Sep 30
In my previous post I introduced some insight into the abilities we have and the flawed thinking that PhotoReading is something mystical that only a special few can learn.
In this post I want to show the stumbling blocks of our thinking and beliefs that can prevent us from learning the PhotoReading system.
There are a couple [...] [...more]
Posted: under Activation, Change, Persistence, Photoreading, frustration.
Tags: belief, comprehension, learning, Photoreading
In my previous post I introduced some insight into the abilities we have and the flawed thinking that PhotoReading is something mystical that only a special few can learn.
In this post I want to show the stumbling blocks of our thinking and beliefs that can prevent us from learning the PhotoReading system.
There are a couple of other stumbling main blocks that affect the belief of the learner. One is the stories and videos of expert PhotoReaders. The ones who flip the pages of the book or scroll the computer screen and then answer questions about the text. First it must be understood that they are experienced in PhotoReading. They would have been unsuccessful in the early days of learning to PhotoRead as any beginner now learning PhotoReading. They had build the non-conscious to conscious mind connection and trust by applying the full system and applying it often. Something the beginner has trouble believing they are capable of.
This creates a paradox. If you don’t believe you can do it and then test the system, you’re going to score as you believe. The way to do what the expert does, is use the system enough to own the system. This means shifting out of limiting reading and passive reading habits that you learned in elementary or primary school.
This brings us to the second stumbling block. The passive reading habit. The PhotoReading system is an active reading system. By active I mean you need to know what you want from what you are reading and be able to recognise when you’ve consciously grasped that. The techniques are straight forward and the activation step when applied quickly help the beginner to get through their reading material 3 to 5 times faster in a live seminar. However the deceptive simplicity of the activation step leave the beginner to believe they don’t need to work on this part of the system. They believe they aren’t getting the PhotoReading step right when they don’t see instant results at the beginning of activation.
Here again we run into a problem of habit. It’s habit that keep us in the passive reading approach. By applying the PhotoReading system a beginner can get their reading done three to 5 times faster. However because they measure themselves against the PhotoReading experts they hold the belief they cannot do it well enough. Their belief that it’s difficult keeps them stuck working with one book for 12 to 18 hours because they think the experts get through all their books in 3 to 20 minutes. They see 4 to 6 hours as a failure to apply the system. Their belief that they are failing because they don’t match the expert time becomes a barrier to learning. 
What you see and the success stories are exciting experiences however even experts spend more time with the books they really want to know. In fact the more books they have used the full system on the better their conscious - nonconscious mind connection that such demonstrations become possible.
I offer my own experience here to help the beginner.
I consider myself an expert PhotoReader and a book of about 350 pages that I really want to understand and expect to learn something important from would take me 30 to 120 minutes. It depends on my reading purpose. By the same token there are many books I only spend 5 to 15 minutes with to discover they have nothing of interest to me. These books I have put on my mental bookshelf. I can always come back to them if my circumstances change and it does become important.
If you can believe that you can read you have the necessary skills to become proficient at PhotoReading . You won’t be demonstrating the PhotoReading skills you might find on the web overnight. The only person you should be measuring your progress against is your own. If it takes you 18 hours to read a book and in the process of learning a system you could reduce that to 9 hours with the same or even better comprehension isn’t that progress?
Focus on believing it is possible for you to learn PhotoReading. Don’t compare yourself with others and give up. Aspire to progress to that level.
© Alex K Viefhaus Sept. 2009
Sep 08
It’s difficult to succeed when you don’t believe that you can.This same challenge applies to succeeding with PhotoReading. If you think it’s something magical. Something that only mystic with special abilities can do then you will hinder your success with the PhotoReading system.
Let me tell you the secret of PhotoReading.
It’s not mystical, It’s [...] [...more]
Posted: under Uncategorized.
It’s difficult to succeed when you don’t believe that you can.This same challenge applies to succeeding with PhotoReading. If you think it’s something magical. Something that only mystic with special abilities can do then you will hinder your success with the PhotoReading system.
Let me tell you the secret of PhotoReading.
It’s not mystical, It’s not magic. The system as a whole uses skills you naturally use everyday. If you are reading this you have the most important skill for PhotoReading mastery. You already know how to read. It doesn’t matter how fast or slow you naturally read it’s your ability to understand this at whatever your current speed of reading is.
PhotoReading is the next step in reading. The skills that you should have been taught when you entered high school. What you learned in Elementary or Primary school is what you needed to know to master the first stage of reading. Getting the basics. The PhotoReading system takes you to the next level.
When you learn PhotoReading in a live seminar, home study course or even the book you will notice that you are taught some additional reading skills. Skills that help set your focus for reading. You could easily double your reading speed by applying these basic skills.
The PhotoReading step also uses some of your natural skills. If you drive a car you use this skill more than you realise to get you to your destination. Brain research also shows more and more that there is more perceptual powers in the networks of your non-conscious mind than your conscious mind can access. To say we use only 1% of our mind when talking about the conscious mind is an over estimate. If you ever consider the art of reading you might notice that it involves a lot of non-conscious processes.
Do you ever go back to re-read a sentence because, you didn’t understand it? Who told you you didn’t understand it? Your non-conscious processes of course.
Do you ever re-read something because you realised you missed a word or read it wrong? Again, who told you? You’re no longer reading to your primary school teacher or tutor. So it was a non-conscious part of your mind that is monitoring this. You have a non-conscious part of your mind watching over you as you read.
With the PhotoReading step you give your non-conscious mind a mental snap shot of the text you wish to read. Don’t worry about your mind being able to handle this non-consciously. It can. As you have proved to yourself if you’ve ever re-read words or sentences of a book. The non-conscious mind is already working for you.
The challenge is realising that the PhotoReading step is not done consciously and it requires trusting that part of you that you trust for so many other experiences. You know when you need to go to the bathroom don’t you?
One of the misunderstandings about the PhotoReading system is “reading at 25,000 words a minute”. It isn’t reading at 25,000 words a minute it’s PhotoReading at 25,000 to 100,000 words a minute. One is conscious the other is not.
Reading is done consciously and cannot comfortably exceed 1000 words a minute. Faster than that you have to start skimming. If you take the figure that the conscious mind can only handle 7 plus or minus 2 bits of information a second and allow that one word is one bit. The maximum reading speed is 560 words a minute. The average reading speed is 190 words a minute.
PhotoReading is done with the non-conscious mind and isn’t satisfying to the conscious mind because it isn’t reading as we know it. The non-conscious mind takes in 2 million bits of information a second. Therefore non-consciously 25,000 to 100,000 is a leisurely pace. PhotoReading is like pre-reading.
Since PhotoReading is not done with conscious mind we run into a couple of other stumbling blocks that hinder belief that the PhotoReading system works. I will continue on the subject in my next post.
© Alex K Viefhaus
