What are Your Enemies of Learning

Luanne PaynickPosted by Luanne Paynick on May 5th, 2010 | 0 Comments

What was I thinking as I drove out of the parking lot on the last day of my coach’s training at Newfield Network?

Wow! I am completely elated.  I need to pinch myself. My dream has become a reality. Me–enrolled in a premiere coaching school, internationally acclaimed and accredited by the International Coach Federation. Yes!!!!!

What was I thinking an hour later (better yet 24 hours later, when the thoughts had become pervasive)?

How in h*** am I going to accomplish this? What was I thinking? And even more importantly, how am I going to do it to perfection?

What was I thinking after I had a chance to decompress, get a little bit (ok, a lot) of sleep, and sort through my assignments and commitments?

Knock it off, Luanne. This is your biggest enemy to learning – the need to get it right. If you don’t begin to look at learning as an opportunity to make mistakes–get it all wrong–you won’t learn what you need to. Always cautious and careful – never daring to take a risk.

What am I thinking now?

With this new awareness, I can make some better choices. First, I can reframe what it means to learn something. Maybe I need to frame learning as knowing something in my heart and soul. Knowing something isn’t getting others to say, “Wow! Look at how well you did.” Or getting universal approval. Knowing something is about experiencing it, feeling it in my body and emotionally connecting with it. It’s also about being able to apply what I have learned to make a difference in the world. I may be able to make a bigger difference by having experienced it “wrong” once or twice.

And finally, learning is really about the joy of getting curious – discovering something new – rather than the emotional pain that comes with having to be perfect. It’s about exploring the unknown and the undiscovered – in others and in myself.

What are your enemies of learning? What is keeping you from knowing? Consider the following possibilities as presented by Chalmers Brothers, author of Language and the Pursuit of Happiness. Is it:

  • Your inability to admit, “I don’t know”?
  • Your belief that you should already know?
  • Your distrust of the person teaching you?
  • Your making everything overly significant?
  • Your forgetting that your body is a domain of learning? Practice is putting your body into it. When you don’t practice, you don’t get results. The capacity for new action is about doing. It’s not head learning or memorization.

Choose to “befriend” the following, as suggested by Chalmers:

  • Willingness to declare “I don’t know”
  • Listening
  • Openness
  • Respect and admiration for your “teacher”
  • Willingness to question your own questions
  • A mood of perplexity and curiosity

Who knows what you might learn and what you might accomplish as a result? Vanquish your own enemies to learning and a universe of knowledge can be yours.

Image by NASA

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