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hello
my name is gary lorrison and welcome to my site. for the past 20 years or so, i’ve been running courses and seminars and written extensively on ways of helping people perform more effectively across a whole range of different life skills. i have worked with students, academics, businessmen as well as people who are simply interested in getting more out of life. my goal is to help you become the best, most effective version of yourself. so that you can get the most out of your life. and also make the biggest contribution to other people. we live in scary times. and i firmly believe that the best hope for mankind and the best hope for you is to literally make people better - if we could all make better decisions, if we could all behave more intelligently, if we could take the right steps to ensure our long-term wellbeing if we could eliminate or reduce the stupid things that we do, that would be better for all of us both both individually and collectively. so by taking steps to become the best version of yourself, you will not only be giving yourself the chance of living the richest, most fulfilled life that you can, you will also be making a contribution to making the world a better place. if you are here watching this video it might be because you are interested in one or other aspect of personal development. you might be interested in improving your memory, reading more quickly, thinking more creatively, you might be interested in getting fitter, or sleeping better or achieving more balance in your life. i am going to encourage you to explore all of these aspects. because if you really want to get the most out of life there are a number of different areas you should consider focusing on. and ultimately they all impact on each other. they create a positive feedback loop so that benefits in one area will help you in another area. and while each area might only make a limited difference (incidentally that depends on you and how much work you put in), by adding them all up, they could ultimately make a huge difference to the quality and quantity of your life. so i’m very quickly going to run through some of the areas that i run courses on. and i hope you’ll see that each will help with the others. firstly i am going to look at ways of helping you learn more effectively. this will help you to acquire new skills quickly and easily, to remember new things, it will help you to perform more effectively and be more intellectually flexible. it will help you to become an expert on any area that you want to. to be confident in any such area. first off all we’ll look at improving your memory. my memory course uses the techniques used by memory champions, techniques that can be learned by anyone and that work in sync with how your brain naturally works. I will show you how to learn and remember new facts and new skills much more easily than you do now. we'll also look at steps you can take to help you combat forgetting and deal with absent mindedness. when you are done you will know how to remember facts, skills, and procedures, as well as your life history much more effectively than you do now. and you'll be familiar with the steps you can take to ensure that you can retain what you learn in the long term. we’ll also look at techniques you can use to read more quickly. any learning you do is likely to have some aspect of reading to it. and if you can read more quickly and know how to get through written material more quickly and effectively that will make a big difference to you. you will save time while focusing on what is important and eliminating what is unnecessary. we’ll look at speed reading techniques (incidentally be wary of a lot you see on the internet here about snake oil?/ done later) that can increase your reading speed from the average of about 300wpm to maybe 1000wpm if you practice.. we’ll also look at better techniques for reading non-fiction books - that is text books, technical books, reports and so on. afterwards you'll be able to get through the same amount of material in much less time and have the confidence to know that you have focused on what is actually important to you. Again all of the techniques we look at here work in sync with how your brain naturally works. Finally, in this area of learning and absorbing information we’ll also look at mind maps - these are ways of taking notes that will greatly increase your ability to record information more effectively. they will help you to remember and retain what you note as well as helping you to think creatively as well as making it easy to use what you have noted for any new work that you might wish to do. you will be able to easily see all the information you need on one page so you'll be able to easily see how everything relates logically to related information which will aid your understanding of the material. Using mind maps helps you to record information in a way that maximises your brain activity and involvement and the more active your brain, is the better. so that's learning, but we'll also look at thinking but in addition we'll look at ways of helping you think more effectively. there’s no point in having loads of information at your fingertips if you still make poor decisions as a result of poor thinking. so we’ll look at ways of boosting your analytical thinking skills. we'll look at ways to avoid mistakes in thinking, fallacies and cognitive biases - mistakes that we can all fall prey to and which can lead us into error. we’ll also look at ways of helping you to think more creatively. Despite what you might think it isn’t the case that some of us are creative and some of us aren’t there are specific techniques that you can use to think more creatively. and learning to do things in a new way - to innovate - is an essential part of your progress towards being a better version of yourself.. and it is definitely a skill you should have in your intellectual armoury. we'll also look at strategic thinking. strategic thinking is about looking at the big picture. your big goals, you big plans. but it’s also about planning and taking all other factors into account. if you can become an expert strategic thinker. you will be able to plan. achieve your goals. you will learn to consider what other factors might have an impact on you and have a plan for the unexpected so hopefully you'll never find yourself in a situation where you are at a loss as to what to do. so that is the intellectual side of things but if you really want to be the best version of yourself it is important that you have an awareness and also learn to master the psychological factors that will affect your outcomes in life. so we’ll take a look at peak performance psychology. whatever you do, whether you are the most active person, or a couch potato, you are achieving results in life. you want to ensure those results gel with what you actually want out of life. we will learn what results you want and develop techniques that will give you the best chance of achieving them. we’ll look at the factors that can influence your goals in life, the values you believe in, what motivates you to act and how you can use this knowledge to get the most out of your life. to be committed. to be energised. an important aspect of this is communication. any time you interact with another person, whether face to face or online or over the phone you’ll get some kind of result out of that interaction. we’ll look at how you can use what we know about communication skills to ensure that you get the most our of any interaction to help you to achieve your goals whatever they might be: and that might range from getting a business deal to simply making a new friend. as you develop and learn new skills you’ll inevitably come across situations where you meet someone who is good at something and you would like to acquire some of their ability. we’ll look at how you can learn most effectively from such people such that you can learn a skill that they have. this could be any skill from playing the piano to changing a care tyre. and i’m not saying here that you won’t need to practise. and depending on the skill it may still take a long time. but learning our approach will help you master new skills in a more effective way. if you have ever done any yoga, meditation or mindfulness training, you will no doubt be aware that your state of mind can have a profound impact on you. this is backed up by science. we know for example, that brainwaves come in different frequencies and that these frequencies are associated with different brain states and also we know that different brain states affect your emotions, your behaviour, what you focus on and ultimately your outcomes - so if you can learn to control these different brain states you can take control of your mind and you will see different and better outcomes in your life. we also know that great memorisers for example use more - and different - areas of their brain than the average person. so it makes sense to find ways of using different areas of the brain with the ultitmate aim of using as much of your brain as you possibly can. I'm not going to repeat the fallacy that we only use 10 per cent of our brain. That's rubbish. We use it all, all the time. But it does have different areas of activation at different times. And if you can find ways of activating these different areas, then you will notice the benefit. . we’ll look at this together. we’ll spend some time on mindfulness and meditative training to help you cultivate the powerful states of mind that will make you more effective. more focused and achieve better concentration, so when you are working for example, you can get more done, more quickly and effectively thereby saving yourself time we’ll also look at ways of stimulating - quite naturally - different areas of your brain with the aim of improving cortical function. getting your brain to run at its best. all of this can be enhanced by doing whatever you can to get into the best physical shape you can. how can you do this? well i’m going to focus on three areas. firstly, if you give it a moments consideration, you'll realise that every cell in your body is made up of something that you have eaten in the past, so your nutrition is vital in determining your physical and mental state and your levels of performance. this means that if you interested in peak performance, having a real understanding of good nutrition. what to eat. when to eat. how much to eat as well as what to avoid is vital. not only will it ensure your long-term health but it will ensure that in the short-term you feel fully of energy as you go through each day. Also we'll look at sleep and rest. If you wish to perform at your best, you should also ensure you are properly rested. good sleep and rest are vital to ensure that our brains and bodies can repair themselves - both after illness and injury but also just as a result of the vagaries of each and every day of life. so having a knowledge of getting the most out of how to sleep and how to rest effectively will help you. finally - we’ll look at physical fitness. i am not a fitness trainer. if you want one of those go to the gym. find one. if that’s for you. but what we a’re going to look at is various different aspects of physical fitness. which ones you might want to concentrate on, those that are compatible with your aims in life. for some of you that might be a very high level of physical fitness. for others maybe not. instead maybe a base level of physical fitness that you can maintain as you go throughout your life. we'll also talk about those aspects of fitness that can be easily overlooked. There are a number of aspects to good physical fitness and you should at least have a knowledge of all of them and so understanding of what you can do to maintain and develop each area. we will look at how you can do that in a way that is best for you. so this is a lot to cover which is why i run a number of different seminars spread out over time. each seminar will cover the essentials of that subject, there will be a number of exercises during the seminar and we'll look at things you can do afterwards to practice and to develop new habits so that you can incorporate what you learn into you life and make it part of your life. In addition you can always get in touch if you have any questions or feedback as a result of a particular seminar. [Also if you need help or feedback i'm happy to offer that on an ongoing basis. Just be aware that I work alone so I may not get back to you immediately. Just so you know. But I will get back to you. - maybe put this in the talk?] if you’d like to find out more, i run a free introductory session every other week where I will go through these areas in more detail. What i will try to do in each of these is give some information that you will find useful and an exercise or two that you can use even if you decide what i'm offering is not for you. But obviously I hope you won't decide that. if you would like to sign up to an introductory class click on the link below. or if you’d like to jump straight in take a look at the classes below. = = = = = = now just a short word about money. i'm keeping the cost of these classes as low as I can compatible with making them financially viable. You should know that there are a lot of snake oil salesmen in the area of personal development because it attracts people who want to change their life. so if you see, for example courses at a huge price that are discounted but only if you sign up within the next 30 minutes I would advise you to be very wary. Similarly if you're tempted to watch a long informercial that promises you some free "secret" information but only after you've watched hour after hour of sales pitches. You'll find these all over the internet and most of them won't tell you anything that you can't find out by googling the information that you want. But some of us are desperate for a silver bullet that will make everything perfect. Well I'm sorry but there isn't one. If you want to change you can but it will take time and effort - as most worthwhile things do. Most of the information you need is already out there on the internet. And that applies to me too. You can probably find everything that I'm going to tell you out there for free if you're prepared to put in the time. The thing is i've already done that and hopefully I've also found a way of presenting the information in a way that will actually help you to make changes in your life.. So each seminar is £50 (that's around fifty euros or fifty dollars give or take). I aim to keep the seminar sizes small (no more than 10 people per seminar) so that you don't get lost in a huge class. If you like what I'm doing and you do want to save some money you can sign up for all fifteen for the discounted price of £500 (or £450 after one paid seminar). Booking them all individually would cost you £750 in total. Now for the time being I plan to do the seminars in a very specific order. Starting with a memory and then working our way through in the order you'll see below. This may change over time so do check your emails. Finally a little bit about me. I have academic background in law, philosophy and general science. So I try to take an analytical approach to this area of personal development. That means so far as is possible I follow the science or the logic of what I'm trying to convey to its natural conclusion. I don't invoke any spiritual, supernatural or pseudo-scientific beliefs. There are no secrets that if only you believe enough or pay enough money that you will gain magical access to. Everything you will learn is I hope open, obvious, logical, replicable and I hope simple to understand. That doesn't mean I don't make mistakes. None of us know everything and we are all fallible even as we strive not to be. And also knowledge changes over time. So what knew or thought we knew yesterday may not necessarily be true today.. But I will do my best to ensure that what I tell you is true. But if I tell you something that is wrong, I'm always happy to be corrected. But irrespective of that I have no doubt that you will get something out of these seminars and if you put in the work you will notice massive benefits. Thank you. |
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