Self Hypnosis and Academic Performance

Charles E. Henderson, Ph.D.

Regardless of age or circumstances, you can make learning and test-taking easier and better with self-hypnosis.

Over the years, my colleagues and I conducted a lot of research on academic achievement and related subjects. Here is a brief synopsis of our findings:

• Almost any student can improve his or her grades. This includes the very best students as well as the worst.

• Most students waste 60 to 90 percent of their studying time. Self-hypnosis significantly reduce wasted time and made studying take a lot less time. Students who learned to use self-hypnosis got a lot more done in less time.

• Students who need the most improvement are the ones who improve the most, usually with amazing results.

• With self-hypnosis, most students actually enjoy studying and school a lot more.

• When students learn to use self-hypnosis, drop-out rates are significantly reduced and graduation rates increase.

• Test taking is a lot easier and less stressful with self-hypnosis.

• In general, self-hypnosis helps students concentrate better . . . spend less time studying . . . eliminate last-minute cramming . . . remember more . . . get along better in their classes both with other students and with teachers . . . be more relaxed about participating in class discussions and projects . . . and get better grades.

Myths and facts about knowing how to study

Really good students don't have to study much. Wrong! There are very few students who can make good grades without much effort. Most of us must put in some time with the books, pay attention in class and take notes, and study the notes.

You're either born a good student, or you're not. Wrong! Good students are not born, they are made. Studying is a skill that, like any skill, requires two things. One is practice. The other requirement is to practice correctly. In other words, you have to do it right. Otherwise you're just getting better at doing it wrong.

And here's a ket factor: Knowing how to do it is not the same as being able to do it. If it were, everyone would be a good student once they knew a few basic tenets of good studying. Here, for example, is a simple seven-step prescription for studying, one version or another of which you can find in any good how-to-study book:

1. Read through the table of contents of the textbook. Then go through it more slowly, writing down questions that occur to you for each chapter and subhead.

2. Scan the entire book, turning each page, not dwelling on any part, just reading the headings and some of the first sentences in places like the beginning of each paragraph. Do this fairly quickly – don't actually "read" the textbook at this point.

3. Read each assigned section of the text at least several days before the class in which it is to be discussed. Do not underline, do not otherwise mark any of the text. Read fairly quickly and don't be concerned about remembering the material in your first reading.

4. Wait a day. Sleep on it. Then read the text a second time. This time read more slowly for comprehension. Write down any questions you have about the material to ask during class. When you have finished reading the material, make an outline of what you have read, including all major points. Go back over the material to make sure you have captured the major points and what may look like the kind of trivia that some dumbass teachers like to inject into a test.

5. Take notes in class, focusing mainly on parts of the lecture that are not covered in the textbook. This will be relatively easy for you because by this time you will be quite familiar with the textbook material before the lecture.

6. After the material has been covered in class, read it a third time. This time you can underline or highlight important parts to come back to before any tests. You will find that doing it this way you will highlight much less of the text than you would if you tried to get it all in one reading.

7. Before tests, review your class and text notes and outlines, and all of the highlighted material. Get a good night's sleep.

Do this for all your courses and you will make very good grades. Simple, right?

Well, not really. Knowing and doing are seldom the same thing. That's why we need a good studying-bound practice of self-hypnosis to be able to do what we know we should do.

Subconscious blocks and autoquestioning

The subconscious part of the mind can hold ideas and attitudes that make it difficult – or even impossible – to excel in a particular subject. Most of us have one or two subjects that are more troublesome for us than others. Such difficulties can be caused by subconscious blocks for a particular subject, while there may be no blocks to other subjects. This is the kind of situation that leaves use saying things like, I'm just not good at ________ (fill in the blank with whatever happens to be the case: math, English, history, etc.).

Subconscious blocks can also apply to all learning in general. Instead of a block that applies to particular subjects, the subconscious mind might be opposed to scholarship in general, or to learning above some acceptable level. While some girls/women suffer from this, the problem seems to be present more often in boys/men. I have come to suspect that certain masculinity concepts in the developed world are part of the problem. Having taught thousands of college students it has been my observation that homosexual men seldom suffer from anti-intellectualism. (I refer here to both the conscious and subconscious kind.) Anti-intellectual blocks are much more likely, in my experience, to appear in males for whom it is extremely important to come across as macho. Never in my classes have I ever had an aggressive, belching, beer-guzzling NASCAR-fan party animal who was a good student. They may exist, but I've not seen one.

Why this can be true, and how the subconscious mind works, is too much to get into here. If you need more information on this, please see Chapter 5 (“The Conscious Mind”) and Chapter 6 (“The Subconscious Mind”) of my book, Self Hypnosis for the Life You Want, or pages 11-17 of my earlier book, You Can Do It With Self-Hypnosis.

Sometimes hypnotic suggestions can change or overcome these subconscious blocks without our knowing very much about them. But it is more often the case that we have to delve into them, determine that they exist, ascertain their nature and scope, and formulate tailored suggestions to change them so they will stop being a problem. For this we can use autoquestioning, a fascinating and very productive method of getting information from the subconscious mind.

Sound like too much work? Well, it is work. There is no free lunch! Remember, though, that sometimes an anti-intellectual condition (or any condition, for that matter), can be changed with a few simple suggestions. But that is the exception. I can tell you definitively that research has shown that the simple approach works only about 12 to 15 percent of the time. And permanent changes occur down around seven percent. That means that most people are going to have to put some work into it. Their only choice is to stay the way they are (or get worse) or make the effort to bring about permanent change to a condition they like better.

Anyone who tries to tell you differently is either lying or they don't know what they are talking about. I know they are out there because I frequently hear people who say things like But so-and-so said his/her program works if I just listen to/read/eat it for a week! I have learned that it usually doesn't work to argue with these people. Some of them will go ahead anyway and buy the program with the miraculous claims. (They are usually quite expensive.)

For more information about autoquestioning, please see my Web page, “Ideomotor Questioning (Autoquestioning).” or Chapter 7 of Self Hypnosis for the Life you Want or Chapter 3 in You Can Do It With Self-Hypnosis.

Concentration

First of all, forget the concept of attention deficit disorder. Almost everyone has this “disorder” to some extent. I say “almost” everyone because there are a few – a very few – people who seemingly can focus in on whatever they want, whenever they want, sometimes to the extent that it can be hard to distract them.

From a practical standpoint there are only two essential elements involved in concentration: attention and focus.

Think of attention as in paying attention. You have to attend to something, generally speaking, to concentrate on it. You do not have to furrow your brow and squint your eyes to concentrate. In fact, doing that may be an indication that you are having difficulty with your focus.

A camera lens is a model of focus. Everything that is in focus is clear and distinct, whatever isn't, isn't distinct. If you start reading a printed page but at some point realize that you are reading without knowing what you are reading, or cannot remember what you've read, you are out of focus and have lost your concentration. I can remember times when I would try several times to read a passage or page of text and be unable to remember what I had just read.

It is usually worry or concern about something that causes this problem. And worry and concern – the kinds that block concentration – are not conscious phenomena, they emanate from the subconscious part of the mind. Therefore they are often out of our conscious control. You've had the experience of being unable to control what you were thinking about. Or unable to get a particular thought or song out of your mind. That's because the subconscious is in control and can't be controlled by the conscious if it does not want to be.

The same is true for holding a particular thought in the mind, which can be equally difficult.

To put it succinctly, the subconscious is the culprit that keeps you from concentrating “at will.”

Worries or concerns (or responses to threat, to be more technical about it) at the subconscious level can be dealt with in several ways. One way is to see a shrink, probably for years. This may or may not help, and certainly it will not be very fast. It will, however, help the shrink pay for a condo in Aspen.

Most people, who are not too lazy to do a little work on their own, choose autoquestioning and self-hypnotic suggestion. This approach can work as almost immediately, or it can take a few weeks or, at most, months. The first part of this process involves identifying the source of the problem (that is, the subconscious block to concentration). Once the blockage is identified, suggestion can remove it or minimize it to the point where it is no longer a problem.

All of this is spelled out in my book, and there are also available CDs and tapes that provide solutions to these problems. Take a look at the catalog for more information.

Memory

Another biggie that is usually paired with concentration is memory. There is not much point being able to concentrate on stuff if you can't remember it.

Memory is not as simple as most people think. For one thing (and here I'm guilty of simplifying), there are two ways that information is stored so we can remember it. One is developmental. That is, for about the first six or seven years of life new memories are stored at a rate and volume that exceeds everything we will learn for the rest of our lives.

Most parents have observed how easy it is for their children to memorize anything. In fact, there are some things they wish their kids would not remember.

After childhood, memorizing becomes more difficult as we age. By the time we reach our 30s or 40s it may seem that it has become impossible to remember anything. This is not the case, of course, but sometimes it can seem like it.

On this topic, too, the subconscious looms large. There can be subconscious fear of being good at remembering things in general, or of remembering certain classes or categories of things.

As in the case of concentration, autoquestioning, self-hypnosis, and suggestion provide a way around these difficulties.

Test Performance

Many who read this will be students who, as an end product of their concentration/memory applications, will be tested for a grade. Even those who are not actual students will nonetheless need to remember material later either on the job or for living life in general.

Suggestions can be formulated that significantly improve test-taking ability. I have seen many flunking students make astounding improvement in their grades with the use of a few well-honed suggestions. Some of these people were older “non traditional” students at the community college level. No matter what the age, test-taking can always be improved.

Fear is usually the worst enemy of good test taking. Being fearful of something sets up its on self-fulfilling agenda. You can break such a stranglehold of fear with suggestions that improve self-confidence, and that make it easier to relax both before and during examinations.

Self-image is another aspect that often needs correction. If you are subconsciously convinced that you are not a good test-taker, change that with suggestions that raise your expectations of yourself. It is almost impossible to be anything other than what you subconsciously expect yourself to be. So raise those subconscious expectations to what you consciously want to be or happen.

For more information, see:
Concentration & Memory CD
Concentration & Memory Audio Cassette Tape
Autoquestioning & Suggestion CD
Suggestion Audio Cassette Tape
Book: Self Hypnosis for the Life You Want
Book (PDF on CD): You Can Do It With Self Hypnosis

faq | hypnosis facts | home | catalogue | about ceh | shopping cart