How to learn & study more effectively

Hello, my name is Emma, and in today's video, I am going to teach you about an approach

that will help you become a better learner.

It doesn't matter what you're learning.

Maybe it's English.

Maybe it's learning how to drive or maybe it's learning how to be a better conversationalist.

Whatever you're learning, this approach can help you, because this approach is used for

all types of learning.

So, what is this approach called?

Well, I call it the "BLESS ME" approach.

I will explain in this video how you can learn better with the BLESS ME approach.

I will teach you about seven different factors to think about when you learn anything.

These factors really influence and impact your learning.

So, you really want to think about these different factors to become the best learner you can

be.

Now, before we get started on what is BLESS ME and what are these seven factors, I just

wanted to thank James Fricton, who taught me this approach in his application of this

to medicine.

I'm taking this approach and using it for learning, but James Fricton is the one who

created this approach for medicine, okay?

So, thank you, James Fricton.

Now, let's get started.

How can we use BLESS ME when we're learning?

So, BLESS ME is a way to remember seven factors.

The B in BLESS ME stands for body.

It's important to think about your body when you're learning anything, because the brain

is a part of your body, and by thinking about your body, you can really increase your ability

to learn.

You need to think about lifestyle.

Lifestyle has a huge impact on learning and whether or not you're going to be successful

in remembering different pieces of information.

It's going to help you with studying and a whole lot more.

Think about your environment.

What's around you when you're learning?

We'll go into a little bit more detail on how the environment will impact your learning.

You can also think about society.

That's going to impact your learning.

Your spirit, and I'll talk a little bit about how that impacts learning and what I mean

by spirit in a moment.

The M in BLESS ME stands for mind.

And finally, the E stands for emotion.

So, BLESS ME is just - so, all of these equal BLESS ME.

It's an acronym that can help you remember these different factors and how they impact

your learning.

So, I'm going to go over each of these factors and tell you specifically how they can improve

your learning if you think about them.

Alright, so let's first talk about body and how your body impacts your learning.

So, the first thing you need to think about is in your body is your brain.

And so, when you take care of your body, you're also taking care of your brain.

So, this is why it's important, because your brain is where you learn.

So, what's important for learning?

First thing is exercise.

Exercise seems to be important for everything, and it's very important for learning.

Because when you exercise, you actually can create new neurons or brain cells.

So, exercise can help with your memory, so it can increase your memory and what you can

retain.

And also, when you exercise, you get more blood going towards the brain, which allows

nourishment for the brain.

So, exercise helps you learn better and faster.

So, when I say exercise, what do I mean?

It can be as simple as going for a walk or a jog, as long as you are, you know, not walking

too slowly.

There's a lot of different ways you can exercise.

The main thing is, by being active, you're going to help your learning.

Posture.

What do I mean by posture?

Posture is the way we hold our bodies, okay?

So, maybe, you know people who have really bad posture.

They're the kinds of people who might be like this at their computers.

What you want when you learn is good posture.

Why?

Well, posture actually can help you to stay more alert.

So, if you are sitting upright while you're learning and, you know, you're aware of your

posture, you can actually become more alert and remember more.

It's easy to see this if you look in any classroom and you see the students who are lying down

on their desk, their head on their arm, and they have terrible posture.

They're probably not paying attention that well.

But when you have somebody sit upright, it tells the body to become more alert.

So, posture is key.

It can also help your confidence.

So, when you have good posture, you might be more confident and feel better about yourself

as well, which can also help your learning.

Alright, so after body, the next part of BLESS ME is lifestyle.

So, how do you live your life - can really impact your ability to learn.

I'll give you a couple of examples here.

What you eat is a part of your lifestyle.

Are you the type of person that eats a whole bunch of sugar and potato chips and then falls

asleep on the couch?

Or are you the kind of person who tries to eat healthy?

Well, not - I don't think this is a big surprise for you, but healthy eating really helps with

memory and it helps with learning, okay?

The reason is food is the fuel or the gas of the brain.

Your brain needs a lot of different nutrients in order to work and do its best.

So, food is really important to learning.

Here, I've written "healthy foods and a balanced meal", making sure you get your proteins,

your fats as well as your carbohydrates, can really help you learn better.

And if you are like, "What's a protein?

What's a carbohydrate?"

I think it's really good to learn about nutrition.

Because, by understanding nutrition, you can help yourself learn better.

So, healthy foods, balanced meals, equals a happy brain.

Okay, my next point is sleep.

In lifestyle, we're also talking about sleep.

Do you get enough sleep?

Do you get four hours of sleep, or do you get eight hours of sleep?

Well, ideally, to help your brain learn and be its best, you need about eight hours of

sleep.

So, try whenever you're studying, whenever you need to learn something new, make sure

you get enough sleep those nights.

Because it's when you're asleep, that your brain is doing a lot of work to remember everything

you've learned during the day.

So, sleep is important.

The other thing I want to say about sleep is it's always a good idea to try to learn

when you're at your best.

So, some people, maybe they're at their best at 11:00am.

So, that's a good time to learn maybe harder material.

Maybe other people, they might be at their best at 7:00pm.

So, that's when they might learn things that are hard for them.

So, my point is know yourself, know your best times, and try to study when you're not tired

and when you're the most energetic.

So, know your cycle, know what's best for you during the day and when is the best time

for you to study.

The other thing I just wanted to add was, in terms of lifestyle - thirsty.

It's important, when you're learning, to be well hydrated and to drink lots of water.

That's going to help the blood flow in you, and it will help you with learning as well.

So, make sure you stay hydrated.

Now, let's look at some of the other factors in BLESS ME.

Okay, so a lot of people, when they're learning, are really surprised to find out how big of

an impact the environment you learn in has on your learning.

So, what I'm trying to say is this: the environment is important to think about when you're learning.

So, let's think about the environment for a moment.

When I'm talking about the environment, I'm not talking about the forests and the jungle

and the oceans.

I'm talking about the environment around you.

That might be your classroom, it might be your bedroom, it might be the library.

The place where you learn is what I'm talking about.

So, it's important when you're learning to have a quiet environment with not a lot of

distractions.

If you're the type of person that gets a lot of messages on your phone and you hear the

beep or the bell a lot, or the ringing, I mean.

That can be very distracting and it interrupts your learning.

When you learn, you need focus, because your brain then doesn't have to waste time on thinking

about other things.

It's really important, when you're learning, to be in a quiet, focused environment.

One of the best tips I ever got when I was learning how to study properly was don't study

in your bedroom, especially not in your bed.

Because if you study in your bed, you're more likely to get sleepy, and that can be really

hard for learning.

So, find a place.

It might be in your house, it might be at the library, but have a good place to study.

And make sure that there's enough lighting so you don't have to work so hard when you're

learning and reading things.

One thing that can be really helpful when you're learning is to have what you're learning

in the environment.

So, I'll give you an example.

In my classrooms, I always like to have a lot of English on the walls.

Why is that?

Well, sometimes students might be tired and they might not be listening to the teacher,

so they start to notice what's around them in the room.

And then they might read a poster in English, or they might read something, and they might

think about it.

So, a lot of the times, what is in your environment is actually helping you to learn without you

realizing it.

So, you know, you can do this at home or in your study space.

You can write English words that you're trying to memorize on the walls.

You can write things you need to remember.

Maybe it's pronouns, maybe it's different expressions.

But having what you're learning on the wall can be very helpful.

And here, I've put learning without thinking.

Okay, so environment is very important.

Think about where you learn and think about how can you improve it, so your brain can

work at its - your brain can do its job at its best.

Okay, the next part of BLESS ME stands for society or social life.

So, when we're talking about the S in BLESS ME, we're talking about who can you practice

your learning with.

So, if you're learning English, for example, do you have somebody you can practice with?

That might be a classmate.

Maybe it's somebody you met at a bar who speaks English.

Who can you practice with?

And that goes for any learning.

It's important to choose people who are not going to distract you.

So, you might know somebody who knows English and can speak it really well, but if all they

want to do is party and they procrastinate all the time, it's probably better to find

somebody who is more serious and who is really focused on what you're learning.

Another key of having good support or knowing somebody you can practice with is it gives

you a great advantage when it comes to getting tips.

You can learn a lot by talking to people about how they learn.

When you meet somebody and you're in a class, you can ask them, "How do you study this?

What are your methods?" and you'd be surprised.

A lot of people have really good ideas on how to learn.

And so, the more people you meet, you can find this information out.

Maybe they have a good website they use that you can - they can recommend to you.

But the key is, by talking to people who are learning the same thing, you share information

and you can actually learn how to become more effective and efficient in your learning.

And again, they can be supportive.

When you're learning something, it's always good to have a cheerleader, or somebody who

says, "You can do it!"

Especially when you have a bad day, you're tired.

Maybe you didn't do well on a test.

You always want somebody who will encourage you and tell you, "Don't give up, you'll get

this."

That's really important in learning.

So now, let's look at the last part of BLESS ME, which is the S, the M, and the E.

Okay.

The next part of BLESS ME is an S, which stands for spirit.

So, what do I mean by spirit?

Well, for some people, spirit can refer to something to do with their religion.

For other people, it just means just how they see the world and the meaning they get from

it.

So, it might be religious or maybe not.

Depends on the person.

When we talk about spirit, we're talking about what is our purpose in life.

What is our life meaning?

What are we motivated by?

Usually with spirit, we're talking about the big why questions.

So, when you learn something, it's good to think about why are you learning this.

How does it fit in in with the big picture?

Maybe if you're learning English or a language, for example, maybe you have motivation because

you want a better life in another country.

Or maybe you want to learn more about the world and English is a great way to do that,

because a lot of things are written in English.

So, it's always good to ask why are you learning something, and to think about how does it

fit in with your life goals.

The more motivation you have, the more likely you will be to learn something.

When we're talking about spirit, we also talk about resilience.

So, this word has become very popular: resilience.

When we talk about resilience, what we're talking about is how does somebody handle

bad things happening to them?

How do they cope?

What do you do when something goes wrong?

Are you the kind of person who gives up and says, "Oh, okay, that went horrible, I quit."

Or, are you the kind of person who finds your strength and is able to achieve success, despite

things going wrong?

So, that's what we mean by resilience.

What do you do when things go bad?

People who are resilient are able to bounce back when things go badly in their life.

They're able to continue, and they don't give up.

So, this is a question you can ask yourself.

When something you're learning gets hard - so maybe you're learning - for me, it was math.

When I had to study math in university, I had a hard time.

And so, for me, that's when I really needed my resilience.

When my classes got really hard, what did I do?

And so that's a question for you to think about and reflect.

What do you do when things get hard?

So, spirit was the S. Now, we also have M in BLESS ME, and the M stands for mental or

mind.

You can use either mental or mind.

And what do we mean by mental or mind?

Well, we're talking about your thoughts.

How you think really impacts your ability to learn.

So, for this, a very important question to ask yourself when you're learning anything

is it's important to ask yourself how you learn best.

What tricks work for you?

How do you study?

These types of questions are really important because sometimes you'll find that the way

you're learning actually is not the best way, and there's an easier way which will let you

be more successful.

So, reflect on why you do what you do.

Why do you study where you study?

Why do you write your notes the way you write your notes?

Why do you do your homework the way you do it?

Okay?

It's really important to think about these things, because once you realize what you

do, you can think about ways to improve it.

So, with mental, part of this is also problem solving.

Sometimes, we're trying to learn, but maybe things aren't perfect, okay?

Maybe I want to learn in a quiet spot, but I can't because, you know, I have a brother

who loves to play loud music and so every time I'm trying to study, I just hear music

playing.

So, by problem solving, maybe I can think of a better way to learn.

Maybe it might be buying headphones to drown out the noise.

So, this is what we mean by mental, problem solving.

How do you fix problems with your learning?

So now, let's get to the last part of BLESS ME, and that is the final E.

Okay, so the last part of BLESS ME is the E, which stands for emotion.

It's important when you're learning something new to ask yourself, "How do you feel?"

When we learn something new, it's often frustrating, okay.

Sometimes we can feel bad or like, we're stupid because we don't understand everything right

away.

And learning takes time.

So, emotion is really important to the learning process.

I'll give you an example.

Research shows that when you're feeling a lot of stress, your ability to learn actually

goes down.

So, if you think about, you know, if you're trying to learn before a test, you probably

have a lot of stress.

And so maybe you're not going to learn as much as if you're learning in a really nice,

calm, stress free environment.

So, emotions matter when it comes to learning.

So, what can you do?

Okay, if you have stress or you're feeling really bad, one of the main things I think

is learning good stress management techniques.

Because if you learn how to manage your stress, your learning can increase.

So, for example, this might be having - knowing what to do when you're feeling bad.

For some people, that might be doing yoga or meditation.

For others, it might be as simple as listening to music or going for a walk.

But knowing what to do when you feel bad is important, because by addressing how you're

feeling, you can increase your learning.

And this also goes for when you're feeling good.

When you're feeling happy or you're having fun, you actually learn a lot more.

You can even think about this with school.

When you think back to classes you had, you probably really remember the fun ones.

And so, when you're learning, it's important to make it fun and a positive experience.

For some people when they're learning English, a great idea is to use music to learn English.

And the reason is because when you're listening to music, you're often having fun and you

can actually learn a lot, because you're not feeling as stressed as maybe if you're just

reading a grammar book.

So, taking into account your emotion is very important.

Similarly, sometimes when people feel a lot of stress, they procrastinate.

What do I mean by procrastinate?

Well, it's when you don't do what you need to do because you're feeling too stressed

about it.

So, when some people procrastinate, instead of doing their homework, maybe they watch

a movie instead.

Again, by learning stress management techniques, you can address this.

So, you've learned about BLESS ME today, and the main point I want to make about BLESS

ME is what it does is it helps you to think about your learning, which is important, and

to find the best ways to learn better by thinking about how you learn and what's best for your

brain.

So, thank you for watching.

I hope you've enjoyed this video.

I would like to invite you to check out our website at www.engvid.com . There, you can

actually find a quiz where I go over BLESS ME and ask questions about it.

That way, you can practice what you've learned.

I'd also like you to check out my channel and subscribe.

Just remember to ring the bell.

I have a whole bunch of different resources there on a whole bunch of different topics.

So, check it out.

And if you're looking for free resources and you're learning English or just learning how

to learn, I also invite you to check out my website at www.teacheremma.com . There, you

can find a lot of materials as well.

So, thank you for watching, and until next time, take care.