The Insiders Guide to Improve Your Learning Style
I wrote this book for speakers and teachers. A surprising outcome has been how deeply it has impacted learners! Several years ago, I was at the Christian Counselors of Texas listening to a presentation on neuroscience and attachment. The emphasis was on the idea that attachment is a right brain function and language and “learning” more a left-brain function.
At that moment this book was birthed in my mind. It occurred to me how many of our attempts to help others change come from helping them know information. Yet to really reach the part of them that produces deep change left brain learning processes might actually be an obstacle.
From that thought until May of this year I have explored a range of theories and ideas about change and the human soul. This book, Think Differently Learn Differently, is the result of that exploration.
Tapping into some basic brain science, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, a range of counseling approaches and a biblical paradigm of the human soul, I have tried to write a user-friendly approach to the relationship between communication and change.
While I originally wrote this book to be a guide for people who speak, teach or counsel, I have been pleasantly surprised by the broader impact this material has had on people in unexpected ways.
One businessman changed the way he presented to his executives and had a meaningful breakthrough in their receptivity. Many have had breakthroughs in areas of life-long compulsivity and they have changed the way they use their minds. Two key ideas from the book involve communication and how it impacts on the development of our internal representations of reality and the idea that “how” you learn is more important than “what” you learn.
Internal representations such as paradigms, or archetypes so deeply guide us and our learning processes that they can keep people stuck. The focus in these sections is on recognizing that new ideas are automatically filtered through already existing thought processes. These new ideas are quickly absorbed into old ways of thinking. People who worry can take good news and turn it into something to worry about, while optimists can take bad news and fuel their pre-set optimism. This show how thought process always trumps thought content. Learning to recognize and impact these thought processes allows new ideas to actually make an impact.
The sections on ways of learning address the idea that we have all been taught a “way to learn” and that not all ways achieve the same goal. The kind of learning that allows us to pass a test is nothing like the kind of learning that makes us a good spouse.
Like taking off a pair of glasses we did not know we were wearing, this section helps people recognize why they have often been unable to achieve the change they desire. More importantly, these sections test our eyes and can give us a whole new prescription for our corrective lenses.
From brain science to understanding “identity” and “spirit” this book was designed to increase our capacity to enter the lives of others and bring about change. In my effort to make it accessible and applicable I filled the book with illustrations, metaphors, tools, and techniques as well as practical suggestions to shift your own way of teaching or learning.
My hope in this book has been to answer questions that people didn’t know to ask: Questions such as, “Why is it that I learn so much but it doesn’t seem to help me change?” or “If I know it in my head why can I not get it into my heart?”. Or even questions like “Why do people always seem to respond to me a certain way?
If you want to be more impactful in helping people change, or if you have found yourself stuck in spite of your own pursuit of change, this book is written for you! I hope it is as much fun for you to read this as it was for me to write it!
For more information come please visit our website.
Bob Hamp, LMFT
Bob has been involved in both clinical practice and church vocation for almost thirty years. His counseling center and writing has focused on helping people shift thought processes to find deep and lasting change and freedom. He and his wife, Polly run Think Differently Counseling Coaching and Connecting.
