Natalie: Hi, I’m Natalie Ledwell and this is the Inspiration Show. Today on the show we’re going to be talking how you are way more intelligent than you think and may be how the schooling system may have put some programs or sub-limiting beliefs in your mind of how intelligent you really are. A bit of an interesting subject today, so help me to welcome my guest Renee Mollan Masters. How are you Renee?

Renee: Good, very well. Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

N: This is going to be a great subject today. So, why don’t we start first of all with your background and with your story and how you got into doing this awesome work?

R: Okay. Well, for me school was a schizophrenic experience and what I mean by that is one minute it was easy for me, and one minute I didn’t do very well. When I was in second grade my very best friend got moved to third grade because they said she was smarter than the rest of us. And then when we were in college, on freshman year, we took a botany class together and it was taught experientally, and so, I got the A and she got the C. It just blew my brain, how in the world did that happen? And then finally, I got a masters in (1:25) mythology and then I read Dr. (1:29) Gardner’s work on the fact that all brains are different and brains need things that are different in order to learn. And as I was reading his work, it was like all the answers, all the questions that I have had during school just got answered. And I began using this process to help students and to help nursing students nationally, and it just took off, it was like everybody was saying, “oh, my gosh! Why didn’t somebody tell me this one when I was in school.” And so, here I am.

N: And what’s interesting, so what you’re saying is that we are all on a certain level of intelligence but we only learn in a different way and as long as we can identify where that is for us, then we can be as intelligent as anybody else?

R: Absolutely. You see in school there’s only two types of learning styles that is honored, that’s linguistic and logical. So if you don’t happen to be intelligent in those areas, you feel like you’re a stranger in a strange land. And you end up with this little voice inside, which I had, that said, ah, you’re not as smart as you think you are, and you function at a lower level. You achieve less than you should because you don’t believe in yourself. Believe it or not brains are more different than fingerprints, now just think about that. Brains are more different than fingerprints and in school we think that everybody should get into a mold or just to work that way. What happens is that two-thirds of us feel like we’re left out. And it’s not fair, it’s discrimination.

N: Yeah, it’s interesting because you know we pick up a lot of our programming and our beliefs about ourselves when we’re younger. So when there’s an incident or experience that we have where we go, oh, we’re not very good with life, I actually stop myself from saying I’m not very good at math because the more I say it, the more I perpetuate that. So, how many different learning styles are there? Or how many different ways can we learn?

R: Well, I like to think about them as brain talents and Harold Gardner came up with seven. He has 9 but I only use the 7 basic ones because they’re the easiest to apply. And then also, we all process language differently, and some like to hear it, some like to read it, and some like to read and hear it at the same time. If you’re in an education system, knowing this, knowing where your preference is, is really important. But Gardner’s 7 different areas, the first is linguistic, which are people who really like words. Logical, they need sequential presentation of information. Spatial, they need to simplified linguistically but pictures and colors and maps really makes sense to them. Body kinesthetic, they like the movement. They like the music part, the rhythm. They may not play an instrument but they still have this music band. Talented and knowing self, these people as little kids really had a good sense about I know what I want to eat, I know what I want to do. They just have the sense about themselves and they’re experiential learners. And the last one is Talented and Knowing Others. These are the actors. As children they could tell whether somebody was safe or not safe and they were the mediators of arguments a lot. So, that was something that we can tell whether we are good of that talent. But what I bring to the table that is different is that once you know your brain talent, you can take any situation where information is coming at you, even if it doesn’t line up with your talent you can train and transform it so that it works for your brain. So in a sense, it empowers you to be intelligent no matter what and for students sometimes they think they can only learn when they have a good teacher, well this changes the game completely.

N: Because it’s interesting that because what I’m thinking is we have these 7 different styles of learning, as a teacher how do you teach the 7 styles and what are you’re doing is empowering the student of how they can take a specific piece of information and then change it so that they learn it the best way they’re learning.

R: Exactly and I think that, you brought up a good point. I think the reason this hasn’t really taken off in school learning style, hasn’t taken off in schools is that teachers don’t know how to use it. They’ve tried teaching to the different styles and they know that it doesn’t work. This is a total different way of doing it and it truly is a (7:16) of power in the student, which is, they are the ones doing the learning. They should be empowered, in my opinion.

N: I know, exactly. So what you’re saying is it doesn’t matter whether they’re in primary school or high school or college or wherever they are, once they know to basically decipher the information the way that they learn that they can, it doesn’t matter where they are or what they’re learning, which is very cool. So, tell me of some of the people that you’ve worked with like somebody, can you give me an example of how someone has been able to change something into the style that they use for learning.

R: Okay, let me tell you of a success story first. There was a student who had to learn anatomy and physiology stuff which is a lot of information. She was musical and she was body kinesthetic. So she put all the stuff that she had to learn on a tape, and then what she did is she listened to that information while she played the piano. So she was doing musical and body kinesthetic. One time through, she had her mom test her. She knew the information cold, she went to the test and she passed the test. A week later she still knew the information and anatomy and physiology is very detailed information. So she learned it, she didn’t memorize it. Now, as far as changing a learning situation what happens is, if you change a learning situation what happens in how to do this is, let’s say I’m a logical learner and I like sequential – first this, then this, then this and then this – and let’s say you have a teacher who is linguistic and what linguistic teachers do is they go to the main heading and then they go off on (9:19) and tell stories, and what happens to the logical learner is they get lost because it’s not sequential. So what we have them do is we can have them get several pieces of paper and put the major headings of where the lecture is going to go that day on these several pieces of paper, and when the teacher starts talking about a heading, they start taking their notes and when the teacher goes across on a tangent, they don’t panic because they know eventually they’ll come back and when they talk about another heading, they find that piece of paper where that heading is and they start taking notes again. So when they’re finished, they have all the entire lecture outlined and organized in a sequential manner.

N: The other interesting thing you brought up is that you can be a combination of different styles of learning as well?

R: Exactly. We are not one note. We have many notes and we have many talents. And when you take the two self-evaluations, which is in my book and my online training, you only focus on your strengths. You don’t worry about your weakness. Your weaknesses are there, so what? Focus on your strengths. You can hit a homerun when you focus on your strengths.

N: Yes, when you talked about the different styles, I was like, “Oh my god! I definitely have to have the sequential thing.” So if I’m in a seminar, then someone starts to tell a story, they’re trying to prove the point that they’re trying to make, I get completely lost and like, wait a minute, what’s going on? Because I need to have the (gestures) like that. But I am also partly I think musical, because I always joke about how one of my (11:10) is that I only have to hear a song may be once or twice and I already know the lyrics and I just pick up with things and music as well, which is really interesting. So if I was to learn something with audio while I’m listening to music, it’s probably like our mind movies where you have your affirmations and your photos but you combine music with it, it helps you to retain that information (11:34). Would that be right?

R: Yeah, for you, but that wouldn’t work for everybody. And obviously, you have a very musical mind and you can readily take that to the bank and make all kinds of jingles and make up your own song and do all kinds of crazy things and that stuff will just be flying, and the ones that you need to remember you will never forget and you probably wouldn’t forget, I would imagine.

N: It blows my mind, like I think you of a song I haven’t heard in 25 years and still remember the lyrics, how does that work? (overlaps with guest)

R: See, it’s perfect! It’s a perfect example. It’s your long-term memory and so what’s really exciting is that when something goes into long-term memory it associates with everything else you know about that subject matter, and a chemical reaction happens. So it literally changes the way you think and you can begin to come up with new and innovative ideas and think outside the box. So it’s fabulous. It’s really the new way and what’s happened in schools, not just in the United States, it’s all over the world, we have abandoned our love of learning. And what we embrace in school is memorizing. And if you go to my website there’s a blog that talks about the difference between learning and memorizing. The difference is huge and the impact on our young people is huge. We need to start asking our kids, do you know how to learn?

N: Awesome. On that note Renee, if people want to find out about your cause or your book or anything that you have, where can we send them? Where is your website?

R: Okay, my website is www.youarsmarterthanyouthink.com and you go to that website, there’s two free downloads, one is mistakes parents don’t want to make when sending their children to college and the other is living your life without knowing your brain talent is disaster. And so those are two free downloads, check out the videos. You can see a trailer of my online training. You can read chapters of the book. You can order everything there. You can contact me. Yeah, it’s full of information.

N: Awesome, awesome. Well, thanks Renee. I knew that today’s show was going to be very interesting and you definitely shared some amazing information that I’ve even learned myself now, which is awesome. So thanks again for joining me.

R: Great. Thank you for having me. It was fun.

N: Thanks, Renee. Now guys I encourage you to share this video, get the word out there. You can do that by clicking the Facebook and the Twitter share buttons on this page. Also download the app if you haven’t done so already, so you can watch the shows on the go. And make sure that you leave your email address on the box found on this page so I could send you the manifesting with the masters video e-course. It is actually valued at $87 and I would love to send it to you for free. Until next time remember to live large, choose courageously and love without limits. We’ll see you soon.