AlexK’s Blog
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
Jun 08
Been busy the last couple of weeks developing an activation technique which I believe will help those who have trouble with comprehension. I’ve been working on this because so many students who participate in my class complain most of all of not being able to comprehend what they are reading. They struggle with this with [...] [...more]
Posted: under Persistence, PhotoRead, Photoreading, comprehension, reading.
Tags: Photoreading, reading comprehension, speed reading
Been busy the last couple of weeks developing an activation technique which I believe will help those who have trouble with comprehension. I’ve been working on this because so many students who participate in my class complain most of all of not being able to comprehend what they are reading. They struggle with this with traditional reading and hope that PhotoReading will help them.
It seems to me that many who look for ways to read faster with techniques like PhotoReading are hoping speed will help them comprehend what they are reading faster. Comprehension isn’t about reading it’s a way of thinking.
PhotoReading can and does help with comprehension however we still have the initial hurdle of activating enough. Too many give up before they are done. Those who have difficulty with comprehension stop the activation process way too soon. Usually on the first activation.
Since comprehension is a way of thinking, I’ve been working on a way to teach that way of thinking. I’ll hope to present it at my next PhotoReading class. I’ve been devising an activation process that I believe will help leverage comprehension. For now I simply refer to it as KL Activation. I am hoping that it will be the switch that gets them activating.
© Alex K Viefhaus June 2009
May 29
After their initial success with learning PhotoReading many students fall back into their old reading habits. There are a number of reasons for this. One the reason I’m going to cover right now is learning to accept the results you get.
New PhotoReaders often excited to apply what they learned and then it doesn’t happen. [...] [...more]
Posted: under Goals, Persistence, Personal development, Photoreading, expectation, frustration, learning, success.
After their initial success with learning PhotoReading many students fall back into their old reading habits. There are a number of reasons for this. One the reason I’m going to cover right now is learning to accept the results you get.
New PhotoReaders often excited to apply what they learned and then it doesn’t happen. It’s a problems for any newly learned skill or attempt to change not just PhotoReading. Many have left a self-improvement seminar excited to use these brilliant ideas, only to realise two or three weeks later nothing has changed. What is going wrong?
The unrealistic expectation
“Now that I know it I will automatically apply what I know.” Sorry it doesn’t work that way.
Sadly no matter how much time we can save or how much easier the new approach may be, old habits die hard. The old habits are like well worn, familiar tracks, through the jungle of out neural networks. They are the first one we take when we are on automatic pilot.
Change takes a conscious approach and it takes 21 to 30 days to develop a new habit. We need to make a conscious effort and when we notice we missed an opportunity to use our newly acquired skill to acknowledge it. To first become aware that we have choices.
The other thing we can do is schedule specific activities for the next 30-days in our planner that make use of the new skill. The time need only be 15 to 20 minutes. It’s important to remember it takes 30 consecutive days. If you are not one to use a planner Get a calendar and aim to put a cross through each day that you have successfully applied the new skill.
If you want to succeed with PhotoReading look for opportunities to use your skill. Select one book for the week to work with over 6 days at 15 to 20 minutes each day. Play with the steps of the system and see what happens.
Be aware
It’s important to remember when we learn something 
new we often fall short of our expectation. This means the result we got might have been less than what we hoped for. You may have done really well in the PhotoReading seminar and now on your own you fall short of your expectation. If you followed what you learned as best you can you did get a result. And any result that takes you in the direction you want to go is a good result.
New PhotoReaders they are often uber critical of their minor successes and throw the baby out with the bath water.
Why do we do that?
The problem probably stems from our education system where there is a top grade wins awards and accolades and a passing grade which is considered just barely acceptable and in many cases not quite good enough or even poo pooed. Just passing or not passing left us feeling inferior and to avoid that feeling we procrastinate in doing what we know we need to work on.
We develop an ’All or Nothing’ approach and result to developing new skills. It becomes a stop sign, anything to avoid feeling inferior. It leaves us stuck with the old habit even when we know the new skill we learned would serve us better. If we could just develop it some more.
The biggest problem is we never learned to celebrate small improvements. We ignored poor results instead of using them as a guide post to push ahead. We scratch it and start over instead of keeping going until we’ve given it all we have.
That too is the biggest problem for those who are learning PhotoReading on their own. They do one activation and say it doesn’t work instead of using that activation layer and building on it with another and then another. For the beginner to finish a book in 1/3rd the time it takes them to read it in the traditional way you need to do a few activation layers.
Be kind to yourself and learn to celebrate minor successes. If you only managed 10 minutes of your new exercise routine although you planned to do 30. Give yourself credit. Celebrate. It’s 10 minutes more than nothing. And it makes it easier to add more minutes next time.
Ignoring it or berating yourself about it isn’t going to motivate you. Your mind will think what if I only manage 9 minutes next time that’s worse I better not start because I feel bad about myself then. Only because you threw out the results you got as not good enough. Don’t make yourself start over. Build on it and see if you can do a bit more than that next time.
If you find yourself disappointed after applying yourself to do something, Stop! Reconsider. You did something and you got a result. Can you champion yourself to use that as something to build on? Something to get better than rather than starting over?
Celebrate your successes. No matter how small.
© Alex K Viefhaus May 2008
Jan 11
To try is to plan to fail
We hear that a lot yet we don’t really understand the significance of that. What it means is quit working on making it work just do the best you can. I know this is hard to do when we’re learning something and we’re not sure if were doing it [...] [...more]
Posted: under Persistence, expectation, learning.
To try is to plan to fail
We hear that a lot yet we don’t really understand the significance of that. What it means is quit working on making it work just do the best you can. I know this is hard to do when we’re learning something and we’re not sure if were doing it right.
So why not try?
It implies failure. Look at it. What does, ‘I am going to try.’ Really say? If you think about it or listened to yourself whenever you’ve used that expression, it says “I am going to try, BUT…, I might not be able to, I don’t think it will work, I don’t think I can.”
What does the mind really hear? Everything after the but. All that was said before it is wiped out. Gone and meaningless. You may have great intentions and they were wiped out because now your focus is on the, “but” and that highlights your true expectations.
The problem with trying is it’s an either or option with too much emphasis on possible failure.
To try is to attempt to two things at once. To succeed and fail at the same time. Giving yourself the safe way out by taking the middle of the road. Ultimately, “to try”, is a cop out. The problem is sooner or later you do wind up being squished like a grape. It’s an easy excuse to short change yourself and not live up to your true potential.
Short-changing yourself
When you did the intended task and found it didn’t work perfectly. You weren’t able to do it as well as a professional or discovered there were some things you cannot do well. You quickly let yourself off the hook and say. “Well. At least I tried.” and that’s the end of that.
Right there, you’ve short-changed yourself!
You tried, with the expectation that failure is a probability. Proved you can fail and left it at that. You don’t take what you learned from the experience. You cannot look at what worked for you and where you ran into problems that led to your failure, because you’re finished. ‘At least you tried.’
So what is just do it?
When you just do it you apply what you know to the best of your ability. You’ experiment and learn because in the end you expect things to work out. You take each opportunity to develop your skill more. Like a plant pushing to the surface you know you’ll succeed because you’re moving in the direction of the sun.You’re an adventurer who knows there is no failure only learning. Just do it
© Alex Viefhaus January 2006
Aug 12
There are days when you fell you would have been better off staying in bed. It goes went from bad to worse. Do you ever feel it was the result of your bad vibes?
“Bad” Vibes can even Jinx a computer. (article here)
How much easier is it to jinx others when we have bad vibes?
You know [...] [...more]
Posted: under Persistence, expectation, motivation.
There are days when you fell you would have been better off staying in bed. It goes went from bad to worse. Do you ever feel it was the result of your bad vibes?
“Bad” Vibes can even Jinx a computer. (article here)
How much easier is it to jinx others when we have bad vibes?
You know those times when you feel like it’ just gets worse and worse. The day is going downhill. Just waiting for the fated third disaster to strike. What if it is just bad vibes?
Bad vibes hit me suddenly today. I had a great day was on a high. Then had an irritation with an unusual spate of porn spam by passing the spam filter altogether and hitting my in box. I didn’t think much of it one of those bothersome quirks in my life. But low and behold I had another mess. For some reason my dog decided to take out the garbage. Selected pieces of it that is. The rest scattered all over the kitchen floor. Unnaturally I cried out,”Hey?” Normal tone. What’s this? Snoopy went outside. He knew the mess irked me. While cleaning up the article about Bad Vibes jinxing the computer came to mind. I thought isn’t this similar? Did I bring this mess onto myself because I of my short irritation with the spam emails? The energy did seem on par. I went outside to pick up the trash he carried out, He was hiding in the shadows of the garage. As I moved out into the yard he made sure he kept a good distance from me. Odd, I thought. I wonder what his experience was that would make him want to distance himself from me? I wasn’t mad at him just surprised that he did that. I put the bin out for collection. It’s collection night anyway so taking the trash out was on the to do list anyway. Patted him and went back to work.
He’s not in his usual spot by my side tonight. Perhaps he has some bad vibes and want to sleep them off. He came in for a pat. Ear is unusually hot. He spent most of the evening of time outside and ice is forming on the grass. He might have an earache and this room is too warm for it. I wonder if his possible earache just a result of the bad vibes?
I don’t know but if people can create bad vibes that causes them to have problems with computers and other electrical equipment. How much easier is it to rub a conscious entity the wrong way just as unintentionally, with “Bad Vibes”?
© Alex K Viefhaus 2005
