Episode 040 - Same Difference, and All That...

Валенти́на Влади́мировна Терешко́ва - Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova. Vostok 6 Cosmonaut and first woman in space. Spot the cognates...

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The Thursday Thesis  - 23/03/2017

“You’re looking the wrong way down the Telescope...”

Here’s one of my favourite accelerated learning techniques, heavily beefed-up with a hearty dose of NLP.

It’s about sameness and difference, and it applies to life every bit as much as it applies to music.

When we set out on our learning voyage into a new subject we notice the strangeness of the new field, the new terminology, jargon and weasel-words that capture our eyes.

Guess what – we fixate on the newness of it all, and we begin to feel uncomfortable or overwhelmed.

What I learned when I studied for my NLP Certification was to flip the search  model onto its head and to look for what is familiar about the new field.

“What is this like,that I’m already good at?” is a powerful question to get you going.

With my guitar students I ask them to notice the deep, underlying pattern (there's just one!) that underpins every piece of music you’ve ever heard.

When I learnt to play guitar I had an awareness of some similarities; but when I learnt to teach I harnessed that awareness into a single system that accesses all music, in all style and in every key,  by using the opposite of what I used to think and do.

Powerful stuff!

In linguistics the overlapping words or partials are known as “cognates”, allowing savvy (from the French ”savoir meaning “to know” – see what I mean about this being easy!) students to simply attach new ideas to the solid foundation of what they already understand.

So it was the same story when I learnt everyday French, Spanish, Russian and Italian as an adult.

Similar language patterns, rather than wild differences, and helpful cognates pointing the way at every step.

As you already know, we get what we look for, so it’s no surprise that when we unknowingly search for differences we can’t connect our new field of study to our mastery of other fields.

So, here’s the thing, the golden question, if you will: what is it that you’d love to learn mastery of, and how is it just like that other thing you’re really good at?

How does that change things for you?

If you were good at being depressed, how could you make "being good at being happy" just as easy...?


© Neil Cowmeadow 2017
 
 
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Neil@cowtownguitars.net