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Training The Brain – Stages Will Make Your Child Smarter

Hey, parents. Want to shoot a quick video here. I’ve been at our certification for about three days now. Seems like about a month of information just crammed in. We’re doing about 8 to 10 hour days. We just wrapped up for the afternoon. It is about, what, 5:00 on Saturday. We’ve kind of lost track of time. But I wanted to spend a couple of minutes talking to you about what is going to be coming up as this is pretty phenomenal, but it does take a lot to wrap your head around because it is future-oriented. The program is called Stages, and we are one of 30 programs in the entire United States that are going to be beta testing this and getting an idea of how well it works in our kids karate classes. It’s been used in multiple countries in Europe, and so now he’s looking to bring it to the United States. So, again, it’s kind of cool that we’re going to be one of just 30 programs or 30 schools that are going to be testing it and getting an idea of how it works.

And so, you’re going to hear us talking about Stages a lot as the name of the program. And the overview of what Stages is, is it’s a a training program for your brain, or what they’re calling a gym of the mind. And so, looking through my five pages of notes here as well as the 250 page manual that we got, wanted to just give you an overview of what to expect because this is going to become a partnership that’s going to be between you and I. I’m going to be presenting the program in different aspects of class and we’re going to be asking you to give us some feedback so that that way we can give it back to the Stages creators so that they can end up making the program even better.

So hopefully we’re going to be hearing lots of good things I’m sure. But at the same time, if there’s a hiccup, if it’s technological, if the delivery system isn’t working or if the message isn’t quite clear, that’s basically what they’re asking us to give feedback on. And so, what Stage’s training is, again, it’s a gym for the mind. It’s looking and teaching patterns to your child so that they can look for similarities and differences. Everything is broken down to a mathematical process. And then your child is able to transfer the knowledge from one thing to another. So what’s really exciting about this is your martial arts training is going to help your ninja learn how to play an instrument. And learning to play an instrument is going to help their martial arts. Doing both of those is going to help their history and their learning capacity at school. It’s going to help them with their chemistry.

So it’s really an interesting and challenging concept to get, but until you get it, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed, confused, or lost. So my mission is going to be spending the next six to eight weeks working on this and helping you understand it a little bit better.

So along with the appreciation and the pattern recognition, this is going to help their self esteem and their confidence. And it’s going to be able to build that because each of those games and the things that the kids do, they’re going to be successful at it. Anytime your ninja is successful, they feel better about themselves. Feeling better about yourself naturally enhances self esteem.

So, again, I’m going to be jumping through my notes here just to give you a very high level overview look so that you can understand what we’re going to be coming back with. I could easily spend about two hours and just throw all of this stuff at you, but it’s very geeky, very tech. And if you’re interested, let me know and I’ll be more than happy to share it with you.

By the year 2040, one billion people are going to lose their jobs. And so, again, 2040, about 20 years into the future, one billion people are not going to have a job anymore. And that’s a low estimate by the way. Where they’re talking about is this process is stemming from innovation and technology. And you’re already seeing it. When you go to McDonald’s or some of the fast food restaurants, you don’t have a cashier anymore, you have a kiosk. There are lawn mowers that will mow your lawn so you don’t have to have a service come do your lawn anymore. Now the newest one is there’s garbage cans that can take themselves to the curb and then once they’re emptied, bring themselves back.

You’re hearing about automated cars. So any type of delivery or driver service is going to be automated and you’re not going to need people to do that. So all of those industries, manufacturing is another one, assembly lines, all of that stuff is going to be completely eliminated by 2040 and possibly more.

So, what are these two billion people going to end up doing? Or one billion people I’m going to start with, and then we’re going to have another billion that aren’t quite ready to work yet. So, up to two billion people are going to need a job, and by helping your child and teaching your child these skills now, it’s going to teach them how to have a better brain, a stronger mind, so that they’re able to create innovation and basically start taking things and inventing new things and/or solving problems that we’re currently seeing with the new innovation. As we’ve learned, the more innovation there is, the more problems that start to develop. So therefore you want your ninja to be able to do that. And that’s exactly what this program is going to do.

One of the great things that I just saw today was the program teaches you to have an artist’s brain with an engineer’s mind. And for the longest time we’ve always been taught that you’re either artistic or analytical, you’re one or the other. And while that generally is going to be true, that you’re going to lean one way or the other, what this program does is it ties them together. If you’re artistic, it’s going to teach you how to see patterns so that you can be more of an engineer. And if you’re an engineer, it’s going to teach you how to be more artistic.

An example that came to my mind real quick was I’ve had several students with Asperger’s. And with Asperger’s, they don’t understand emotions the same way we do. They don’t process them the same way. So they don’t understand sarcasm, for example. So they have a tough time communicating with other people because, if somebody uses sarcasm or some other form, they’re not going to get it or understand it. So they always kind of stick out as the odd kid of the group.

With Stages, it actually teaches them the pattern for how to read somebody’s face. So they’re going to be able to understand the emotion without actually having to have it. They’re going to be able to look at their face, understand the pattern, and then say, “Oh, okay, they’re saying this, or they mean this,” which is really, really cool.

So, the last thing, basically what we want to do is there’s eight intelligences, and everybody has really fallen, again, either analytical or artistic. You’re either this or that. And what’s great about Stages is it actually ties all eight of these intelligences together so that your ninja is going to be able to jump from any one place to another and transfer the things that they’ve learned from one activity to another, which is going to speed learning up by 10, 20 times faster than what they could normally do.

So, real quick, you’ll probably identify your ninja in one of these. The first intelligence would be logical or mathematical. The second intelligence will be verbal or linguistic. The third one is interpersonal. Fourth one is body. They move around and communicate with their bodies best. Fifth one is musical. Sixth one is visual or spatial. Seventh one is intrapersonal. And then the last one is naturalistic. A person who understands nature. So a hunter or somebody who likes to be outdoors a lot, a chef, somebody that picks their ingredients to make food would be a naturalistic learner.

So now what’s going to happen is instead of being any one of these categories, your ninja is going to be able to be all eight. And they’re going to naturally have strengths. They’re going to lean towards, “I like this better than that.” So they’re going to be able to specialize in those.

So, last example for you today. I’ve always liked music. If you’ve noticed, there’s always music playing on in the karate school. It, to me, just adds to the energy and to the beat. But I’ve never been a musician. I took guitar lessons when I was young, but I’m lefthanded and so that made it awkward and I didn’t have a great teacher, so I wasn’t really able to excel at that. I’m interested in the piano. I learned how to play the keys a long time ago, but I could never, again, figure out the melodies and how the left hand works with the chords. So that fell by the wayside when I was in my 20s.

So, in the last 30 years, I have never touched an instrument. Today at Stages we were taught how to play over, what, 8,000 melodies in less than 10 minutes. So I am not a musician now, but I know how to play over, or I can figure out, how to play over 8,000 melodies on, we used a xylophone, so a xylophone or a piano or eventually, if you know the chords on a guitar, a violin, any instrument, I can now figure out how to play over 8,000 melodies because he taught us the pattern on how to do that.

One of the first things he taught us was there are 1,064 ways to draw a square. So, if you’re bored this weekend, give it a shot. See how many different ways you can figure out how to draw a square. And again, he asked us, he’s like, “How many ways do you think there are?” We were throwing guesses out like 15, 25. One person said 28 or 30. He says, “1,064.” And then he starts showing us the pattern of how to do that. And, once you know the pattern, it sticks in your brain. And so now, okay, I know 1,064 different ways to draw a square, how can I use that? Oh, I can put that in this pattern and do the same thing over here with this other activity.

So it’s really exciting, it’s incredibly deep, certainly very nerdy in my opinion. But that’s what I am. I’m a nerd. I’m always interested in learning more and better ways. Another great thing about this program is you’re going to learn how to use both hands. A lot of the students are going to become ambidextrous. We are doing drawings with our left hand and then with our right hand. And then intermixing and mixing up, and that’s how you start to build in those combinations.

So again, I could spend hours and hours trying to explain it to you, and certainly it’s going to be a fun journey. But we are going to need your help. Here’s your first assignment. Want to get an idea of who’s watching these videos and what you think about it. So if you like the idea, please make sure you hit thumbs up. If you really get it and you understand it and you really love the idea, hit that heart symbol. Right?

A lot of times it’s perfectly okay to be confused and say, “I don’t get it.” That’s what we did the first two days here at the seminar. We’re just like, “Okay, I hear what you’re saying but I don’t get it.” And now it’s starting to click and register because, guess what? Those 8,000 melodies that I learned, 8,000 martial arts combinations in 10 minutes. I can teach your ninja how to create over 8,000 martial arts combinations. And that’s where everything’s going to start tying in and you’re going to start seeing how it transfers over.

So, do me a favor, all right. Comment below if you have any questions. Again, this is just a general overview one, so I’m sure you have questions, but instead let’s do this. Let’s just mark that you watched this with a thumbs up or an all heart in. Let me know how interested you are in this. Or, hey, if you don’t get it or you’re not interested in this at all, don’t be afraid to put a thumbs down. We’re looking for honest feedback so that we can start collecting data and then we can start measuring results. And that’s exactly how we’re going to be able to do this.

So, look forward to this. I still have another full day all day tomorrow. And then I fly back first thing Monday morning to start teaching classes again Monday afternoon. Super excited. This certainly doesn’t feel like work. This has been a great time and a great experience of learning for me and I can’t wait to start sharing it with you. Have an awesome evening. Take care. I’m going to go read over my notes and start doing some different drawings and keep learning myself. Take care.