Do you remember when you first learned to tie your shoes as
a child?
Do you remember when you completed your first complicated
math equation?
Think back to the feeling of joy, satisfaction, and
accomplishment when you realized that you could achieve what at first seemed
challenging … it felt pretty good, didn’t it?
So the bigger question now is … where did that feeling go as
an adult?
Why is it that this missing learning LINK within seems to
have faded and instead for some it has become a feeling of being ‘overwhelmed’
or an ‘annoyance’ or ‘just one more thing to do’ that you don’t have time for?
While many SAY they are lifelong students, when it comes to
‘learning’ – it seems that the ‘willingness’ to learn something new is merely
limited to the idealized “benefit” factor figuring out how many calories you
believe you’re burning to justify your using Pokemon Go; or how much money you
can save learning to make custom lattes at home.
This is not to say that having benefit as an incentive for
learning is a bad thing. Hey, whatever
gets you motivated to learn is always good.
But let’s take this to yet another level…
Maybe you were not a straight A student in school.
Perhaps PE was your best subject and the idea of learning
calculus made your stomach churn.
Or maybe you were the person who figured you were going to
get D’s and F’s so why bother trying to learn something new anyway?
Believe it or not – THIS CAN CHANGE and so can your LEARNING
LINK.
Learning is a healthy thing for our minds, but many have
missed the mark on the overall effects of what learning can do for our bodies
on a physical cellular level and for our spirit on an emotional one.
Mental and emotional health of course, have greater life
term benefits for YOU than calories burned or money saved. If we look at our LEARNING LINK through
experiences as a continuous gift that contributes to our overall well-being as
humans, we not only feel good, but we perform better in life both behaviorally
and in daily endeavor/task application.
Although learning doesn’t always come from books and it does
come from the school of life, perhaps expanding the idea of what learning is in
itself, can come in another form of experience.
When it comes to difficult challenges and obstacles, it is a
widely known fact that sometimes when you are ‘inside’ of a situation, you may
not always see things clearly until you take a step back.
It’s easy to evaluate another problem for a friend than it
is for yourself even if it is the same issue, because many say that ‘you are
too close to the situation’ to comprehend the tangle or knot.
However, what if we were to acknowledge that sometimes your
own solution is right in front of you and the logical problem-solving medicine
you actually need lies within the example presented in your everyday life?
Every encounter we have is for reason and purpose. Words and actions, which educate and
enlighten us are never an accident.
Neither is the nudge we get to ponder how we can improve or change any
situation or be of assistance for others.
In essence, that instinctive act in how to help someone else is merely a
wake-up call in how we can resolve the thought pattern process which opens us
up to learning something new.
Academic professors will call upon a film, supplemental
educational project tool or a guest speaker to drive a learning point home
which has already been presented many times in order to ‘awaken’ dormant
learning within the brain.
Quite often reading chapters in books and having lectures
from the same professor begins to become an ‘old tape’ and students shut off
their brains to the cognitive learning process.
Though this is nothing new for the academic world, it is new
for the everyday human to comprehend that if we apply this same tactic to our
own learning, we can expand our capacity to learn more and embrace learning in
a new way.
The old saying “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” is a
myth when you apply the above learning principles.
What is true is that a dog may tire of learning new tricks,
because its brain is conditioned to believe that in learning a new trick will
only produce results of the same old trick.
Watch what happens if learning is supplemented with the feeling of
renewal with new and different stimuli like a fresh new toy or a completely new
experience in reward.
This is similar to the ‘calories burned’ or ‘money saved’
tactic Pokemon Go players and latte strategists utilize.
If the old dog could talk, it would tell you that it feels
like a puppy again or more youthful and vibrant in learning a new trick because
the stimuli impacting the learning process has shifted.
So if in your everyday life, you as a human are learning new
things with this process, why can’t it work for the idea of your mind and body
being more of the focus instead of merely your wallet or vanity?
Think about this for a bit and look at the bigger picture of
what this means.
They say variety is the spice of life and sometimes a
singular shift from habitual routines can ignite a stale learning process
within the brain.
So what this does, is it can actually CHANGE or break you
out of a process to help grow your application of learning perspective so that
you no longer think of traditional learning as being ‘overwhelming’ or an
‘annoyance’ or ‘just one more thing to do’ that you don’t have time for.
The next time you think you can’t become an expert at art
history or learn a new language or even make an entirely new lifestyle or
career change – THINK AGAIN.
Reviving your LEARNING LINK is possible.
Tweaking how you learn is merely the idea of finding a
method that works better for you.
Keep in mind that not everyone learns the same way and
that’s okay. You don’t have to learn the
exact same way as everyone else. You’re
YOU and maybe all you need is to know that learning – no matter at what level
you choose to participate is GOOD FOR YOU… it’s good for you physically,
emotionally, mentally, and even spiritually if you open yourself up to the idea
of what is possible.
Then disconnect and
detach from the idea that you have to be an expert or be perfect after learning
what you just tried.
That’s it.
Yeah… you may think “That’s easy for you to say and harder
to do.”
You’re absolutely right.
It’s hard to break an old mind set or conditioning when it comes to
learning, because it all boils down to how you perceived it from Kindergarten
on up through high school, college or beyond.
But if you take the time to realize that when you learned
how to tie your shoes – you didn’t give up.
You did not automatically default to slip-ons or Velcro as the option to
learning how to tie shoes… and even if you did, you do know how to tie shoes
now.
Somewhere along the way in your life, you learned – and your
LEARNING LINK was open enough to do so.
So take heart as you re-examine your LEARNING LINK and see
what you can do next to broaden your horizons and open up your world. You just may surprise yourself… and if you’re
walking this new pathway in shoes you tied yourself, you have extra reason to
smile knowing what is possible!
Namaste.
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