Power of Repetition. How to Learn anything?

What exactly does it mean to repeat something? It means to do something again. And what does it take to repeat something? It takes your time and energy. So why waste time and energy repeating something. Why not just get it done in the first attempt? It is because, to get it done on the first attempt, you will have to be really good at it. Now the whole cycle is visible. To be really good at something you will have had practiced a lot of times. Multiple previous attempts consumed a lot of time and energy. But only went unnoticed in public because you chose to keep it to yourself. Well, that is not bad at all. That's good. My point here is to just make you realize, nobody is born perfect. Nobody was perfect before they failed a lot of times. Nobody succeeded before they failed a couple of times. Nobody reached their goals before they had repeated. Over and over. And failed hundreds of times to find out their shortcomings and get better before they could come out in the open and show what they could do. We just saw them do it once and win. They were so perfect they made it look easy. And so, we assumed it was all done overnight.

Now, let me be clear. I am not talking about rote repetition here. Where one person mindlessly repeats something without any motivation or purpose in mind. Rote repetition does not bring any knowledge to you. What I am talking about is deliberate repetition. Here you choose to repeat the task to find problems, solve them, and get better at doing it. Deliberate repetition is not failure. It is part of the learning process. A process that can help you program this white muscle in your head. It is just like a computer. But much more powerful than we realize.

A research study showed that it takes only 3 weeks to make or break a habit. These are very difficult to go through. But as soon as you are past 21 days, it becomes a habit successfully. And if you can make it past 30 days, now it has become a strong habit that is easy to do and hard to break. A very similar principle applies in learning something too. Another such study showed that if you repeat a behavior 66 times, it becomes a habit. Also, if you repeat something 30 times, you can memorize it. That is why they say if you have problems remembering people's names, repeat their names over 30 times the first time you meet them. You will not forget this now. In fact, my goal is to make you hear the word repeat as many times as I can in this episode. So that you will remember to repeat every time you have difficulty in learning something.

Let me teach you. Repeat what you want to learn over and over again for as long as you can. After a couple of times, your brain will have the action recorded in your system. So deep that now will be able to do that without thinking of it. Like as if it was a habit. Also, it will consume much lesser time and energy to do it. As if your engine's mileage has increased. After all, it is all inside the mind. Once you decide to do it anyway, repeatedly over and over, there won't be anything that can stop you from achieving your goal. So if you have something that you wish to learn or become able to do in your life, start right away. Do it for just 3 weeks without skipping a single day. At the end of the last week, analyze yourself. If you haven't grown even a little at what you chose to do, stop it. Or else, stop underestimating yourself.

Let go of your fear to repeat and conquer any knowledge that you seek. There is always light at the end of the tunnel. To end here, I'd like to quote from the teachings of Swami Vivekananda "All power is within you, you can do anything and everything."

Now, read it again.