I am asked often, during courses, when people make inquiries, asking questions, what books do I recommend for them to read to learn this or that.
I am often at a loss what to say, as there are so many books available, in fact we are overwhelmed by written material, and every man and his dog seems to have written a book.
What information do they need?
What do they wish to achieve?
What will they put the knowledge to do?
No one book will contain all the knowledge on a subject, there will be a bit in this book, a bit in that book, even the Encyclopaedia Britannica only skims the truth, the full facts about our world, for as we research and discover new facts, new theories, new ideas, so what was written becomes incorrect, old and out of date.
I devour books. This week alone I have brought ten books. Some books are on the training subjects I give, NLP, memory, phobias, fears, stop smoking, weight loss, and more. Some are fiction, recommended by Andy Tuck, the General Manager of Borders book shop in Kingston upon Thames, as I said to him I was enjoying reading the complete and unabridged novels of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
We can all learn so much from books, as long as we realise that the book was written by another human being, who has their own understanding on the world, on the subject matter, and are they correct?
Reading Sherlock Holmes, I came across a passage in The Hound of the Baskervilles, which could sum up what I have just said, as Sherlock Holmes was supposed to have a brilliant mind, as he says:-
“Certainly, though I cannot guarantee that I carry all the facts in mind. Intense mental concentration has a curious way of blotting out what has passed. The barrister who has his case at his finger end, and is able to argue with an expert upon his own subject, finds that a week or two of the courts will drive it all out of his head once more…….”
Another aspect of learning from books, is getting the knowledge into the brain, but will this enable us to do the thing physically we have just learned.
Take riding a bike. Say you have no knowledge of riding a bike, you have seen people doing so, but never ridden one yourself.
So you go to the bookshop, buy a book, Learn to ride a bike in a day, and read and understand the concepts, the procedures, the mechanics of riding a bike.
Would you be able to ride a bike?
No.
Reading gives us knowledge, but does not teach our body how to do it.
Doing something is a whole body experience.
We have to get the knowledge into our brain.
We have to get our body to act upon the instructions from our brain. In the case of riding a bike, how to keep balance on two wheels, How to push one leg down on the peddle with the correct amount of pressure, whilst allowing the other leg to rise, and at the same time steer the bike by moving the handle bars, which also will help the balance.
So I have ten books to get through, to extract knowledge, and then enact upon the knowledge for the purpose I want. That is the beauty of PhotoReading, being able to absorb 20,000 – 30,000 WPM, a page a second. Once it is in my mind I will have to activate that knowledge, to put into action what I have now in my mind, to do it.
Reading alone will not make us the expert who can do, we have to practice, to do it, to experience it. That is why I ask people to do the courses I teach, not just read about them, as in my courses we do.