If we are motivated to improve it helps to remember: When we stop learning, we stay the same. Most of us want to keep learning but few of us ponder what’s the best way to learn. In my search for finding how best to learn I encounter two different methods of learning. One, I’ll call the ‘Default’, which is the way I’ve been learning most of my life, and the other I’ll call ‘Fun and Learn’, which we all experience from time to time but it certainly isn’t our ‘default’ method. Here’s a short description of each:
The Default:
We think about what we want and how best to get it based on what we know. We come up with the specific things we need to do and plan our strategies (times, dates, narratives, specific duties, finances, etc.). As things play out, we feel good when things are going our way, and not so much when things are bad. The quality of our lives depends a lot on how successful we are at getting what we want. As we move forward we adjust our plan to handle the successes and failures.
Fun and Learn:
We follow a disciplined approach to our learning that begins with a deep dive into what is the accurate information we need to get what we want. We know we’re only as good as the way we know how to do it. We realize we improve by putting new accurate information that makes us respond in more productive ways up in our brain. Once we have enough basic accurate information we start practicing; doing the consistent repetitions until we can perform the accurate knowledge properly. We don’t care about results, because our misses teach us we don’t fully understand what’s accurate, and we use our research and repetitions to continue to shed light on what’s accurate. We’re building our bridge as we walk on it. We see each practice/competition as an unveiling of what we know and don’t know. Because we’ve done our repetitions, when any hint of fear or anger shows up (we mess up and judge ourselves), we step back and get in that fun and learn mood quickly. We realize it’s the joy we put into every learning session that will make us our best the quickest, so whenever we start to get upset or impatient (negative energy), we smile and remind ourselves we’re limiting ourselves and getting back into our fun and learning mode.
Not very difficult to see which approach will bring the best results. Still, like a lot of what drives us, our approach to learning is not rational. For most of my life, I learned through ‘The Default’. It’s taken a real effort to change that, but once I adopted a fun and learn philosophy to my learning, my learning curve became something I enjoyed and felt no pressure about. Why would I not want to enjoy my efforts? Why would I still use ‘The “Default’ method even though I know it’s brings inferior results? Just shows how irrational we can be at times. When we put new successful learning experiences up in our brain using the ‘fun and learn’ method, it will become a habit. A totally new adventure!!