Does this make sense to you? Humans are wired as a species to have Danger-Avoidance functions take precedence over our Pleasuring-Seeking functions. What does it mean? Fear overrides our desire for pleasure.
Is it hard to believe 40-million Americans, according to the National Institute of Mental Health suffer from Anxiety Disorders – Panic Attacks?
According to UCLA professor Michael Fanselow – “Fear is the most powerful emotion.” It spreads out to Fear of Failure, of looking stupid, criticism, and appearing incompetent.
U of Michigan Research: Very Important
According to lead researcher Ted Able, 60% of what we fear – never occurs. You waste your worry time over nothing. And 20% of your remaining fears is about the past – over which you have no control and cannot change.
Another 10% of all your fears are petty stuff, which makes no difference at all. The last 10% of fears – only 4-5% are based in reality and worth thinking about.
Mark Twain said, “I have been through some terrible things in my life – some of which actually happened.”
Less Fear, More Curiosity
When you override fear that stops other in their tracks from taking action, you are following natural curiosity that leads to creativity causing success. Huh? It is normal to encounter fear of newness and change, but overcoming fear is the leading cause of career success.
Why? Leaders have a strategy to leap over their fear of failure. They are risk-takers and win promotions. Normal folks have forty justifications for the status-quo.
Misoneism and Cainophobia are in the dictionary meaning fear of new things or change. It goes back to the Greeks – caino means newness.
Life Means Change
Life is all about change and how we prepare and react to it. Stubbornness – refusing to face the need to change – is resistance to life. Get this: your core knowledge decays every five-years and must be upgraded. This applies to lawyers, doctors and companies. How about you?
Comfort Zone We fight hardest to avoid intrusions to our comfort-zone. Newness requires we open ourselves to unsteady and unfamiliar ground, letting go of old energies and confronting new circumstances and relationships. Scary.
Self-Image
There are three faces to our self-image. It’s easy and it helps you to remember the dangers of relying on our comfort-zone.
- a) how we see ourselves – with all our illusions.
- b) how others see us – without those same illusions.
- c) how we think others in our relationships – see us.
Who Are We Afraid Of
- a) blaming personalities
- b) criticizing personalities
- c) complaining personalities
- d) threatening personalities
- e) punishing personalities
- f) nagging personalities
Teaching Speed Reading
“The first thing you must know about speed reading is – you will always own and be able to use the reading system that got you here. The reading skills that you have been using since the first-grade to learn everything you know.”
Why is that statement so important?
Fear of loss that their slow, snailing reading strategy will disappear and they will lose a very precious skill that is familiar and comfortable. We mention that their first-grade skills are permanently hardwired in their left-hemisphere. It can be accessed for use instantaneously. It will accompany them forever.
Speed reading is hardwired in their right hemisphere – there is no conflict, it is like being bilingual, speaking English and Spanish. Does one cancel out the other?
Wait-a-minute, why are they concerned about snailing, when they have just learned how to read and remember three-times faster, with the same comprehension or better. Don’t we love improvements to our skills?
Students took before-during-and-after-tests throughout the workshop. They have internalized the new speed reading skills. Fact: they still have a Fear of loss of the familiar, which is part of our Comfort-zone. We like what we know – it is an old friend.
Peripheral Vision
Snailing reading uses foveal (central) vision for sharp viewing, about five letters wide, which is why we read one-word-at-a-time. Speed reading focuses on the use of peripheral vision, which is a right-brain skill. It permits us to see up to 36 letters wide, or about 5-6 words at a time. Big difference, huh?
When you activate your peripheral vision you trigger your Parasympathetic Nervous System which does the following:
- a) relaxation of muscles
- b) lower heart rate
- c) lower blood pressure, with the ability to feel calm
A healthy nervous system balances both branches of the Autonomic Nervous System Sympathetic (fight-or-flight syndrome) and Parasympathetic Nervous system (relaxation).
Acetylcholine
The Sympathetic produces Adrenaline and the Parasympathetic makes Acetylcholine – which is a neurotransmitter active in the Central and Parasympathetic nervous systems. It increases digestion, insulin activity, and resistance to infection.
So What
Speed Reading uses your peripheral vision and triggers the relaxation through your Parasympathetic Nervous system. It promotes coping and concentration.
Remember, speed reading is not for reading a novel, Shakespeare’s plays or poetry. It is for textbook material and specialized articles and reports. Now you are bilingual in having two strategies for learning: snailing and speed reading.
Welcome change into your life in order to boost your career to the next level. Speed reading is just one additional skill to improve your core talents.
See ya,
Contact us for a free; no strings attached speed reading report – that will help produce self-growth, and may well lead to career promotion.
copyright©2010 H. Bernard Wechsler
http://www.speedlearning.org
Author of Speed Learning for Professionals, published by Barron’s; partner of Evelyn Wood, creator of speed reading, graduating two million, including the White House staffs of four U.S. Presidents: Kennedy-Johnson-Nixon-Carter
Interviewed by the Wall Street Journal and fortune Magazine for major articles.
http://www.speedlearning.org
hbw@speedlearning.org
