The Summit of Success

One of the most important concepts I can teach anybody is learning how to learn.  If you don’t have this down, then you might not even understand this chapter, so I’m sorry, but seeing that you don’t know how to learn is one of the biggest concepts that you could ever teach yourself.  Knowing how to learn, you should be able to take anything and apply it. 

I was playing the Nintendo Wii a few weeks ago and some of the controls just aren’t very good.  I was playing the free boxing game that came with it and the guy that was playing against me was complaining the whole time, saying, “Man, this control is horrible” and “You can’t do this” and “You can’t do that.”  I was consistently beating him in the game and I agreed with everything he said.  The controls are horrible and it doesn’t respond very well to actions that you would like it to, but it’s all about learning how to adapt to the tool that you’re given.

If you’re given a horrible tool and your enemy has the exact same horrible tool, you should still be able to beat him. This is because you learned how to learn.   You learned how to use that tool and do anything you can to use the tool to the best of its ability.  Not to the best of your ability, but to the best of its ability.  If it was to the best of your ability, you would change the tool and use something else.

On the Nintendo Wii, you have to face the controller towards the machine to get it to work. That’s not the same in real boxing.  Your hands are tilted at a position that you would never use if you were a real boxer, but the device is what the device is, and you have to adapt to it.

You also need to learn how to listen and when learning how to listen, first we need to tell ourselves, “No, I don’t know this subject” or if you already know it, you need to say, “I could even learn something else.”  You can learn from people that are less successful than you.  You could learn from people that have less motivation by turning your brain on and saying, “In this situation there is always something to learn.”  That is the first step you want to make to becoming a powerful leader and a great mind.

Based on that, there are three different types of learners and you need to not only be able to see these types of learners in other people, but also see these types in yourself.  However we learn, is usually the same way we teach and we don’t want that to be the case.  We want to be able to teach the same way that someone else learns, so if someone is a sensual learner, then we want to completely change our entire teaching style to a sensual model. 

This is why this book has different examples.  It has analogies, visual examples, and all of that to show you how to learn and to show someone that is a visual learner how to learn, to show someone that is kinesthetic how to learn, so that they can all read the same article and say, “Wow, that was tailored just to me” when in reality we just made sure that we taught it to the sensual, taught it to the mechanical, and taught it to the analytical all at the same time. 

Three Main Types of Learners

How do you use a map to get from Point A to Point B? Everyone has their own system, and it has to do with the way they learn.

 Say three people—Mary, Gary, and Larry—each have a map and a destination. Mary likes to have a list of exactly which streets she’s going to turn on. As she drives, she’s going to be looking at the street signs to navigate. If you asked her which way North was, she’d be clueless. And if she strays from the path she’s got planned out, she usually gets lost quite easily.

Gary, on the other hand, likes to write directly on the map, and trace the direction he’s going to take. He uses his pencil to “feel out” the left and right turns he’s going to be taking, and he just has to recall the movements his hand made to remember which direction he was supposed to go.

 Larry barely needs to look at the map—mostly what he needs to know is that his destination is in a northwest direction about twenty miles away. A few details are helpful, but he works mostly out of his head, and doesn’t need many visual clues like street signs or landmarks to know which way to drive (though his wife sometimes disagrees with him on that point!).

Mary, Gary, and Larry all use different methods to get around, and they do this without ever thinking about it. That’s because the way they use maps corresponds to the way they learn in general—the way they process information. Each of them represents a different type of learner, who needs a certain kind of input to best understand and retain information.

 The three main types of learners are Sensory, Mechanical, and Analytical.

Sensory Learners

Sensory learners learn (you guessed it) with their senses. This group includes visual and auditory learners, who use their eyes and ears to figure something out from external clues. Mary is a classic visual learner. Sensory learners such as Mary like to have things shown or demonstrated to them, so that they can mimic their teacher. If you were teaching a sensory learner how to throw a Frisbee, for example, you would want to demonstrate it to them first, so they could see what they were supposed to do. Sensory learners often get a lot from small auditory clues as well, such as the sound the Frisbee makes as it flies through the air and smacks into someone’s hand.

Sensory learners learn well from pictures or visualizations. When they are reading a text, they want to be able to “see” what the author is talking about, through some illustration of the information. It doesn’t have to be an actual picture, but there it should be easy for them to visualize what’s going on in the text.

Sensory learners tend to be pretty fast learners, thanks to their ability to mimic. However, this type of learning is also the most superficial. Often, something they’ve understood one day is difficult for them to completely recall the next. It may seem that they’re not trying very hard to remember, when in fact they just need to exercise all their learning muscles for what they’ve learned to finally sink in. 

 Mechanical Learners

 A mechanical, or kinesthetic, learner learns by doing. Gary is an example of one of these hands-on learners. They learn best when they get to do things themselves, and their teacher makes adjustments to their form as needed. In the case of teaching someone to throw a Frisbee, you would want to have a mechanical learner throw the Frisbee and then physically correct them—their stance or the way they hold the Frisbee. Sometimes they have trouble figuring out what to do if it is just explained to them, but if they are shown as well they’ll catch on quickly. Mechanical learners tend to be faster than analytical learners at catching on, and they gain a less superficial understanding than visual learners.

Do you remember using plastic blocks or similar aids to learn multiplication? If so, you’re probably a mechanical learner to some degree.

 Analytical Learners

 Analytical, or intellectual, learners like Larry are more “in their head.” They tend to learn well from having analogies presented to them along with explanations. To teach an analytical learner how to use a Frisbee, you would want to explain it to them by comparing it to other things and linking the two concepts together. You could compare the physics behind it to the wing of an airplane, or the flick of the wrist to tossing something in the trash.

 Often analytical learners can have trouble explaining how they learned something: they just “know.” That’s because they tend not to use as many visual or external clues. Analytical learners tend to learn things more slowly, but once they “get it”, they tend to know it better than a visual or even a mechanical learner.

 
“Teach Into Their Learning”

Most people are a combination of more than one main type of learner. Knowing how your client learns is critical to helping them succeed. You don’t want to teach how you best learn, or how you learned it. What worked for you will not necessarily work for them. So also be aware of how you learn, because you will probably be most inclined to teach that way.

 Men often tend to be more mechanical learners, while women tend to be more sensory learners. If Alice is a sensory learner trying to teach Ben, a mechanical learner, how to throw a good boxing punch, simply demonstrating it to him and expecting him to catch on would probably be difficult for him. He might keep asking her “what” he is supposed to do, but he really means is “how.” That is, she is showing him what to do, but he needs to know how he holds his elbows in and his fists up near his chin. The best way for Ben to grasp this, as a mechanical learner, is to be physically guided through the punch. If Alice keeps “showing” him through demonstration over and over again, neither of them is going to get very far very fast.

 Trying to push the “wrong” way on to a client will only frustrate you both. Being aware of your client’s learning type is just one important element of building a positive relationship.

 Remember: teach into their learning or speak into their listening.

 Using All Three

It is also important that when you teach someone, you hit all three of these learning types. Remember, your client’s learning type simply suggests which way they will naturally begin to learn. But the best way for anyone to learn something is to learn it in more than one way. By making them stretch themselves just a little more that way, it will stick with them much better and longer. Don’t just bombard them with too much information, especially the same kind of information.

For example, if you were teaching someone how to swim the breaststroke, you could teach them visually both in and out of the water. Then you could have them mimic you, and correct errors in their stroke physically. That way they could feel the difference in what they were doing before and what they are supposed to be doing. You could also tie in analogies while describing the stroke to them to give them an analytical approach as well. Sometimes instructors of children’s swim classes will describe the upward motion of the stroke as reaching into a giant vat of ice cream and scooping it up toward your mouth—something easy to relate to, especially at that age, and therefore pretty effective.

Addressing all three types of learning is also important when you are teaching someone in writing. For the sensory learners, you want to include images and examples that “illustrate” what you are saying. For the analytical learners, you want to include analogies to tie different ideas together for them. And for the mechanical learners, you want to give instructions, so that they can go out and learn by doing. The different types of learning are something you should be thinking about every time you teach somebody something new.

Getting Paid to Play

Now if you have understood the concept of learning how to learn, we want to apply the concept of getting paid to play.  Let’s look back over at my life, and I could give you a few examples of how I’ve done this.  I was a lifeguard at a city pool for a few years and it was a pretty fun job when you’re 16 years old.  You get to go out there and chill in the sun and watch the people swim – not too hard of a job.

But once I turned 18, I thought, “I want to do something more fun and do some traveling” so I looked into some lifeguard positions in other cities and they would actually pay to relocate me there so I went in and lived on an island up in the Great Lakes and it was a blast.  They paid me to be a lifeguard.  I worked about 10 hours a day and I had a really great time.  I eventually became a manager there.

But before my summer, I didn’t tell myself, “You know, I want to go somewhere and let me see how much the tickets are.  Let me see how much it costs to go on a small vacation.”  That’s not the mindset I’m trying to teach.  What you want to understand is you get paid to play.  Everybody wants to play. Everybody wants to have fun, but you shouldn’t do it at your own expense.  Do it at somebody else’s expense. 

If you’re an accountant, then work with the industry that you’re going into as an accountant and you can go and watch all the theater shows you want, see all the plays, see all the productions, but at the same time, be their accountant so you’re actually getting paid.  Don’t be an accountant at a law firm but then go and spend all the money that you saved at the theater.  The theater might pay less than the law firm but if your true passion is in the theater, then go there, especially when you’re not really at a career level yet.  This isn’t designed for somebody that already has a $100,000 or higher job.  This is designed for somebody that doesn’t have a career yet and are at a position in life, probably 18 to 30 years old, saying, “You know what?  I want to go out there and have some fun and see the world before I settle down and decide what my career is.”

So another way I got paid to play was by taking the lifeguarding to another level.  I went and lived on an island in the Bahamas.  They paid my plane ticket to get there, they gave me room and board when I got there, I lived there for quite a while, everything was free, and I got paid for it. 

A lot of people say, “Oh wow, I’d love to go and have a cruise vacation in the Bahamas” and I can say, “I’ve been on many cruises.”  People will ask how and how much I paid.  I can say, “I’ve probably been on about 40 cruises and I wasn’t staff on the ship.  I was living on an island that was owned by a cruise company and this is the concept of getting paid to play.” 

I thought about going over and living in Rome and I was thinking, “What do I want to do when I get there?  I want to see all the architecture, I want to understand a little bit more about the history, and I want to do some sightseeing.” 

So based on that, my mind doesn’t go to, “Okay, what kind of job can I get in fitness to go over there?” and this is in my younger years.  My mind goes to, “Okay, if I want to see the history, if I want to see all the architecture, and I want to do sightseeing, then how about I be a tour guide?  I know I can get a job there because I didn’t take the time to go to school and then after school to sit down and watch TV all afternoon.  I actually had a productive career as a high school student so once I was ready to get paid to play, I had a nice resume.  I had thousands of volunteer hours and projects that I had managed. I had already had jobs.  All of that stuff adds up, so if you haven’t done that yet, you need to take a step back and do that before you’re ready to do this get paid to play stuff.

You might be 35 years old and you might have been just sitting around watching TV all day.  You just got one degree at college and this doesn’t really apply to you .  This is for people that want to be extremely successful and have taken that step and initiative to change their circle of influence already, they’re surrounded by good people, they’re surrounded by influences that increase their skill sets, and those are the people that can be paid to play. 

If I wanted to go to Greece or wherever, I could just be a tour guide over there.  They’d pay my room and board, they’d pay my ticket over, give me a 6 month or 1 year contract, and the pay wouldn’t be great, but I wasn’t looking for that.  I was looking for the experience.  Then afterwards you can live those moments and say that you’ve experienced the world, and that’s something that life can’t give you – you have to make those opportunities.  So many people hear about my life and say, “Wow, you’re so luck! I wish I could do that.”  And I don’t sympathize because they waste too much time watching TV and not increasing their circle of influence to build the skills necessary for such a great adventure in life. 

You have to find it yourself and take advantage of those offers when you see them because society is going to tell you, “If you want to go to Greece than you’re going to have to pay for a plane ticket there.  You can stay for a week or two and it will be in an expensive hotel and you aren’t going to see as many of the tourist attractions as you’d like because you can’t afford it and you’ll have to come back in ten years to see the rest of that.”

So with this concept, you can do anything.  You can go to Asia, teach English as a second language, see all of Asia.  Again, they’ll pay for everything.  If you’re a fitness trainer, I know a lot of islands that would love to have a trainer come on their island and there’s many different jobs you can do.  Trust me, I’ve done it.  You can be a ballroom dancer in a resort in Fiji.  It’s endless.   You just need to take that step forward and increase your circle of influence after you do that, and you’ve been doing it for at least a year, then you’ll have some cool skills that you can teach others, and you can get paid to play.

Play Dough Minds

So in addition to learning how to learn, we also need to understand that the mind is like Play Dough.  I’ve met many people and I just met a ballroom dancer the other night and it really made me disappointed.  I said, “Hey, we should collaborate” because he’s a really good dancer in one style and I’m a really good dancer in another style.  He doesn’t know that I’ve only been dancing for 3 or 4 years and he’s been a dancer his whole life.  In my opinion we’re on the same level.  He can dance just as well as I can.  You can’t really tell that.  I’ve only been dancing a few years, though my dancing is equal to his since my skillset in other areas is so advanced.  I’ve been in fitness so long that it made my dancing really strong when I came into it.

He told me that he didn’t really like my idea of how to handle business.  I said, “Oh really?  I was thinking that we could work together and bring our students together and maybe we could teach a class to bring in some new teachers.”

He said, “I just don’t think you should be a teacher if you’ve only been dancing a few years.  I think it takes a lifetime to learn what I know how to do and I just don’t respect a teacher who’s only been doing it a few years.” 

He was talking about the students that we’d be teaching.  He wasn’t talking about me.  I kind of chuckled inside because he doesn’t see that I’ve only been dancing a few years but I know that I could teach myself anything and with dedication, anybody could teach themselves anything and it’s hard to be a teacher and say that somebody can’t learn something, because then why be a teacher?

With this concept, I want to show that the mind is like Play Dough.  If you’re a ballroom dancer and you’re a teacher, and somebody comes into your studio and they want to learn how to dance, but they haven’t learned anything in about 5 years, first you’re going to have to teach them how to learn. At first you’re going to have to show them, “Look, when you’re standing behind me, you’re always looking at my feet.  That means that you’re a visual learner.  You’re not up here trying to analyze it in your head, you were looking at my feet.  You need to teach your students to step out of that visual learning and have them learn visually, mechanically, through all of their senses and analytically, otherwise, they’re never going to really be able to learn as deep on a level as you would like them to. 

Note that I’m giving you an analogy right now.   This is great for the analytical learners. 
This is what I call a Play Dough mind because if you have a piece of Play Dough that comes to you and nobody’s used it for 5 years and somebody says, “Make a beautiful swan out of the Play Dough” – first you’re going to just have to make the Play Dough malleable and that’s going to take quite a while, if it’s even possible.  If Play Dough hasn’t been used for 5 years, it might be beyond salvaging. 

First you’re going to knead it in your hands and it may take a good 20 minutes of just kneading.  Then after you’ve got it kneaded out, and it’s nice and warm, then you can work on your swan.  The problem is that people look at the teacher and think, “Wow, that’s not a very good teacher” and I look at it like, “That student doesn’t have their mind in a receptive or moldable setting because they haven’t been learning in other areas.”  The most exciting student that I can find is somebody that comes to me and says, “I’m a painter, I went to college to be a philosopher, I’ve already done a lot in running, but I thought I might try ballroom dancing to get another skill.”

That tells me that this person, throughout his entire life, has kept his mind moldable and he has some nice, easy Play Dough to mold around, so when I get out on the dance floor with him, I don’t have to really teach them how to learn, I can get right into the dancing.  Boom, they learn it.  They don’t get as frustrated as other people because they understand it’s going to take 1000 hours to learn this. 

I worked with a woman from India just a month ago and as I was teaching her the concept, I said to her, “You’re different than a lot of my students.  Usually when I teach my students and it’s a hard move, they complain and say ‘This is so hard, I’ll never be able to do that.’  What’s your secret?  How can you do this move and be confident that you’re going to get it?  I can see that you understand, you don’t have it, and you understand that it’s going to take a long time.  What do you do that’s different?”

She said, “In my culture we have a concept that to be a master at anything, you need 10,000 hours.” 

I like that.  I tell people, “Don’t even judge yourself on something until you’ve done it for 500 hours.  If you’ve done something for 500 hours then you just now have a basic foundation of it.  After you have 1000 hours, you should be able to teach others pretty easily just the basics.  Once you have 10,000 hours, yes, you should definitely be a master of that.”

So what she was doing on the lesson was not worrying too much about getting it right or wrong. She was just counting, “Okay, this is another hour in this skill and I’m getting one step closer to that 10,000.”  Of course that does take a deep level of discipline and patience to understand that. 

So closing this chapter, we need to learn how to learn.  We need to see that first we need to learn how to listen and see how your teacher is teaching you, and when your teacher is an analytical learner, sorry, but you have to turn on your analytical mind and start listening to them.

If that teacher is only a visual learner, then sorry, but you need to just open your eyes and watch and absorb as much as you can there, because they aren’t going to give you mechanical examples.  They aren’t going to give you analogies either.  You’re just going to have that visual because most teachers don’t understand this concept.  So first learn how to listen and that will allow you to learn a lot.

Then you want to get paid to play.  After you have a good skill set, go out and get paid to play because if you spend your childhood and your adult youth going out and working at McDonald’s for the summer, then you didn’t really expand on your skill set but what I did, I was a lifeguard, I wanted to live on a cool island, so I was a lifeguard on a cool island.  That was expanding my skill set and feeding my soul, all at the same time.

Then lastly, we want to understand that our mind has to always be like Play Dough.  You need to ask yourself, “What did I learn this week?” and if you didn’t learn anything, then you’re Play Dough is getting a little bit harder to mold and you’re making it harder for that next teacher to come in and teach you something.  So switch it back over and just pick up anything and start learning it.  Turn your brain on to create some new neural paths.

Let’s pick up our play dough, and begin.

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