Key Tenets (Our Philosophy)

Every Brain is different. That's a beautiful thing and at the same time can be a frustrating thing. We all perceive differently. We all learn differently. And for that reason there is no one size fits all learning development system.

That's why we have developed the Learning Success system the way we did. It can be form fitted to every learning style. It can be adjusted to strengthen every core learning micro-skill at a rate which is comfortable and fun.

As a matter of fact, comfortable and fun is critical. You or your child have probably not been feeling comfortable nor been having fun with learning. It has likely been one of the most stressful difficulties in your life. We're here to solve that for you. Our community is here to solve that for you. You are in good hands. And lots of them.

So let's get started.

Key Tenets of the Learning Success System

• All learning is made up of smaller learning skills (micro skills)
• Grit (self-confidence plus drive) is the biggest component of success
• Kaizen (small steps forward) is critical
• Emotions can hinder or help learning ability (drastically)
• The body, mind, and emotions are more connected than most people realize
• Brains can and do change
• Brain integration, we can help the parts work better together.
• A multi-sensory approach is critical
• Nutrition is critical
• No one person has all the answers but together we do

Micro Skills

When we think of intelligence we tend to think of it as one thing. But it is not that at all. Intelligence is the sum total of ALL the learning processes. We call these learning processes Micro Skills. These micro-skills can roughly be divided into three categories. Visual, auditory, and kinesthetic.

Most people don't think about HOW they think, how they process information. Everyone does it a little differently. There are many components to thinking and each of us has strengths and weaknesses in these processes. The sum of our strengths in these processes is our intelligence level. Since we can develop each process we can develop our intelligence. 

If we want to! Which leads us to:

Grit

"Promise me you'll always remember, You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think"

                                                                      ~A.A. Milne (author of Winnie the Poo, The Ugly Duckling, and many more great works)

We define grit as the combination of self-confidence and drive. In other words, if we believe we can, and we want to, we have grit. Different things can drive that want and finding those things are a key component of grit.

We can build self-confidence and contrary to what is commonly thought, we can build passions also. So even though you may not be able to imagine your child or yourself having a passion for learning, it is entirely possible.

If you'd like to go in deep in understanding grit we recommend Angela Duckworth's book. Grit, the power of persistence

One of the principles we use to build grit is:

Kaizen

Kaizen is a Japanese term which essentially means continuous improvement. 

Anyone who has tried a crash diet knows that lasting change does not work that way. Rushed, over-aggressive change tends to backfire. It is the same with changing how we learn.

The destination of a large ship on a long journey can be radically changed by very small adjustments to its course. While a tiny change in the beginning may seem insubstantial, add up many tiny changes and the outcome is completely different.

As humans, we tend to look at our shortcomings. We forget to look at our accomplishments. Always looking at the horizon. If we always look at the horizon we become depressed and unmotivated. We should glance at the horizon occasionally, but keep our focus on the immediate task. If we make these tasks small enough to challenge us slightly yet still succeed after a few tries we build confidence. If we celebrate these tiny accomplishments we build passion (See grit above). 

This is the way to change. To set ourselves up for success and then celebrate those successes. No matter how tiny. These celebrations make us want to succeed more. They actually release endorphins. Little pleasure hormones. We learn to seek these pleasure hormones. If you've ever had a "light bulb go on" you know the pleasurable feeling of learning. We want to train ourselves, like Pavlov's dog, to seek this feeling. When we have done so we have developed, once again, the natural love of learning that we all have.

That is why we highly recommend journaling.

Here's another key to the process:

I'd like you to redefine the word successful. 

We tend to define "successful" as having reached some goal. This is always looking at the horizon. And we can never get there. That goal moves leaving us despondent and depressed.

Instead, define "successful" as moving towards that goal. We can choose to be "successful" moment by moment. This has the opposite emotion effect. And of course, if we choose to be successful for enough moments, well, we'll go pretty far.

It really is in how we think of things.

And our judgment of our own success has a huge impact on our emotions:

Emotions

Our emotions can serve us or hinder us. We can learn to control them and we can learn to use them,

When negative emotions such as shame or fear kick in a different part of our brain gains control. That part is called the amygdala. When the amygdala gains control it shuts down everything unnecessary to immediate survival. Learning cannot happen when the amygdala is in charge. There are some very primal things that happen when we are fearful of not being accepted and loved. And not doing well at academics can, and usually does, trigger these primal fears.

Learning is fun. Fun is connected to learning. Neurologically. The chemicals that race around in our bodies when we have fun enhance our learning ability. Fun and learning are intrinsically connected.

This is why we have strived to make the new Learning Success system maximum fun. We want to connect fun and learning even stronger.

Learning should not be grueling. Sure there are times when it takes discipline. But we should still gain satisfaction, another positive emotion. If learning is painful something is very wrong. It needs to be fixed. Which is what we are here for.

In short, Negative emotions stop learning, positive emotions enhance learning.

And the easiest way to control our emotions is through the body

Body, Mind, and Emotions

We tend to think that the best way to control our emotions is to will them away. This is really not at all true. Who knows why we think this.

We can lead our emotions with positive thought. But we cannot push them away with it. Positive thought is a good method of working with our emotions in a positive way. However, we don't often realize that we can also work with our emotions through our body. Yet this connection is actually very strong.

It's very easy to prove to yourself. Try this experiment. I want you to do the oppressed teenager walk. Slump your shoulders, hang your head, trudge your feet. Do this for about a minute. Go ahead, do it now. I'll wait.

Good. Now how do you feel?

Not so good?

Ok let's now pull our shoulders back, chest out, and briskly walk like you are important and have somewhere important to go. Do that for 60 seconds. I'll wait.

How do you feel?

Do we need a scientific experiment to know that our body affects our emotions?

I would encourage you to watch this TED talk. 

And if you want to go deeper read her book. I highly recommend it.

Liz and I have spent 20 plus years teaching people how to move their bodies (We're both black belts). And we have observed some amazing things about bodies and learning. You're going to learn some of this in the Learning Success System.

In short, we can dramatically change the way we feel by using our bodies. It is the fastest channel to our emotions. We should not forget this.

And our bodies also do something special for our brains

Brains can and do change

Neurogenesis and neuroplasticity are fairly recent discoveries. And we are learning more and more about them. Neurogenesis is the formation of new brain cells. Neuroplasticity is those cells connecting into the network. Physical exercise and especially Bilateral coordination exercises cause both neurogenesis and neuroplasticity.

Learning new ways of coordinating our bodies and being aware of their place in space (proprioception) just might be the best thing you can do for your brain.

Recent studies have discovered that brain cells that form in the absence of physical exercise are unlikely to connect to the neural network. This is why doing brain teasers in isolation don't do anything for intelligence. There are companies in the marketplace that promote building a stronger brain. It's a billion dollar industry, yet it has been shown to be ineffective. One of the reasons those programs are ineffective is that they do not utilize the body. Yet people buy into them despite the fact that they have been shown not to work. The elderly do crossword puzzles to strengthen their brain, yet that does not work. Instead, they should learn a new dance move. That does work.

Brain Integration

At this point, brain integration is still really just theory. But there is a lot of circumstantial evidence pointing to its effectiveness. Many, many experts in the field have observed it as effective. Absolutely proven? No. Observed over and over and over to work? Yes. So I say do what works.

The basic idea is that all the little micro-skills happen in different parts of the brain. The better we can connect these parts the better they work together. Cross lateral motions do this because the right side of the body is controlled by the left side of the brain and vice versa. But when we do a cross lateral motion the brain has to switch. So these motions, in theory, strengthen the corpus callosum, the connecting part between the hemispheres.

There have been a few studies that did show a strong effect on reading ability by the use of cross lateral motions. But more study is needed. However, with all of the subjective evidence, and a small amount of scientific evidence pointing to the act that it works, it makes sense to do it. Why wait?

And here's where Liz and myself's big claim comes in. We would argue that we understand how to teach these cross lateral motions better than anyone. I don't like to claim superiority in things, but that thing I will be frank about. We are masters of coordinating the body.

Multi-Sensory

Multi-sensory is in the same boat as Brain integration. And actually, they are very related. There is little scientific understanding of multi-sensory approaches. BUT, every effective program out there has a multi-sensory component. It is highly accepted and those who work with a multi-sensory approach are confident in it.

Why?

Well it's really the same idea as brain integration. Through using different senses we are teaching to use different micro-skills. Instead of say, relying only on auditory memory, we can rely on auditory memory, visual memory, and even kinesthetic memory. Integrating all together to strengthen learning.

This is easily observable when you start paying attention to how you think. When you recall a word do you recall how it sounds, what it represents visually, or even associate a feeling, taste or smell to it. If we use more than one of these we can think in different and combined ways. This is multi-sensory. Not proven, but pretty darn obvious when you explore it. 

Nutrition

It should be pretty obvious that our brains need the right fuel to function. What is often missed, is that certain food products can have a very negative effect on brain function.

So for this reason, we should think of nutrition in two ways.

1) How can we optimize our nutrition? This is a journey and everyone has a different starting point

2) How can we make sure we are not poisoning our brains with some food source. We all have different sensitivities. So this is also different for everyone.

So to help you we have created a brain nutrition handbook/cookbook for you. It's an unannounced surprise bonus which we added to the program. We didn't tell you about it before you purchased. But now that we have you here we want the best for you. And nutrition is a big part of that. So here you go.

We'll keep making additions to that book so check back often.

Nobody Knows Everything

I'm going to be a little critical here. So bear with me. I look at a lot of products in the Learning Difficulties space. And over and over I notice the same thing. Everyone claims to have THE solution. To be the expert. To have the most credentials, the most experience, whatever. They are very self-focussed.

Humility doesn't come easy. So I get it. But as martial artists, Liz and I were required to learn it. Or else. 

And having humility means we do not think we know it all. Because we don't. We have our places where we have our extreme expertise. But this whole learning difficulties thing has a lot of moving parts. So if we don't know something, or don't have extreme expertise in one area, we find someone who does. And that is how the Learning Success System came about. The combined expertise from many. 

And that's how it should work. 

Many minds coming together are guaranteed to be better than one. And don't forget, you have one of those minds. So if you have an idea, opinion, or experience you'd like to share, we'd like to hear it. Which is why this site is designed for a community.

Last Comment

These ideas are sometimes easy to forget. So I recommend you come back to this page once in awhile and reread this. It will help you stay on track.

Now let's get going

Phil

Next please read:

How to use the system