Instant Wisdom: 10 Easy Ways To Get Smart Fast

by Beth Burgess

This book will make you smarter, more capable and more creative, super-fast - whatever your IQ. Have you ever had a problem at home, work or in a relationship that you just couldn't figure out how to solve? Have you felt stuck and frustrated because you can't come up with a good solution? Maybe it's a problem that's been niggling at you for ages, draining your energy and making you unhappy. Or maybe it's an ambition or project which you can't seem to complete or achieve, no matter how hard you try – but it would make such a difference to your life if only you could. Have you wasted precious time or money on ineffective solutions? Has the issue caused you stress or hung a cloud over your life? Has your potential suffered because you can't see how to achieve your goals? How much better would your life be if you were able to overcome your obstacles super-fast? If you could have instant epiphanies rather than wasting your time spinning your wheels? Wouldn't you feel lighter and freer knowing that you can solve issues in a snap? Wouldn't life be easier and more enjoyable when you can simply eradicate problems and get on with your goals? Blending science, psychology and philosophy, INSTANT 10 Easy Ways to Get Smart Fast will teach you tools, tweaks and techniques that will make you smarter in mere minutes or seconds, boosting your creativity and expanding your mental horizons. The strategies include methods that geniuses and peak performers use to get amazing results. You will + Einstein's top tool to be ultra-inventive (you can do this in your sleep) + The “Alice in Wonderland” technique that helps you learn anything (it's fast and fun) + A way to boost your creativity that is so simple that kids can do it (it's literally child's play) + How to fool your brain into being super-focused (an actor used this trick to land millionaire-making roles) + An ancient technique that will make you much wiser (a famous philosopher's secret weapon) + How to become cleverer doing things you love (this surprising method leads to happiness and success) + The tactic top athletes use for ultimate performance (but you don't even have to leave your chair for this) + A delicious way to boost your logic (granny knows this trick, but I bet you don't) + The “Smart Stranger” method for achieving instant insight (this is a genius way of solving any problem) + How to get great minds to improve your intelligence (no bribes required) ... and much more. When you can boost your brainpower instantly, you will be able to solve personal problems much faster, become a better worker, save precious time on projects, and achieve your goals at lightning speed. Instant Wisdom contains personal stories, surprising studies and real examples. It contains a variety of exercises, so you can use the tools immediately. So, what are you waiting for? Do you really want to spend more time and energy stressing out over problems? Or do you want a whole set of easy tools that you can use to instantly be sharper in all areas of your life? Get INSTANT WISDOM now!

Genres: Nonfiction

179 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 4, 2018

About the author

Beth Burgess is an award-winning, bestselling author, therapist, coach, freelance writer, and founder of several specialist services.

ADDICTION AND MENTAL HEALTH: As an alcoholic in recovery, Beth specializes in writing about addiction recovery. Her recovery books include 'The Recovery Formula' and the award-winning 'The Happy Addict'. She also contributed two chapters to 'Addiction and Choice: Rethinking the relationship'.

Smyls was set up to empower people who have suffered setbacks to move on and find happiness. As someone who has recovered from addiction, social anxiety disorder, bulimia, self-harm and Borderline Personality Disorder, Beth has an empathy and insight that allows her to reach people in the darkest of places.

WISDOM AND EFFECTIVENESS: After making a complete mess of the first part of her life, Beth set out on a journey to gain insight, so she could become a wiser, better, happier person.

By exploring science, spirituality, philosophy, psychology, and sociology, Beth has been able to formulate new ways of thinking, develop her own insights, and transform her life.

Beth wanted to share the wisdom she has learned, so she set up Wiseism, a resource to help people use wisdom to improve their lives.

'Instant Wisdom' is the first book in 'the Wiseism Series'

OTHER:

On her professional journey as a therapist and her personal journey, too, Beth has learned cutting-edge ways to deal with all sorts of issues from beating stress and mood disorders, to increasing the chances of achieving success, happiness. and fulfillment.

Beth has written articles for The Huffington Post, Tiny Buddha, the Royal Society of the Arts, The Big Issue, New Statesman and various other publications. She regularly writes on topics such as addiction, mental health, and what it takes to live a healthy, happy life.

Beth has also published a mini ebook, 'What is Self Esteem?'

You can always see what Beth is up to at on her personal website or watch videos by Beth.

Reviews

[☘Misericordia☘ ⚡ϟ⚡⛈⚡☁ ❇️❤❣ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Q:
... curiosity hasn't killed any cats as far as I am aware.
 Curiosity has killed a few people... (c) Which just goes to show how superior to humankind cats are! Mrrrow!

I happen to be a sucker for all kinds of compendiums of self-improvement techniques. This one got me with these:
Q:
- Einstein's top tool to be ultra-inventive (you can do this in your sleep)
 - The 'Alice in Wonderland' technique that helps you learn anything (it's fast and fun) ...
 - The 'Smart Stranger' method for achieving instant insight (this is a genius way of solving any problem) (c)
Other takeaways: Plus reading aloud. Plus good music. Plus comedies and tragedies.

I loved the author's take on Socrates' Method. It's totally worth it even when it goes a long way to irritate the less transendentally-inclined people.

A fast and concise read, offering quite a bit of interesting ideas.
Q:
I got good enough college grades to get into Oxford or Cambridge. My teachers were stunned that I didn't want to apply. But I hated the atmosphere of over-privilege and the silly, archaic traditions, so I was set on a less hoity-toity university in London. (c)
Q:
So, if you have made assumptions, generalisations, or held rigid views about anyone, remember that people aren't sheets of paper. They have many dimensions. By clinging fast to one opinion, you may have missed other aspects to someone's character and overlooked different qualities that they possess. (c)
Q:
I felt much better about myself. I was more carefree. I lost my angry edge. I felt much more peaceful. And it was because I was now doing wiser, kinder things. (c)
Q:
Charan Ranganath, one of the authors of the study from the University of California at Davis, wondered how curiosity might have an impact on the memory and on learning.
 "In any given day, we encounter a barrage of new information," the psychologist said, "but even people with really good memory will remember only a small fraction of what happened two days ago."
 To research this, his team asked a group of volunteers to review over 100 random questions, such as “Who was President of the US when Uncle Sam first got a beard?” and “What does the term 'dinosaur' actually mean?” Participants then had to rate each question on how curious they were to know the actual answer.
 Using an MRI scanner, the researchers monitored the participants' brain activity while they were given the questions again – this time matched with an image of an unrelated, neutral face – and then, the answers.
 When it came to the questions that volunteers were most curious about, their dopamine circuits went into overdrive.
 Dopamine is a brain chemical that gives us a high and is released when we anticipate or receive rewards. It can motivate us to seek out things which are gratifying to the brain, such as friendship and food. And dopamine also causes cravings for more.
 It seems that curiosity is like a motivational loop, first giving us a thirst for knowledge, then a buzz when we learn more about things we are curious about. And when we discover more, we may even be driven to explore that area even further.
 When the researchers tested the volunteers on what they had learned later, people who had expressed a high level of curiosity about a question were more likely to remember the correct answer. (c)
Q:
The dopamine system and the hippocampal area interacted very strongly when curiosity was heightened, making it easy for the brain to learn new things – even if some of it was not of particular interest and was unrelated to things people were actually curious about. (c)
Q:
In a 2006 review, published by The Beckman Institute, researchers revealed that mice got smarter by simply  running on a wheel. (c)
Q:
More research on rats showed that, while the rodents created new neurons when experiencing something new, it was only when they had down-time that those neurons moved from the hippocampus into the rest of the brain, storing what they had learned in their long-term memory.
I'm wondering now how exactly rats kick back and chill. (c)
Q:
Children are naturally inlined to adventure, imagine, experiment, explore, and look at things from different angles. It's how they learn about the world. (c)
Q:
Psychologists at Stanford University split a bunch of schoolkids into two groups. One group was told that learning changes the brain and were given positive statements indicating that the students had the ability to improve their own intelligence.
 The second group were told that intelligence could not be changed, and no matter how hard they worked at a subject, if they just weren't good at it, they would never improve.
 Both groups took a test based on a seminar they had attended. The students who had been told that they could change their own intelligence scored 85 per cent on the test, compared to just 54 per cent for those who were taught that they couldn't influence their own innate intelligence levels. So, the power of belief really does matter when it comes to achieving better cognitive performance. (c)
Q:
In a 2012 study, researchers at Wisconsin-Madison University and Pennsylvania University turned a bunch of volunteers into 'super-searchers' simply by getting them to say the name of the item they were asked to look for out loud.
 Participants could locate objects more quickly when they repeated what they were seeking to themselves. Speaking the name out loud increased participants' speed at finding household items, and also familiar brands and groceries when completing a virtual shop. (c)
Q:
It is not success that leads to happiness. You can still be miserable and depressed even if, from the outside, you seem to have it all. It is happiness that leads to success, which is what very few people realise. When you are happier, you are smarter and perform better – it's as simple as that. (c)
Q:
The UK Sleep Research Council recommends having a cup of coffee before a nap. As caffeine takes about 20 minutes to kick in, the coffee should wake you from your nap and help you feel even more alert at just the right time. (c)

Disclaimer: I was offered this book for free in exchange for an honest review.

[Glen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A books that tells of various ways to sharpen your mental acuity. Nothing too far off the beaten path. Mostly common sense, really.

Still, sometimes you need to be reminded.

[Jo-Ann Duff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beth Burgess contacted me on email to pitch her book for review. I get sooooo many pitches every week and most books get a polite knock-back, or the pitches are so poor and sometimes rudely demanding they don't even get a response. But Instant Wisdom: 10 Easy Ways To Get Smart Fast really stood out for me, well rather Beth's engaging, friendly, yet no-nonsense tone did! So, I accepted the book for review and it is the best self-help book I've read since Gary John Bishop wrote Unf*ck Yourself. Yeah, I know, big call right?

Why Is Instant Wisdom so bloomin' good?

I'll tell you. Beth writes about what's real and there are solid, tangible, practical tips within this book to give you not only the edge in personal and work situations, but a little bit of mindfulness and stillness too which resonated with me greatly as an overthinker and worrier.  What comes across in Instant Wisdom, is that it's ok to be a pain in the arse sometimes, as long as you recognise it and give it a red hot go next time round to handle things a little bit better. The more you put these tools into practice, the smarter your brain gets!

Beth's style of writing really worked for me and I really enjoyed chapters such as Shifty Eyes, Sportacus and Boss Your Brain Around which are all speckled with humour, making serious issues such as anxiety a little more palatable and easier to digest and read about.

Thank you, Beth. Reading Instant Wisdom made me feel a little less weird and a little more in control

[Al · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just glanced at the dictionary for a definition of wisdom and what I found talks about three things. Smarts, the stuff you know comes first. Experience, what I’d call the stuff you’ve learned from doing. Last is good judgement, which might be looked at as having a good sense of how to combine the first two in coming to a conclusion on how to proceed when faced with the need for a decision.

Instant Wisdom addresses all three pieces of this to some degree, outlining different techniques or approaches to help improve your decision-making skills to become more wise. One statement near the start of the book jumped out at me when the author talked about how “acknowledging your own ignorance can pave the way to greater wisdom.” Those who think they know it all have been shown to vastly overestimate their knowledge. (Research the “Dunning-Krueger Effect if you’re interested in details.) Those who take the author’s advice and assume they don’t know as much as they’d like to are more likely to not only actually know more when decision time comes, but also are more likely to do adequate research in coming to a decision and increase their knowledge in the process.

Do the author’s ideas work? I suspect this will vary from person to person, but I’m going to vote yes. Some of the ideas are things I’d already discovered and use, so those definitely work for me. The others seem logically sound, it’s just a matter of putting them into practice.

**Originally written for "Books and Pals" book blog. May have received a free review copy. **

[Scherry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This quote opens the book and is really the guiding message throughout Burgess’ writing. A message that demonstrates how being more intentional with your thinking and directing one’s energy towards your New Year’s resolutions and goals.

Opening the book for the first time, I was not prepared for the immense feeling of familiarity that came with reading it. One of the things I enjoyed the most about her writing is that Burgess does not purport to be superior in any way by being the author of this self-help book. Rather, the familiarity of her writing brings her closer to her readers.

Often, I felt as if I were sharing a coffee with a friend as we talk about issues in our lives and how we intend to better ourselves. These are conversations I have had frequently throughout my life with friends, so to have it in a book form to reference whenever I want has been such a pleasure.

Full review at: https://avidbards.com/2018/12/26/new-...

[Bob Rich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imagine there is this nice lady chatting with you. She is telling you about tricks and techniques that enabled her to transform a life wrecked by anxiety and addictions into one of inner power and contentment. She then recounts a years’ long illness that should have had her plummet back into despair -- but the strength and peace have lasted. And here she is, sharing her tools with you. That’s what you get in this book.
Those tricks and techniques are those of positive psychology. She gives research backing for them, but still in that chatty, easy-to-read style. I know they work, because very similar techniques have worked for me personally, and because, like Beth, I have taught them to hundreds of my clients.
No two people agree 100%. My only point of disagreement with Beth is that she explains in terms of what “the brain” does. This is nowadays a popular way of talking about emotions, feelings and behaviour, but one that mildly annoys me, as I explain here: http://mudsmith.net/bobbing12-6.html#...
It is unlikely that the target audience for Instant Wisdom shares my prejudices, so... so what.
In this book, Beth’s aim is to teach you how to make better, more intelligent decisions, to solve problems with more power and ease, to grow intellectually. An accidental byproduct is that you can use her book to also grow emotionally and even spiritually.

[J.B. Richards · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overview: Based on Author Beth Burgess’ own life experiences and lessons, “Instant Wisdom”, gives readers positive and proven steps they can take to live their best lives possible through wisdom, humor, self-reflection, and application.

Through a blend of academics, science, history, and behavior modification, Burgess encourages positive self-change and constructive thinking to replace stale old habits through this innovative and introspective how-to guide. By employing several sets of clearly defined steps, and providing examples of how others have learned from their successes and failures, the author demonstrates how critical thinking and behavior modification can change one’s overall mindset in setting and achieving their life goals.

Burgess describes her own triumphs and tribulations in order to form a more intimate connection with her readers, thereby leading them to improve their own lives via knowledge, inspiration, and motivation. Formulating a plan for success is a goal many try to comprehend, but few fail to achieve. Thus, it speaks volumes that, time and again, Burgess hits the mark through her keen observations and amusing interpretations in demonstrating how failure can be turned into success. And while the manner in which she examines what went wrong in her examples may have you rolling in your seat with laughter, her competent analyses of these situations explain how the employment of a few simple fixes can ultimately result in future success.

“Instant Wisdom” is an apt name for this how-to guide. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in performing a clear self-examination with the intent of setting positive goals and changing their lives for the better.