How to Train Yourself to Learn Faster

Rob Dial (0:08)

Welcome to today's episode of The Mindset Mentor Podcast. I am your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you want to finish this year strong, join my free three-day challenge, October 27th to 29th, live with me. Here's why, because most people check out around this time of year, they look at their goals that they've set, they see how far away they are, and then tell themselves that they'll start over again in January. Don't do that. There's still enough time for you to make real progress this year, you just have to use it. Over these three days, I'm going to teach you how to deprogram and reprogram your identity, how to start taking real action, and also how to start changing your brain to the new you. You're going to get a 60-day roadmap for the rest of 2026 and a workbook so you know exactly what you need to focus on next. To join for free, go to finish2026strong.com.

Once again, finish2026strong.com, and I'll see you live on the challenge. Today, I'm going to teach you how to learn anything so fast that it almost feels unfair from what you've been doing in the past, because what if the reason why you struggle to learn isn't lack of time or intelligence or focus, but the way that you've actually been taught to learn? Because here's the truth. Most people are stuck in outdated school methods and ignore how the brain actually wires knowledge neurologically inside of your head. And then meanwhile, there's people like elite performers and memory champions and special ops units that are using psychological and neurological tricks that make learning faster and deeper and nearly permanent in your brain. And the best part about all of that is that you can use them too. So this isn't about just like reading faster or cramming harder. Really what it's about is about understanding your brain and understanding how to flip a switch in your brain that makes learning your superpower instead of your downfall. And so let's dive into it. The first thing that you need to really understand is that you have to actually dismantle the thought that learning is just about input. Like when I was in school, I thought it's like reading and watching and listening and writing it down and being like, okay, I've got to memorize this. And so there's a difference between memorizing something and mastering something. Usually when you memorize something for like a test, it's gone right after the test. I'm talking about how do you get something so encoded into your brain that you remember it years from now. And so real learning is knowing how your brain learns and holds information in it, and then how to do it in a way that makes learning sticky. And so the first thing that we really need to dive into is to understand that your brain learns what you believe it's supposed to learn, which sounds weird. But there was a study done at Stanford in 2007 that showed that the beliefs about intelligence change how people's brains light up during mistakes. And so people who had a growth mindset, which are people that believe they can improve, like they're like, I know I can improve. I know I can get better, had what's called longer neural engagement after errors, which means they literally stayed more present longer through discomfort, which made their learning even deeper versus people who have what's called a fixed mindset, which is like, oh, I can't really get better. This is just how I am. I'm gonna try to force this information into my brain. Those people actually disconnected after mistakes, which means that they disengaged instead of staying engaged like the people who have growth mindsets. And so you have to understand that making mistakes actually triggers a neurochemical cocktail of acetylcholine and norepinephrine. And those heighten your focus, they heighten your engagement, and they heighten your neuroplasticity, which is the actual changing and rewiring of your brain. And so making mistakes actually makes your brain more ready to learn. And so if you think about this in layman's terms, when you mess up, your brain focuses more.

And most people who have a fixed mindset shut down, you need to go, okay, hold on, my brain is about to get focused, so I don't need to shut down, I need to push forward a little bit more. If you stay focused and keep pushing through after you mess up, after some sort of mistake, instead of shutting down, you can actually learn faster and more deeply than if you had actually gotten it right the first time you did this. And so instead of thinking to yourself like, oh, I'm bad at languages, I'm not really a great learner, you need to actually believe like, I know I'm going to learn this language. And if I get pissed off because I'm making mistakes, my frustration means that my brain is more engaged. I need to push through. And now your brain goes, ah, mistakes are a good thing. Let's keep going. So that's the first thing you need to understand. The second thing that you need to understand is that you can use what's called state dependent learning so that you can actually prime your brain to learn like they do in special operations.