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What is the single most important tool when learning ANYTHING?

It is the part of you that you used as a child to entertain yourself and enrich playtime. It is the part you use now as an adult everyday when you catch yourself staring blankly into space in an altered state of consciousness. It is your imagination.

 

 

 

If we call the external world and all in it 'real' and 'normal' then it must be said that everybody has their own personal relative perception of the world. Birds are beautiful to me and certainly not scary but to some people they can be horrifying. Hallucination is a testament to how powerful the imagination can be and we have all seen a stage hypnotist persuade audience members to warp their normal perceptions of the world.

Artists use imagination in order to create, an architect imagines how a building will look and feel and top level sports people imagine themselves in a winners position. I have never asked ... but i am sure racing car driver plays out the track in their imagination before a race, making sure that their mind fully understands every bump and nuance in the road. By now i guess you get the idea and can probably even think of examples in your own life where you rely on imagination. Imagine for a second that a glass of water is sitting on the table very very near to the edge. So near in fact that if one were to shunt the table just a little the glass would teater precariously on the edge. Most people would not feel comfortable seeing the glass and would feel impelled to move it closer to the middle of the table. Why? A great example to test what your imagination is doing is while you are speaking on the phone. The voice on the other end is stimulating memories and forcing you to create internal scenes with  amazing detail. For example if i mention a blue dog sitting on a fluffy cloud.

While reading this sentence your mind was simultaneously cross checking the data against every experience and colour stored in your minds database. Your imagination came alive after finding no matches and created the image right in the forefront of your mind. Can you see it there now? The blue dog on the fluffy white cloud? And where does it lay in your imagination if you had to give it a 3D position? To the top left or right? 

Children often use those little cards with pictures on them as a learning tool. When asked to spell a word people will often stop and visualize it in their mind before speaking. When you have lost your car keys you close your and imagine where you might have left them and when you remember they are it is like a photograph in your mind for a second. The imagination is a powerful tool that should be nurtured and encouraged in all people.

CHILDS PLAY

It seems to me that as a child i learned things by repetition, rhythm and imagination. The alphabet and times tables were learned entirely by monotonous repetition. Songs and nursery rhymes were learned by {highslide}flashCards.jpg{/highslide}rhythm and all of these things required imagination. As a result ALL of the things i learned in this manner i can still easily recollect today. When my grandmother started losing here mind to dementia she could still remember the nursery rhymes she learned as a child. From this i derive that one of the best ways to learn is by repetition, rhythm and imagination. It is how i learned to walk and then run, ride my bike, count to one hundred and throw a ball. After many years of practicing these things i have become rather proficient and seriously doubt i will ever forget how to do them. Necessity is the mother of invention and in fact all life has evolved by way of adapting to their surroundings out of necessity of survival. As adults we learn to speak a language and live our lives in an environment where most people communicate by way of this language. It stands to reason that most people have no real need to learn a second language and place little value on it. A small child however is in a tormenting situation where they have a need to communicate hunger but no way to do so.

Learning to communicate comes quickly because of this powerful impetus and every waking minute is spent testing and tasting the surrounding environment. After learning to communicate by body language, grunting and facial expressions a child starts to learn mobility which again is fueled by a need for independence. Finally a child figures out that by learning to speak they can begin to interact and control their environment to some degree.

The point i am dancing around the edges of here is that humans can do amazing things out of necessity. When priorities are rearranged and something becomes supremely important it is very easy to pay alot of attention to it. I have seen a friend suffer a aneurysm and fall into a coma, only to teach himself to walk, talk read and write all over again. He even taught himself to play guitar and piano on top of that! He did this by committing every waking minute to his cause and never ever giving up. I can't say for sure that i would be as strong as him but i know how he retaught himself. He made these things a priority and practiced them diligently. If you can find a way to make something a priority and focus your attention, you can accomplish anything.