The ancient Chinese, as usual, were right. A picture is worth ten thousand words. More than that, a picture is better than just words because a picture is multidimensional. Each picture contains levels of data and meaning simultaneously expressed in a single gesture.

In fact, if you think in pictures, you will be able to process information better, more quickly, more accurately, and with greater understanding. When you think in pictures, you are able to see relationships among elements of a structure more easily. This gives you an enhanced ability to comprehend complexity effortlessly.

And this is why one of the techniques we teach in all of our structural thinking courses is visual thinking. If you are "picturing," you can reach penetrating clarity, an ability that increases your chances of understanding the dynamics in play in reality. Then you can make effective adjustments in your creative process. There's an old phrase that goes, "Picturing makes you smarter." It's true.

Now, if you're like a lot of people, you're thinking, "I can't visualize." But all of us can learn to be more visually literate. We have grown up in a society that promotes the verbal over the visual. However, most of us have become visually literate by watching films, TV, and working at a computer screen.

Visually, we have it easy. But in the old days of radio drama, the family would stare at the big radio speaker in the living room. And when The Shadow or Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar or Jack Benny or Bob Hope were on the air, the family created pictures in their minds as vivid and clear as if they were watching HDTV. Have we become less visual as our technology has become more visual?

I began to think in pictures when I was a music student at Boston Conservatory. Somehow, I got the idea I could be a better composer if I had a visual language. So, I began to practice forming pictures as my teachers lectured. I found I could follow them better. I pictured what I read and what I heard. I began to picture what my friends were saying, and I found my communication with them got better.

Over the years, as I developed and then began to teach structural dynamics, the visual component took a centerpiece in the learning process. In our courses, we teach people how to have a "little film crew" in their heads, so while others are talking, they are making a movie of what they are saying.

A number of years ago, Rosalind and I led an FST (Fundamentals of Structural Thinking) in Trinidad for over a hundred people who were members of the credit union movement there. Many of these people were loan officers who were giving people a start in life by financing new businesses, homes, and so on. On the second day of the course, a lady gave a report about how she was using what she was learning so far. "When I got home," she said, "My nineteen year-old son said he was going out. 'Where are you going?' I asked. He told me, and I pictured what he said. I asked him a question about what he said, and he answered. I pictured the answer, and asked another question. He answered. I pictured it. And then he said, 'Mom, is this what you're learning in that class?' 'Yes,' I told him. 'Well, keep it up!'"

Listening is made easier when you picture what the person has said. And there's nothing more satisfying than having a conversation in which the other people know you have heard and understood what they have been trying to communicate.

When I write, I picture, and then I find words to describe the pictures I am envisioning. I don't know how others do it, but this is how I do it. If I don't have a picture in mind, I can't put it into words, I can't write.

A few years ago John Mulligan, one of our friends and structural consultants, told us about Nanci Bell. Nanci and her colleague, Pat Lindamood, are pioneer educators who, over the past twenty years, have developed an approach to learning that teaches students with learning problems the technique of visual thinking. The results are astonishing.

Lindamood-Bell, the educational organization that promotes a visual thinking methodology, first asks their students to practice turning single words into pictures. The student hears and sees the word chair, for example, and then must picture a chair. In the next stage the student pictures phrases, later whole sentences, and later still, whole paragraphs.

The student is learning how to translate words into pictures, and then, pictures into words. The translation between the visual and the verbal produces something powerful: increased comprehension. The students better understand what's being said and written. Verbal directions become clearer to them. They begin to understand what they are learning and, even more importantly, the point of what they are learning. The process of learning moves from anguish to love and then to thirst. The child is transformed and enriched.

My daughter Eve had a learning problem. When she was in elementary school, she had trouble learning how to read. She hid that well because she had an almost photographic memory. If she would hear something once, she could remember it word for word. Then, looking at the text as if she were reading, she would render a perfect performance. Many of her teachers were fooled.

Once, when Rosalind and I were leading a course in California, we ran into a woman whose child had a similar problem to Eve's. She told us about an optometrist who specialized in certain eye disorders that produced the type of symptoms Eve had. There are only a few optometrists in the country who specialize in this field.

You know how sometimes all the right elements are in place at the right time in just the right way? Well this was one of those. Call it a miracle. We do. We happened to run into a mother whose child had a similar condition. Eve happened to be with us on this trip, the optometrist's office happened to be within a few miles of the conference center we were using, the doctor, who was booked up months in advance, happened to have a cancellation. So, while I led the course, Rosalind took Eve off for two days of intensive tests. The result: one of Eve's eyes wasn't synchronized with the other. Eve couldn't read because she couldn't see the words. They jumped back and forth in her mind as her eyes fought it out to see which would be dominant.

Flash forward a few years, and now Eve is in her early teens. She can read, thanks to years of eye exercises she did for hours after school with a special tutor. But, the homework is getting tougher and Eve is staying up doing it until one and two and three in the morning. In our best parental voices we say, "Eve, go to bed." "But I've got to finish my homework." "Go to bed anyway." "But..."

We have conferences at school. We find out that the homework is not especially hard for the other kids. What's going on?

It's about that time that we find out about Nanci Bell and her work. So, the next summer Eve studies for two intense weeks at a Lindamood-Bell Center near Boston. She begins to learn how to picture the words she is reading and her comprehension improves dramatically. She goes the next summer, and she improves even more. Because of this training, Eve becomes able to keep up with her homework and go to bed at a reasonable hour, something that would have been impossible in the past.

Now, she is a senior in a very demanding private school, and she is doing honors work in all of her classes. (3.4) She still works hard, because that's the kind of girl she is. When her brother was in school, Ivan (who is naturally visual) was the type of kid who could sleep through class, not do his homework, not read the text, and still ace the test. Eve's not that way. And, speaking as a loving father, but being objective to a degree, Eve's got tremendous drive to learn and she's got tremendous strength of character. I admire her greatly, because it hasn't been easy for her, and yet, she has some self-generated inner drive that enables her to push well beyond her limitations. This past summer, Eve did another two weeks of training at a Lindamood-Bell Center, and, again, the progress has been remarkable. This year, Eve was invited to join advance placement in English, and she is doing very well indeed. This would have been impossible without visual training.

Eve's ambition is to be an actress. This fall she auditioned for The American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and was accepted. (This was the school luminaries such as Danny DeVito, Grace Kelly, Robert Redford, Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall learned their craft.)

Last week, Eve got a letter from a college in New York that accepted her, offering a merit scholarship. Their letter said:

"I am extremely pleased to announce that you have been selected to receive the College's most prestigious Board of Trustees Scholarship...(this) scholarship is awarded to a highly select group of students on the basis of academic performance."

Rosalind and I picture, and that's why we get each other's jokes. Picturing is a natural part of our life together. Picturing gave Eve a better platform in life from which to pursue her dreams. We know how the ability to think in pictures adds to one's life. We've seen that time and again in the people who come to our courses, both in their professional and personal lives.

Finally, there are studies being conducted now in which the researchers are teaching dyslexics to think in pictures. The early returns show that a change happens in the brain when they picture. Areas of the brain that do not "fire" (get blood) before learning how to picture begin to "fire." Evidently, the change is physiological as well as mental.

So, no matter what your starting point, learn how to picture. Develop a visual language. (And by the way, even blind people visualize and develop their own type of visual language.) A picture is worth ten thousand words, and, as we have seen over and over, is well beyond words.

Copyright © Robert Fritz, 2003

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