Word Snapper Articles

How To Learn Anything Rapidly and Effectively

By Alan Allard

Many times I have sat mesmerized while watching a movie, having been pulled in from the very beginning by an actor’s “performance of a lifetime.” Then I realize that he or she has had one “performance of a lifetime” after another, absolutely owning the stage or the theatre with their command performances. Have you ever wondered how such an actor reached this level of mastery in their field? How do they “become” their character with such absolute congruence? For instance, how did Charleze Theron reshape her entire body, including the features of her face, for her performance in “Monster?” How could she pull off taking on the appearance of Aileen Wuornos and end up talking like her, walking like her and in essence becoming her? How did Cuba Gooding, Jr. so effectively turn himself into Robert “Radio” Kennedy, the young social outcast as portrayed in the movie “Radio?”

The answer is that Charleze Theron and Cuba Gooding, Jr. literally “modeled” the people they sought to portray. They temporarily “stepped into” another person’s beliefs, values and behaviors, and modeled them so well that their fans momentarily forgot who the actors were.

How To Shorten Your Learning Curve!

Now, what if you could model the skills and behaviors from someone with competence in what you desire to learn? More than that, what if you could dramatically shorten the time that is required for you to learn and develop mastery of certain skill sets for your career, relationships, health and hobbies?

The fact is that you are quite capable of learning to do just that! In fact, you are more than capable. Think about it this way…from the moment a newborn infant begins life on this planet, she or he begins a process of rapid, unrestrained learning and the building of complex skill sets! This is true, despite the fact that human infants are born helpless and more dependent than the young of any other species!

Learning And Your Unconscious Mind

Furthermore, this rapid learning continues until adults interfere with the natural learning process all infants and children unconsciously engage in. Until the interference begins, learning complex processes and skills are easy and natural for a child, largely because it is an unconscious process and not a conscious one. It is when the conscious mind gets in our way that learning becomes difficult for us. With that said, the conscious mind does have a vital role to play in rapid and effective learning and skill building. More on that later.

Now, continue reading if you value learning how to accelerate the overall process of learning new behaviors and skill sets. Not to mention building in useful belief and value systems and strategies for modeling excellence in others.

How To Determine What You Are Capable Of: A Base-Line

Recall a time you saw someone doing something exceptionally well–something that you have not yet learned to do–or that you are not yet doing exceptionally well. Something you believe you would enjoy doing, something you would profit from doing! If you have something in mind, you now have enough information to conclude that you can learn to do what you pictured in your mind someone else doing. Because what one human being can do, another human being can “model” and replicate. Or improve upon!

All Behavior Is Learned!

I say this because…all behavior is learned! Period. More than that, the beliefs and values that you and I use to shape our life, have been learned as well. This can be and will be of great value to you as you consider that the beliefs, values and behaviors that we have learned…about learning itself, have had, and will continue to have, profound effects on our capacity to enjoy ourselves and our lives.

For instance, all that we have learned up to this moment determines whether we create unhealthy stress for ourselves on an ongoing basis… or enjoy rising to the occasion and delightfully surprising ourselves with how easy it all is. Whether we have been “reacting” to what life brings us or whether we move forward with the grace of an accomplished student…depends upon our past learnings.

Simply put, our lives are reflections of our past behaviors, and all of our past behaviors were simply learned behaviors.

If you look back into your life and are less than pleased with what you see, understand that it is all in the past. It has nothing to do with what you can build for yourself today and tomorrow, and so on. Your past achievements and who you have become were shaped by your past learnings, no more and no less.

Good News About Your Future!

If you desire a better future and a better you, you are limited only by what you are willing to learn today and tomorrow.

As you look back upon your life, remember to remember that the past is the past. And who wants to repeat the past, however good it was? Because if something was good, we can improve upon it to no end!

If you look back and enjoy what you see, consider that it is merely a shadow of what you are capable of being and doing! And your future? Well, it is in good hands, yours! And your future will be built, choice by choice, behavior by behavior, out of what you learn, or do not learn, from this point on. Period.

Now, you are as capable as anyone else. True, in the past, you might have been limited by not knowing how to model others and to rapidly acquire their skill sets. Perhaps you have not known exactly how to access their beliefs about the skills and behaviors you desire to acquire. Yes, that might have been limiting.

Recall for a moment all the things that you have been able to model and learn from those around you. Such as tying your shoes, walking across a room, riding a bicycle, operating a computer, whistling, cooking a meal, communicating persuasively with a client, connecting with your child or significant other, accepting yourself unconditionally…

How did you acquire all these skills? There is a process to how you learned these skills, whether you are consciously aware of the process or not. What if you could easily model and take on the skill sets of another human being who has demonstrated a high level of competency in a specific realm?

Is Life Inherently Difficult?

It is not as difficult as most imagine–just as most things are not as difficult as most imagine! Some human beings have learned to make things difficult. Such as the now well known psychiatrist who unfortunately released a book over twenty years ago with the beginning pronouncement that “Life is difficult.”

Whew! What a belief! And mind you, that is all it is. A belief. Not a fact, not “reality,” simply a belief.

What if, instead, you and I began to learn a new skill, with the belief of “This is going to be fun!” Or, “I will undoubtedly gain this skill quite rapidly.” Or, “I have learned far more difficult things than this, such as how to talk, so this will be much easier. I’ll just take all the resources that I’ve built into my mind, my brain and my body since I learned the quite complex skill of talking, and use these resources to master yet another skill.”

Now, how would these beliefs about learning affect your ability to learn whatever you want to learn, rapidly, efficiently and effectively? Furthermore, what if you knew how to apply internal strategies to make your learning time fly by because it was all happening quite naturally and fluidly?

What if you knew how to run the hardware of your brain in such a way that you quickly and enjoyably absorbed whatever was useful to you in acquiring a new set of skills and behaviors? How would that affect your ongoing life? Your primary relationships? Your career? Your ability to earn the income you desire? How would that change your overall future?

Understanding The Real Rate of Return!

By Harald Anderson

There is one indicator more than any other which determines the health of an economy and it is the Real Rate of Return. Furthermore this is the simplest of all indicators to understand because it determines the safety of assets. Next time you hear the TALKING HEADS discussing the nuances of the markets, filter what they say through your own understanding of the Real Rate of Return.

The Real Rate of Return is the one number that determines the safety of principal. It is calculated by taking the current BOND YIELD and subtracting the expected INFLATION rate from it. The result is the REAL return on giaranteed money from the government.

Interest Rates are on the rise as we have been expecting and this pressure has put a tremendous amount of pressure on the stock market. The essential simplicity at work here is very, very basic. If Interest rates on Bonds are yielding 5.14% and inflation is forecasted at 5%. The difference is the REAL RATE of RETURN, (in this instance we are speaking about .14%). The REAL RATE of RETURN is what sparks major rallies and declines on Wall Street.

The reason for this is that the Bond market is the largest financial market in the world. There are literally trillions of dollars invested in debt denominated assets. These investors are primarily interested in the security of their principal and taking as minimal risk as possible. They historically have been thrilled with REAL RATES of RETURNS that would be in the 2% - 5% annually. During the 1970’s this indicator went NEGATIVE for a while indicating INFLATION was rising faster than interest rates and BOND INVESTORS actually had substantial negative returns. During this time there was much “screaming and gnashing of teeth.”

It has always been my estimation that Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan’s key task is to keep the REAL RATE of RETURN as high as possible. HE has been extremely successful at doing this. If you read back over any history of the financial markets you would be WISE to view events through this indicator. The economic climate becomes remarkably different and people’s opinions change dramatically when the REAL RATE of RETURN on the most SECURE investments is threatened.

A thorough understanding of this simplicity is necessary for success in any kind of investing as IT is the basic building block from which all other analysis is based. Although it is always difficult to forecast what will happen in the future, the one factor you can count on is that when THE REAL RATE OF RETURN is falling there is much SWEAT on the brows of Money Managers who monitor the trillions of dollars entrusted to them.

Recycle - Plastic Bottle Recycling Can Help the Environment

By Bryan Burbank

Plastic bottles are everywhere and they make it much easier for us to get the products we want in lighter bottle than glass. It is important to the environment that we recycle so that we can keep the plastic bottles out of our land fields. You need to remember that plastic does not go away it will sit in a field and never decompose and this can cause a lot of problems. Greenhouse Gas Emissions can be greatly improved when you recycle and the best part is you will be helping to improve the world we live in.

You will also save in many other ways as well such as oil because it takes oil to make those plastic bottles that we use. If instead of throwing them away so they can sit in a land field then you can reuse them and you will use less oil. This is a positive thing because there is only so much oil available to us. We can also reduce green house gasses because it takes more energy to make new bottles from oil then to recycle old bottles. Make sure you have a place in your house that you designated as a bin that the recycled bottles go and this will make it easier for all of your family to get involved.

Remember that recycling is a crucial part of saving the world we live in and with making a few changes it is easy to start recycling.

The Current US Economy & the Changing World

By Michael Fritz

Many people, I would say 90% of people, don’t ever look further than what’s in front of them.

Now with that said, read the rest of my article.

Did you know that 75 of the wealthiest people ever born going back to Cleopatra, 14 men out of that same group, (20%) were born within 10 years of each other in the US? The first and second on the list were Rockefeller & Carnegie. So what did this group of 14 men have in common?

Between the years of 1860 and 1870, the US went through one of the greatest transformations in history. This is when the rail roads where build, and when wall street was build and the economies of the time where tarring down. They were being rebuilt from the ground up. So everything that people knew, from pilgrims to farmers was being shifted into what became the new wealth of the world. The problem is, it’s hard to see something like this emerging when we don’t know what will change the current us economy.

Think about what’s happening for a second. Number one, the current economy has monetary policies, and special interest projects that are making the rich richer and everyone else poorer. In turn, because of the damaging fiscal policies of our government, the value of the dollar is dropping, and the future of our country seems to have a different theme. The world will change.