Answer Question
Frustrations With German Audio Companion Discs
I have recently started working through the German Level 1 again, and I was quickly reminded of something that turned me off last time. Perhaps a bit of background is in order to make this point more clear.
I publish subliminal audio for a living, and my background is therefore in psychology, hypnosis, subliminals, and persuasion. I also have experience teaching informally.
In creating a script for any form of mind programming, it is always a good idea to focus on positives only. Why? Because if you focus on negatives, you can make things worse, or even do damage. That's because the subconscious mind is very literal, and is also the seat of the emotions, which means it can be irrational as well. Fears, for example, can not always be said to be rational. You might get stung by a wasp, and then have the resulting fear grow over time as a vicious cycle and become a serious overreaction to wasps which might make them so terrifying that you do not react in a safe or sane manner to them. In extreme cases, an overload of fear might even kill a person. The point being, fear is useful to keep you safe, but because it is an emotion, and therefore irrational, it can be unreasonable, or become so. Triggering fear - even unintentionally - is one example of the dangers of negative wording in a script.
However, many professionals who are looked upon as authorities, such as doctors, lawyers and teachers, use negative wording in ways that may as well be in a hypnotic context, because these people are being given a proverbial blank check by the majority of their listeners. For instance, when I was in cancer treatment years ago, I was witness to many other cancer patients being told they had no hope to live. Those who believed this, almost invariably died by the time the doctor said they would. Those who rejected it, only about 60% died, and they outlived their believing brethren by months and sometimes years. Doctors are trained to "be realistic", but in their position of power, authority, training and repetition (volume of patients, seeing the same thing over and over a lot), they tend to forget that their patients are people, and as such, they can be helped or hindered by what they are told by a doctor. It can quite literally result in a death when a doctor is careless with someone who believes every word they say to be the literal absolute truth, and this is unfortunately the case more often than not in this society which practically worships science.
The same, to a considerable extent, is true of teachers. When a teacher tells someone something, especially someone who is in the role of student, the person who hears it will tend to take it as literal truth. When a teacher says, "Wow, I can't believe you decided to try to learn German, it's going to be hard," - guess what? That tells the student, "German is difficult to learn, and you should expect to have difficulty and a hard time doing so." The result, if that is accepted by the student as true? They will tend to subconsciously make this true, whether or not it actually is. In other words, they will make their expectations their reality.
I am not saying that German is easy, or would be easy for everyone to learn. I have not gotten far enough to see the full extent of how difficult it might be. But it drives me crazy when someone is careless with their projection of negativity on subjects like difficulty. Sonia, you are guilty of this multiple times in just the first level's audio component. That makes it harder to learn the language than it has to be, because it sets an expectation that the language must be difficult to learn, and the subconscious - being absolutely literal and unable to differentiate between good and bad commands - executes the command (expectation) by making it fit the person's definition of "hard" or "difficult". Again, makes it harder than it has to be.
I don't know if this has been changed in any of the updates, but this is a very important point, and I really want it to be addressed, because it makes me not want to use the audio components. I don't want to repeatedly listen to (and be programmed to believe) that "Hey! This is hard stuff!"
Instead, I think you should follow the format I did when I created my language learning subliminals. They do not teach the language, but they work to make learning the language fun, make it as easy as possible (with positive expectations, enjoyment of the learning process, etc.) and improve memory. They work to make it easier to pronounce new sounds, and make reading and writing the new language easier. And last but not least, they work to make the learning go as fast as possible. In other words, they approach from an entirely positive direction, and they encourage, enable and enhance.
The goal isn't to be unrealistic about it; learning a language takes effort, and desire, and persistence. It isn't going to "just happen", or happen overnight. But the fact is, learning is a lot easier when you don't create artificial barriers to success, such as the instructor telling you, "Hey, this is/is going to be difficult. Get ready to suffer!"
I also think it might be good to combine our talents. My subliminal language learning programs would be very good paired with your language programs, which (as far as I can tell) are the best around.
Thanks for listening.
I publish subliminal audio for a living, and my background is therefore in psychology, hypnosis, subliminals, and persuasion. I also have experience teaching informally.
In creating a script for any form of mind programming, it is always a good idea to focus on positives only. Why? Because if you focus on negatives, you can make things worse, or even do damage. That's because the subconscious mind is very literal, and is also the seat of the emotions, which means it can be irrational as well. Fears, for example, can not always be said to be rational. You might get stung by a wasp, and then have the resulting fear grow over time as a vicious cycle and become a serious overreaction to wasps which might make them so terrifying that you do not react in a safe or sane manner to them. In extreme cases, an overload of fear might even kill a person. The point being, fear is useful to keep you safe, but because it is an emotion, and therefore irrational, it can be unreasonable, or become so. Triggering fear - even unintentionally - is one example of the dangers of negative wording in a script.
However, many professionals who are looked upon as authorities, such as doctors, lawyers and teachers, use negative wording in ways that may as well be in a hypnotic context, because these people are being given a proverbial blank check by the majority of their listeners. For instance, when I was in cancer treatment years ago, I was witness to many other cancer patients being told they had no hope to live. Those who believed this, almost invariably died by the time the doctor said they would. Those who rejected it, only about 60% died, and they outlived their believing brethren by months and sometimes years. Doctors are trained to "be realistic", but in their position of power, authority, training and repetition (volume of patients, seeing the same thing over and over a lot), they tend to forget that their patients are people, and as such, they can be helped or hindered by what they are told by a doctor. It can quite literally result in a death when a doctor is careless with someone who believes every word they say to be the literal absolute truth, and this is unfortunately the case more often than not in this society which practically worships science.
The same, to a considerable extent, is true of teachers. When a teacher tells someone something, especially someone who is in the role of student, the person who hears it will tend to take it as literal truth. When a teacher says, "Wow, I can't believe you decided to try to learn German, it's going to be hard," - guess what? That tells the student, "German is difficult to learn, and you should expect to have difficulty and a hard time doing so." The result, if that is accepted by the student as true? They will tend to subconsciously make this true, whether or not it actually is. In other words, they will make their expectations their reality.
I am not saying that German is easy, or would be easy for everyone to learn. I have not gotten far enough to see the full extent of how difficult it might be. But it drives me crazy when someone is careless with their projection of negativity on subjects like difficulty. Sonia, you are guilty of this multiple times in just the first level's audio component. That makes it harder to learn the language than it has to be, because it sets an expectation that the language must be difficult to learn, and the subconscious - being absolutely literal and unable to differentiate between good and bad commands - executes the command (expectation) by making it fit the person's definition of "hard" or "difficult". Again, makes it harder than it has to be.
I don't know if this has been changed in any of the updates, but this is a very important point, and I really want it to be addressed, because it makes me not want to use the audio components. I don't want to repeatedly listen to (and be programmed to believe) that "Hey! This is hard stuff!"
Instead, I think you should follow the format I did when I created my language learning subliminals. They do not teach the language, but they work to make learning the language fun, make it as easy as possible (with positive expectations, enjoyment of the learning process, etc.) and improve memory. They work to make it easier to pronounce new sounds, and make reading and writing the new language easier. And last but not least, they work to make the learning go as fast as possible. In other words, they approach from an entirely positive direction, and they encourage, enable and enhance.
The goal isn't to be unrealistic about it; learning a language takes effort, and desire, and persistence. It isn't going to "just happen", or happen overnight. But the fact is, learning is a lot easier when you don't create artificial barriers to success, such as the instructor telling you, "Hey, this is/is going to be difficult. Get ready to suffer!"
I also think it might be good to combine our talents. My subliminal language learning programs would be very good paired with your language programs, which (as far as I can tell) are the best around.
Thanks for listening.