Can you remember the first time you got on a two-wheel bike? Can you mentally visualize your parent holding you upright? Did he/she yell at you for not learning fast enough? Did you fall and scare hell out of yourself? And finally, did you succeed or fail in learning to ride your two-wheeler? You are still a great learner.

Your Inner Child was watching it all and had a mental camcorder; he/she and filed the bike experience away in your amygdala and hippocampal brain archives. It is still there decades later for future reference when attempting new learning experiences.

Comfort Zone

You still check with your Inner Child before attempting a new learning experience to determine if it is life threatening. There is a thin line between satisfying your curiosity to learn and fear for your survival. It is called your comfort-zone, being in in-the-zone, in-the-flow, and your status-quo.

All your emotional experiences after age three reside in the mind of your Inner Child for quick comparison and association. You print a face-to-face mental picture between childhood success or failure, and your present decision.

Cool or Not

Should I jump off this cliff and bungee jump 250 feet? Is doing 110 mph on this new motorcycle cool? Go to school out-of-state or stay in my own room and go to university locally? Your brain flashed back to your Inner Child experiences before making a decision.

You can excite them to life anytime you choose through your creative-imagery; they occur spontaneously when you get frightened. Google: fight-or-flight.

See the research at Johns-Hopkins University, by Chih-hao Yank et al. appearing in the journal Neuron, May 24, 2007. New Adult Brain Cells Rediscover Their Inner Child.

Adult Brain Cells

This new research indicates newly born adult nerves (neurons) are like those of a developing child for one-month. So what? The adult cells are excited and powerful (like an infant) for learning and memory.

So What

When Homo sapiens ages, we get more hardwired than children; learning new skills and knowledge, including long-term memory, becomes inhibited with the years. Aha, but there is a window of opportunity for 30 days for all newly minted adult neurons.

What is wrong with desiring instant gratification, improved attention span and a shorter learning curve?

You can add these tools to your mind with Synaptic Plasticity; kick your brain into high gear by knowledge seeking activity. It is a choice.

Use It or

Here’s how. Use-it-or-lose-it means letting your Inner Child play games requiring cognitive involvement like chess and bridge. Watch Jeopardy, the History and Discovery channels, and permit your child-like curiosity to fulfill itself. Your adult may not need dialogue with others; your child within is still learning to socialize and empathize. You need to exercise it.

We suggest you take courses to enlarge your knowledge and skill base; scuba diving, how to knit, and speed learning, learning to read and remember three books, articles and reports in the time others can hardly finish one.

Alzheimer

Most adults stifle their Inner Child and his/her need to be on the go, spontaneous, and find answers for your life purpose and meaning. What’s it all about, Alfie?

After college we stop reading non-fiction for supplemental knowledge. The average U. S. college graduate reads only one book annually: American Publishing Industry, 2007.

Ten recent scientific publications offer evidence your potential for Alzheimer Disease can be reduced up to 50% by adding daily cognitive experiences to your life. We live in an aging society and you will likely live into your nineties.

If you become a life-long learner, you help avoid Alzheimer by creating a fire-wall around your brain. Exercising your neurons, synapses, and neural circuitry through brain work, just as you do push-ups for your muscles, tendons and ligaments, will permit you to enjoy your senior years and be useful to others.

Google: Dr. David Snowdon, University of Kentucky, The Nuns Experiment.

Endwords

When you were growing up you were constantly being civilized by your parents, relatives, teachers and the media. They were evaluating your every word and act against some cardboard child of perfection. You were taught to measure up, work harder, play nicer and learn more. Like it or not you were brainwashed to be externally-directed. After your schooling was completed, the job of evaluating your every move was turned over to your company and its minions.

How can you become internally independent when you are subject to the matrix created by others? The answer is volition, your will to act to satisfy your own muse (inspiration) and not the dream of others. You can begin any time, even at seventy-five, but why wait to declare your war of independence?

We end by revealing two-secrets for your further research.

First, the 80/20 Rule. Google: Vilfredo Pareto, Italian economist. Will you consider leaving the comfort-zone of the Trivial Many (80%), and join the army of the Vital Few (20%)?

Second, Sensory Adaptation means the use of repetition to cause learning and memory to become easy. Your brain requires less and less energy to produce results after practice. Our goal is to take our new skills and place them on Auto-Pilot.

SDSN (Start Doing Something Now!)

Learn your fundamentals (strategies) so well they go on Auto-Pilot.

Why?

It frees your conscious mind to be creative and imaginative instead of worrying about how to do the skill. Most folks think this applies only to Tiger Woods. Reading is automatic (the rules of spelling, grammar and syntax are internalized), so is writing, typing, riding a bike, driving your car, and of course Surfing the Internet. Do you have to stop each second and tell your fingers, Point-And-Click?

We are more Cyborgs than we admit; let the mechanics take care of themselves by our inner robot.

Whenever you learn a new skill, example, speed learning strategies and schemas, the faster they become automatic, (turned over to your right-hemisphere), the more creative and imaginative you become. Now your consciousness can focus on new ideas and how to apply them to solving your challenges, not mere mechanics.