How to Learn Faster and Retain More in Your Brain [Spoon-Fed Newbies Guide]

Could you say that your thoughts and emotions define you?

Think about it. Are you your thoughts and emotions? Or you’re more than that?

Your mind is only one of the three big main components that define you, the ego/personality.

Your thoughts, emotions, and memories – everything you’ve experienced and learned until this day is stored in your subconscious mind, a mysterious plane and consciousness that you leverage every day.

When it comes to learning faster and retaining more, you’ll need to perceive yourself as the entity behind the mind, the one that makes choices and decides its fate on its own.

Your mind is a tool that needs to be leveraged and modeled according to YOUR own priorities.

Most students (and people) have trouble learning. They blame their time, mental capacities, flaws, and strategies because they’re in a vicious circle.

They are trapped within the mind, identifying with it. Effective conscious learning involves a pure focus on an objective that has been established not by the subconscious mind, but by the genuine you.

In today’s post, you’re going to learn some out-of-the-box mental tips and tricks to improve your learning capacities.

If you follow these strategies and advice, you’ll have no trouble learning anything from complicated technical information to philosophical concepts and theories.

Additionally, these tips should help you learn almost anything faster, and that includes learning from your mistakes and bad decisions. Shall we?

Learn to Concentrate

“Focus, for goodness sake!”

How many times have you heard this phrase? I’ve heard it from my mother, father, teachers, girlfriend, friends, books, motivational videos, and so on and so forth.

Has anyone ever mentioned HOW to focus?

Focusing is a skill. Attention requires practice. Most people’s minds are chaotic. Most students don’t know how to focus. Is that their fault? Probably not.

How do you focus?

You simply place your FULL attention on a certain object and use your willpower to stay attached to it. You do not let your mind (internal chatter) intervene and you simply enter observation mode.

When you talk to someone, focus on their message, body language, and on anything that they do. Give them your full unconditional attention for one or two minutes and you’ll understand what real focus is.

Do the same with reading. Silence the mind and simply enjoy reading. If you place your entire attention on the present moment, distractions will be impossible to break your focus.

Build Your Own Learning Style

Some people are visual learners, others auditory, others kinesthetic. Seeing, hearing, feeling. Basically, you need to identify what type of internal representation you have.

If you’re really good at remembering visual cues, you might be a visual learner. If you can recall words and sentences, you’re probably an auditory learner.

If you simply remember and know the answer, if you “feel it”, you’re a kinesthetic learner.

Well, depending on your traits, you should develop your own learning system. For example, some people can’t learn without taking notes.

They do it differently than me, and that works for them. Each of these people has taken the time to develop a personalized system that suits their daily needs and meets their performance expectations.

If you want to start learning effectively, you’ll need to do the same.

Test, Test, Test

Testing is the most important aspect of learning. You are the consciousness who controls the body’s actions and the mind’s conclusions.

Therefore, you need to keep adapting your mind to your priorities and needs.

If you need to study ten volumes of specialized information in one year, you’ll need to test and test and test again until you find a proper routine and system to comprehend and retain some of that information.

Give yourself one week to test each strategy. For example, I used to study using the Pomodoro technique, a time-management system that involves working in batches of 25 minutes, taking 5 minutes breaks.

It used to work for a while, but then I switched to one-hour full-focus sessions because they simply worked better for me. You need to test until you find out what works best for you!

Your Mind is a Part of You, Not You

Your mind is often who you are, but not what you are.

Your thoughts, emotions, likes & dislikes, memories, beliefs, convictions – they are all passing. They all change, each in its own unique degree and pace. These are aspects of the MIND (which always changes).

You, on the other hand, are the mind plus the body plus the aura. These are three interconnected circles that define “you” as individual consciousness.

If you keep that in mind, you’ll never have trouble staying on your path and learning whatever it is that you want to learn.

The moment you acknowledge your mind as your tool, the moment you’ll place yourself beyond thoughts and emotions. In this state, you will be able to learn and remember anything that represents a priority.

Learn to Silence the Internal Narration While Studying

When you read, are you actually reading the sentence “out loud” in your mind? Do you use your voice to read?

If you do, try reading without actually spelling the words in your mind. See, can you?

At first, it seems like you’re understanding but it’s hard for you to follow big lengths of text. That’s totally normal because you’re not trained to read and learn without using your internal voice to accompany you.

To experience moments of brilliance and brightness, try using the mind by changing the way it behaves. Silence the voice whenever it becomes distracting and use the silence to improve learning.

Focus on the Reason Why

The motivation behind the learning process and its objectives is extremely important, especially for students who study to pass exams.

Unfortunately, this incentive alone is no longer “strong enough” for many students, so to them, there’s no reward in performing great at school or learning useful stuff regularly.

If you want to learn faster and better, focus on the “why” behind your study. If you look within, deep down, you will find a powerful motivation factor that’ll help you stay focused on learning.

It’s all about focus – if you command your subconscious mind to pay a lot of attention to your learning process, it will.

But before you do that, figure out why it’s so important to you, otherwise, you’ll have to deal with a lot of internal conflicts.

Make Drastic Changes in Your Everyday Nutrition

Here’s an important tip that you shouldn’t dismiss. Your body and your mind are interconnected. If you want excellent cognitive performances, put the right food in your body.

For example, avoid sugar and meat. Stay away from additives, try to eat as many organic and fresh fruits and vegetables, and get familiar with superfoods and seeds. If you make your body thrive, your mind will thrive also.

Exercise Every Day

Another basic advice (that most people ignore) is exercising. A daily exercising habit can help you not only preserve a good physical and mental health and avoid diseases but also improves your cognitive abilities such as memory and creativity.

Exercise releases the negative energy from your body and generates mental space. Whenever you feel tensioned and cannot learn properly, consider exercising for half an hour.

Take Breaks Often

I used to offer assignment writing help for one of the best paper writing services in the UK. Being a full-time writer for over three years, I’ve learned that frequent refreshing (and healthy) breaks are extremely beneficial when it comes to developing better cognitive abilities.

Memorizing, problem-solving, and all the rest of the skills required to effectively learn information are easily understandable if you give yourself some time to breathe.

Work hard, but don’t forget to work smart. That involves being smart enough to give your mind and body a break in order to avoid exhaustion.

Take a thirty-minute “power nap” every day and see for yourself what a “productive break” means.

Learn to Disconnect

Taking breaks is one thing, disconnecting is another. To disconnect means to completely remove yourself (mentally) from your thoughts, feelings, activities, and even senses.

It means finding a quiet spot, taking a seat, breathing in, and letting it all go.

When you do that, you’re basically entering a meditative state. Five-minute meditation/disconnection breaks from reality are actually extremely useful for your brain as they significantly boost your mental performance.

Introspect, Contemplate, and Meditate

If you want to assimilate information and learn it the right way, you need to get used to introspect, contemplate, and meditate.

These are three different mental activities that will help you improve your learning abilities big time.

Introspection is about using your mind (thoughts) to find solutions to problems and needs and to discover mistakes that you have made.

It is also the tool you use when you want to find the hidden roots of emotional problems.

Contemplation is the art of thinking without thoughts. You can visualize or feel something without actually putting it into words.

Meditation, well, meditation is something you’ll need to discover on your own.

Use these three mental tools on a daily or weekly basis between your learning sessions. Direct them towards your purposes and have them work in your favor. Practice, try, and witness the results on your own!

Takeaways

The mind is a complicated creature. It can think on its own and trap us in its own thoughts if we’re not careful.

To be able to learn consistently for a lifetime, you must always be “beyond” your mind, acting as a sovereign and conscious individual.

Keep your awareness high and steady and you’ll have no problem learning anything you want in this life.

As long as you know and respect your true priorities and reasons, your learning performance will never give you any trouble again.

Enhancing Your Memory Doesn't Have to Be Hard [10 Proven Strategies]