Russell Van Brocklen: Dyslexia as an Advantage and the Shift That Changed Everything

Welcome to the Internal Shift Show. I'm Debbie

Longo, Transformational Coach. This show explores

how the way we think, decide, and respond internally

influences where we end up over time. Today's

conversation draws on real experience and expertise

to look at how small internal shifts can change

direction, momentum, and outcomes. I'm joined

today by our special guest, Russell Van Brocklin.

Good afternoon, Russell. Welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. Thank you for being here.

I'm going to ask you to tell your story and point

out a life change experience or traumatic experience

or something like that where you went through

a change, your process, and how you got through

it. how you came out the other side. And the

results of that should always be positive. Now

I do this show for a few different reasons. Everybody

has their own individual story, but there are

other people's stories that people can relate

to. There are parts of other people's stories

that people can relate to. So maybe somebody

is feeling stuck. Maybe they think that their

situation that they're in is normal. Maybe they

think that they want to get out of it, but they

don't know how. So it's kind of like a motivation

education type of podcast. And just to let people

know that really there is no negative situation

because anything that's negative can always be

turned into a positive. And we call that perception.

because it's really how I view it. So if I don't

think it's negative and it's a space that I want

to stay in and I'm interested in staying in that

sick and suffering and being miserable all day

long, then that is my choice. But I'm here and

the stories are here and all the episodes I have

available to listen to, to show that nobody has

to stay in their own negative situation, whatever

that may be. because if you pick one of our podcasts,

it's most likely something like that. There's

something in there that you can relate to, that

the listener can relate to. So if you would do

that for me, I would appreciate it. Thank you.

So for me, the most interesting part of my story

into what I do is this is the last thing I was

ever supposed to do in my life. put me on this

pathway was I did this rather absurd thing at

the end of college in the late 90s. I wanted

to know how laws were made, not some class I

wanted to know. So I signed up for the New York

State Assembly internship program. And people

say, well, what's weird about that? When you

do it, is that the end of your college career?

Well, I showed up and I said, here's my neuropsychological

evaluation. I have a first grade reading and

writing level. which means I couldn't do the

internship as designed because back then you

had the elected official, the chief of staff

who was probably an intern a year or two before,

and then the intern. I was supposed to write

down, take phone calls, write down messages,

write up policy memos, file things, all which

I couldn't do. So the director went up to the

speaker's office and kind of like, we don't know

what to do with this kid. And the speaker's office

said, you're not getting rid of him because he's

dyslectic. Figure it out. So they got a committee

together of their senior people and they did

a radical solution. They literally pulled me

out of the legislative office building and moved

me over to the Capitol and put me in the majority

leaders program, the council's office. And when

I walked in, I immediately knew why they did

it. They had three administrative assistants

that could help with my horrendous writing so

I can turn in memos each week. But they had absolutely

no idea what to do with an undergrad. So they

treated me like a graduate student. which was

a real staff position. So I had by far the most

responsibilities of anybody in my undergrad class

for that internship. For the academic portion,

I gave a major Q &A session that took hours instead

of the big paper. And at the end, they recommended

15 credits of A minus. Now that goes back to

the State University of New York's political

science department, and they reviewed the accommodations

the New York State government itself came up

with, which were tremendous. And they said, we

don't like these accommodations, so we're going

to lower your grade. From an A minus for 15 credits,

guess what they lowered it to? They flunked me,

15 credits of F. And at that point, just remember

where I came from. I spent nights and weekends

working at the majority leaders program in council's

office. the people that ran that place day to

day. I was offered all of these great positions

because of that experience. I turned it down

and I went to my professors and I said, enough

is enough. I'm done with the discrimination.

Where can I go in grad school to force myself

to learn to read and write so I can help other

dyslectics? And they said, well, if you like

political science, it's easy, law school. So

with a first grade reading and writing ability,

I went and audited two law classes. Well, I forced

myself to learn to read a little bit. I got through

some cases and contracts my second day I was

called on. And what they do in law school is

they use the Socratic method. If you don't know

the answer, which nobody does the first week,

they will keep asking you questions you can't

answer to embarrass you publicly until you eventually

adapt. That didn't happen to me. I didn't respond

as a student to the professor. I responded as

his equal. He was the law professor for 30 years,

longer than I was alive at the time. He's asking

me questions I'm answering as his equal. He's

trying different ways to fool me. I know exactly

where he's going, moves ahead. He's know exactly

where I'm going, moves ahead. Goes on for 15

minutes. Finally throws up his arm and said,

Russell, you couldn't be any more correct. I

have to move on to the next case in the interest

of time. That kind of shocked my classmates because

they can't even after they graduated law school

pass the bar They said they still couldn't do

that then I go on to property we start getting

these quizzes about a month in You're supposed

to think after each reading each prompt for three

to five minutes to figure out how they're trying

to fool you of an answer I didn't wait three

to five seconds I answered immediately and I

kept getting the highest grades in the class

and I'm sitting there twiddling my thumbs because

I'm the fastest one done I learned to read within

a month after this. I learned to write within

a couple of years. Then I went back to the New

York State Senate and I said, I solved dyslexia.

I want you to fund my dyslexia research project,

which they don't do. So they sent me over to

the New York State Education Department. Now

remember, I'm under the direction of the majority

leader of the state Senate. Back then, it was

three men in the room, the governor, the speaker.

And they sent a majority leader. So they can't

just get rid of me. They said, well, where's

this from? I said, Buffalo. They said, well,

we want a New York State, the SUNY distinguished

professor in psychology to evaluate this and

to approve this. So I go out to Western New York

and I found out that there's two distinguished

professors. One just happened to be the one that

gave me the evaluation that started this. She

agreed. New York State paid for 20 hours of testing

over three days of the smartest woman I've ever

met. In the end, she wrote up a five page report

and what she said was, I have a base reading

writing ability of a first grader. Once I turn

my system on, we use the graduate records exam,

analytical writing assessments, the measurement

instrument. I'm scoring at about the 70th percentile

of every grad students. I'm moving from a part

of my brain that does not work to a part that

does. And then she wrote up five pages explaining

all this. So I go back to the education department

and they looked at that, they go, okay, they

weren't expecting to see me again. Then they

said, oh, here's another way to get rid of this

kid. You have to connect it to current research.

There was only one professor that made any sorts

of sense. His name was Dr. James Collins. He

wrote a book called strategies for struggling

writers with three default writing strategies

of copying visualization narrative. And it was

supposed to take me years to get his approval.

I did in under two weeks. He's starting to notice

how I do really good in grad school. So he put

down a plus excellent. Within six months, I got

fifteen thousand dollars from the university.

I went back to my old high school, Averill Park,

Central School District, right outside of Albany,

New York, our state capital. And I wanted to

work with students who are like me, highly motivated,

highly intelligent. First student they gave me

was Michaela. Michaela was reading and writing

at the eighth grade level as a junior in high

school. We gave her the GRE writing assessment,

zero percentile. About five months later, she

retook it about the 50th percentile. The next

student they gave me was Adam. His writing was

even worse. He ended up at the 70th percentile.

At that point, Averill Park went to the Senate

and said, we want this. We tried it for a couple

years, we want it in class. They funded me for

a couple of years. And I took the teacher instead

of two years to learn my process. She learned

in about four hours, modified it to teach her

teaching style and who she likes to work with.

We focused just on these super motivated, intelligent

kids. And they went from starting off at the

middle school level to one class period for the

school year. They were reading and writing at

the average of entering graduate students. They

all went out of college. They all graduated GPAs

of 2 .5 to 3 .6. We were compared to the best

to selected college at the time landmark, which

was a transfer college. We were three X as successful

for less than 1 % of the cost, cost New York

City taxpayers less than $900. I thought I was

done, but then I went and I presented this with

Avril Park Central School District at the New

York City branch of the International Dyslexia

Association in 2006. The professors came to me

and said, you had two students who were writing.

at the 70th percentile of entering grad students

who started off the middle school level. We don't

care. We want the craft of research. It's like

the craft of what? It's a book that came out

in 1995, has since sold over a million copies,

and it teaches students, PhD students, how to

write their doctoral dissertations. Context,

getting everybody on the same page, a unique

problem statement, a unique solution. The teacher

said, this is fantastic. Doesn't work for normal

kids. And I said, no. And they said, come back

when it does. I came back with a solution eight

years later for both. So that's how I got started.

That was very good. Thank you. I appreciate that.

So let's go all the way back. When did you discover

that you had dyslexia? How did you be able? How

were you able to cope with that and live with

that when you were actually living with it? Oh,

well, there was no coping with it. There was

no living with it. I was tossed into special

ed in third grade. And it sucked, then it kept

sucking. I remember when I was in fifth grade,

there was a pilgrims project. I had two relatives

on the Mayflower. One was the religious leader,

one was the biggest male content. And I couldn't

participate because I was in special ed. So finally,

at the end of seventh grade, I had a school board

member across the street. I said, you gotta get

me out at least for history. He said, I can do

this once and that's it. So they pushed me out

for history. I start getting hundreds on every

test I ever took. Every test, every quiz I hadn't

studied. I was the top history student. Then

in high school, I forced my way out of everything.

And how did I adapt? One of the more funny stories

was we have a New Year's Day called a regents

exam. If you pass the regents, you pass everything.

It takes three years of preparation in Spanish.

to take the Spanish regions. And I kept taking

the Spanish test and passing it with a 66 through

a 68 every time. But that's including getting

a zero on the speaking part. And they could not

figure out how I was doing this because I took

classes. I took my test in special ed room where

everybody's watching me. You can't cheat. So.

I finally told them what I did. I said, if you

look at the answer that has the most words that

is in the question, that's 80 % of the time.

That's how I was doing it. I found out later

when I took the GRE analytical section, I was

in the top 1%. So they wouldn't let me take the

regions. I got through that and I just kept going

when they said, don't go. I just kept going.

Yeah, that was good. So that was really to me,

that was really the beginning of it. And then

you described all this, how you your process,

right? How you got into it. But what was your

feeling in between the time that we were just

speaking about, right? When you were in school

and then when you fast in between the time of

that. and then all the way to, I don't know how

many years this is, but all the way to what you

were talking about right at the beginning of

this podcast when you went to the Senate and

you passed the bar and all this stuff. No, no,

no. I never passed the bar. I never officially

went to law school. I just audited for years

and years and years. I couldn't get past the

legal research and writing, but I could do the

actual classes really well. OK, so what was your

thinking and feeling between that time as far

as the dyslexia and how is that a part of your

process? Well, it just I always kept getting

asked to do the next most impossible thing. So,

again, looking back, what I did for less than

nine hundred dollars for the New York state taxpayer,

we took these super motivated, intelligent kids

and we trained them so they could go and do well

in college. and graduate with no help, okay,

for under 900 bucks. And then I'm asked to do

the impossible yet again. How do I work with

normal kids? Figure that one out. That took another

eight years. Then I was told literally, how do

we get parents to train parents to do this where

they can do it at 10 to 15 minute sections? And

I literally doing that, we ended up being four

times more quicker to getting a solution than

the private dyslexic schools. in a couple 15

-minute sessions a week, and they got the kid

all day. So it's just been one impossible ask

after the next one, and I keep doing it. So what

was your feeling about the dyslexia? How did

you get through that? How was your process during

those times? It was an endless amount of frustration.

And the only time it has stopped is relatively

recently with the advances in artificial intelligence,

where it's literally like I have an administrative

assistant. I spend 250 bucks a month on artificial

intelligence over three models each month. And

I'm getting more work done in a day than I used

to do in a year. And that's not an exaggeration.

Yep. I know exactly that, uh, that story. So

that was good. And now if you could explain your

process between, I don't know how long this was,

but are you still doing the teaching and the

auditing and everything that we just talked about?

Yeah. So just see, this is not that complicated.

This is the top book in my field on dyslexia.

It's from Dr. Sally Shay was from Yale. That's

dyslexia. Now, do you see how the back part of

my brain has next to no neuroactivity? The back

part of yours is going crazy, but the front part

of my brain is two and a half times overactive?

Well, according to Yale, the front part of the

brain deals with ward analysis followed by reticulation.

So I use that, but in an intervention period,

what we do is we first focus on the kid's speciality.

So let me give you a very quick example of the

most successful kid I ever worked with. Her name

was Casey. Casey was 10 years old, fifth grade

reading, writing at the second grade level. She

was interested in Theodore Roosevelt, so I signed

her this book, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt,

all 900 pages of it. She insisted on doing reading

first, so it's a very simple process, which I

showed her. She went to her room, closed the

door for three hours a night for six months,

most of the days during Sunday. At the end of

that, you could flip to some random page, point

to a random word, and she would literally tell

you the dictionary definition. She jumped eight

grade levels in six months, and I worked with

her for 15 minutes a week. What happened is that

I went to a book she hated, and she said when

she went from books she liked to what she hated,

her motivation dropped by 50 percent. Most kids

are down 75 to 90 percent. So during the intervention

period, you have to focus on the kids' speciality,

their area of extreme interest and ability. Secondly,

if you ask any dyslectic or ADD or ADHD, when

you're thinking about your speciality, do you

have ideas flying around your head at light speed

but with little to no organization? They're going

to say yes. So what we have to do is to force

the brain to organize itself by using writing

as a measurable output. We don't ask a big picture

question and then go to the details, which schools

normally do. We ask something very specific and

then we slowly go out from there. And then we

do word analysis followed by articulation. And

that's the model. And it's incredibly effective.

Yeah, that was good. Thank you. So sometimes

when things happen, sometimes things are genetic.

or I'm just born that way, you know, and sometimes

there's no explanation or it's a learning disability

or whatever the situation is. A lot of times,

like, and I work with a lot of people like this,

they feel that it's a problem, it's a hindrance,

it's a negative thing. They're going to have

to live with it. It's going to affect them. They're

not like normal people. But there are positives.

to everything, to every disability, every traumatic

experience, everything. And what you are describing

is something that you've accomplished and, you

know, a lot of things, which is a very, very

good thing. And not only that, and it seems like

you're very proud, you know, of all these things

that happen, but not only that, you explain that

you can take dyslexia and you can really excel,

regardless whether you have dyslexia or not.

Now you used it to help these people with the

testing, developing new ways and everything,

which is really good. But the point is that I

can use anything to my benefit. I can create

things, I can make things, I could do things

that I normally might not be able to do if I

had a disability or anything. Now... I can sit

in the negative and I could say, this thing is

a problem for me. And I can't, I just can't live

with it. And that's all. I'm just never gonna

make anything out of my life. And then I would

just sit in a room and do the minimum thing that

I do, that I need to do every day. Just pass

school or something like that. But your story

is a story of courage and strength because you're

explaining how you really, really turned this

into a positive, because you didn't have to do

this. You could have said, I have dyslexia, and

it's not gonna work out for me, and you didn't

have to do anything, okay? You could have done

that, and then that would have been it. That

probably would have been it. That probably would

have been your life. But now you've done things

to help people and change the world. Not only

change yourself, right? But you changed and influenced

a lot of people. And you just described this

to us in detail when I think that's a great,

great, great thing. So in closing, I would like

to ask you, how do you feel now? How do you feel

right this second, right this minute, based on

everything we just said on this podcast, your

story and your process? How do you feel? Well,

I feel great because I'm making progress. Just

so people know what out in the real world, what

an unfair advantage is. We've met on Pod Match.

I'm the number one guest for the third month

out of the last seven on Pod Match. I was in

the top six of the other parts. Since May, this

is my two hundred and twenty first podcast. I

have one hundred and ninety one positive reviews.

All right. If I wasn't dyslexic, this would never

have happened in college. All those papers that

you wrote in high school, all those papers you

wrote, I wrote none of them. I gave hours long

presentations with hard Q &A and then I was able

to figure out because I'm dyslexic, how to stay

on the leaderboard when everybody else doesn't

last more than two months because they run through

their natural referrals. I had like three referrals

from PodMatch in the last... six months, yet

I have 81 more podcasts scheduled because I can

take what I've learned and apply it to a lot

of different areas. So in the real world and

in graduate school, dyslexia is not a hindrance.

It is an extraordinarily unfair advantage. Yes.

But for you, it's not. Oh, for grad school? Absolutely.

When I finished up with Dr. Collins. It didn't

work out that way. No, in grad school. What I

did is I just skipped over everything. I finished

up with Dr. Collins in under two weeks. In law

school, I learned to read and write. Yes, I could

never function to read and write as fast enough

as the profession required, but that wasn't my

purpose. My purpose was to find a solution I

could teach other dyslectics. Very good. Excellent.

I really love it. And I think that's a great

way to close. So as we close this conversation

as a reminder. that progress really comes from

one big decision, but from the internal choices

we repeat. If something from today's discussion

connected with you, take a moment to notice how

those internal choices showed up in your own

life. This has been the Internal Shift Show.

Thank you for listening and thank you, Russell,

for being on the show. I appreciate it. Thanks

for having me.