead is a moment when the brain recognises a pattern that others have failed to see. Any ‘talented’ person will tell you that the pattern has existed forever. And that they’ve just failed to see it. Of course, so have the others around them.
Because the ‘talented’ person is the first to see the pattern in this specific way, they are called ‘talented.’ But truly talented people know and recognise the forehead moment. They know it’s the moment that they finally recognise a new direction. Or to put it another way, another pattern.
You can do this while driving a car
Let’s say we wanted to go from my house to the city in peak traffic. No matter how bad the weather, I can get you to the city from my house about 40 cars ahead of anyone who sets out at the same time, from the same destination. It doesn’t mean that I’m talented at driving. It means that I’ve recognised a pattern.
I’ve worked out exactly the spots you need to change lanes. Yes, the exact spots. Changing lanes at those specific spots will get you about 40 cars ahead. Which is handy, when you’re in a hurry. But you know what? How do you get 600 cars ahead?
It’s called ‘taking the bus’.
The bus has its own freeway unhindered by traffic. It can get you to the city 600 cars ahead.
Now you don’t see that as a talent, do you? But it is? It’s the ability of the brain to recognise a pattern.
Pattern 1: Do what you’ve always done. Pattern 2: Change lanes at specific points and get 40 cars ahead, every single time. Pattern 3: Get on the bus, and get 600 cars ahead. Every single time.
This pattern recognition is what we call the forehead moment.
That duh sound you hear, is the new direction unfolding.
Once you work out the new direction, nothing is the same.
And other car drivers either follow you (like they did with Einstein)
Or they take the bus.
Or they call you talented, and do what they’ve always done 😉
Benjamin Zander, famous orchestra conductor and co-author of the ‘Art of Possibility’ has a story to tell.
Benjamin had a twenty-five year old problem.
He had thirty students that were going to go through two semesters of training with him. The students were all instrumentalists and singers. They were going to learn the art of musical performance, including the psychological and emotional factors that stand in the way of great music-making. Yet, in twenty-five years, he wasn’t able to get the class to do what he wanted them to do. Namely, to take risks with their playing. They’d always be so anxious to succeed, that they’d stay on the straight and narrow.
And then Ben (and his wife Roz) came up with an emotional super-charger
They 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?
Technically this seems weird, but look at the emotional ramifications.
Imagine if you could learn to draw cartoons, and there was no such thing as a bad cartoon.
Imagine if you could write an article, and there was no such thing as a bad article.
Imagine you could paint a picture and got an A.
You can’t imagine it, can you?
But ask a cartoonist, or a reporter, or a painter to do the corresponding tasks above, and they’ll do it without too much of a frown.
And if you look back into their history, you’ll find something consistent.
You weren’t told that you were a great cartoonist. Your drawings weren’t put up on the fridge. Your parents didn’t get you a whole bunch of drawing books, and let you paint on the walls. You were instead told, that art was for the other talented people. That no one in your family was an artist. That it’s ok if you can’t draw. And that’s not what happened in the house of the ‘cartoonist.’
In that house, the cartoonist knew one thing. That he or she would get an A if she drew something.
That the mother and father, and teacher, and grandparents—even the dog would be all excited when you did your cartoon.
That when you went to school, your friends would egg you on to draw cartoons.
That your cartoons happened to be a chick/guy magnet and got you prominence.
All the while the brain is going: Hey this is good.
Emotions of success fill your brain.
Failure pops in, says hi, but the success is so overriding, because suddenly you’re seeing yourself as an A student already.
And hey, now you’re talented.
But how do we know this to be true?
Words and actions have enormous emotional ramifications.
If someone tells you you’re really good at ‘cartooning’ for instance, a couple of things happen. 1) You begin to like that person more.
2) You begin to see your own work in a new light.
Liking that person more, means you get pre-disposed to impressing that person. So if the person says: “You really dress well” then you’re more than likely to dress well each and every time you go to see that person (even if you’re quite casual otherwise). And then, in the process of dressing well, you feel better. And you see your own dressing in a new light. You can now spot smart casual from casual. You are now suddenly progressing along the line—if only to impress one person.
Of course, this leads to other people noticing your new ‘talent.’
This starts a bit of a Domino Effect. You think, there you are. And therefore you become what others believe you are.
And this magnificent journey begins with a simple comment, or series of comments.
Comments that make you feel good. Comments that make you smile. Comments that end up with your ‘talent’ becoming a chick magnet.
The A starts in a single moment.
Which brings us right back to Benjamin Zander and his students.
He got each student to see themselves at the end of two-terms. And to write a letter to him saying: “Dear Mr. Zander…I got my A because of…”And in this letter they had to give as much detail as they could; the story of what would have happened during the year; and what would have happened to the student as a result of this A grade. And everything needed to be written in the past tense.
Would you live up to your A?
Would you live up to be a ‘smart dresser?
Would you live up to being a superb cartoonist?
You see, it’s all emotion. Because Zander’s students haven’t achieved anything. But do you have any doubt about the outcome? That’s the power of emotion. That’s the power of your brain. And that’s why talent is a myth.
Final Note: Watch the video below. As a result, I’m not only talented in B notes and C notes, but listen to classical music every day as well. And I would not call myself a classical music lover. Well, now I am. 🙂
