Hi,
I can sympathize with you, I spent about 7 months, 3 years ago learning and trying to improve, my ability to photoread, with no luck. I spent time image streaming and went through all of the exercises in Einstein Factor, no luck. I did the Photo reading home study course with the mind mapping from the book on mind mapping by Tony Buzan himself, over and over and over again, no luck. I listened to Memory Supercharger and Personal Genius, once every day, no luck. I took the Silva Method, at the end of the 7 months and was only able to use it to relax myself mentally and physically.
Then about 3 and a half months ago, out of the blue, I thought, what the heck, I`ll give it another try. I followed the same routine as before, Image Streaming, Photoreading, Memory Supercharger, and Personal Genius, but this time added one different thing. I broke down what I believed my beliefs, values, rules, emotions, states, references, memories, vocabulary, etc... had to be in order to succeed at photoreading. I also listed what I thought was holding me back, and referenced it to what I believed would help. Using some NLP techniques I did my best to change the negatives to positives.
In the beginning, I did the dictionary exercise withh 10 words, and matched 4. Not bad. The first time years ago, it was 0! And I kept going with the program I had set up, spending about 30 minutes every day evaluating my states, beliefs, etc... during the session. I noticed one thing, I wanted to succeed so much, that I wasn`t really entering the states I needed, to actually succeed. So I took a week off, from the program, and just played around with everything. I did it just for fun, and 4 weeks ago, I began seeing real results. Books I was photoreading for fun, were being activated.
I then thought that I would test myself in a chess tournament against various profiles on my computer. I went to the library and photoread every chess book they had, and activated. I also read several books on chess psychology. I did this for 3 weeks, not playing a single game on a board but trying to work the games out in my head. Now, for reference in my teens, I was rated 1716, which is pretty good. I set up the computer to play a variety of styles including the strongest possible profile. The average rating of the opponents was 2323 according to the computer but discounting them by 300 due to the possibility that they may be inflated, I won 4 out of 8 games, and drew 1, resulting in a rating of 2373. This done over 4 days using tournament time controls. Adjusting, this comes to 2073. A master rating! This isn`t the interesting part though, I went over the games using the Chessmaster`s analysis tool, and had played the openings and endgames almost flawlessly, with some strategic and tactical errors, in the games that I lost(and the games I won). I`m going to test myself next week by playing in a tournament against live chessplayers next month. If the rating sticks, well then ... I can apply this experience as a benchmark to any other that I wish to succeed in.
My point through my longwinded explanation is that maybe you need a break from all the self-help, and just enjoy life. Come back to the program the way a child would, full of wonder,and enjoying the process without really expecting an outcome. In the end there is always an outcome, we just need to get out of it`s way and let it happen.
"In a direct contest of the will and the imagination, the imagination invariably wins."
Good luck. And I hope that something in the novel I`ve written here helps.
LM
