Some people misunderstand the word learning, including me. Learning as we know is the process of acquiring knowledge, skills, or something new. Most often we start from a point where we know nothing about a particular topic, then we learn about it and we can say that we have learned something from the source(s). In online learning, we can see learning progress indicated by progress bar, that pick ups clues about our learning from the number of videos, assignments, that are completed. In school by the end of every term, we have learning evaluation marked by some tests on which our abilities and knowledge are tested. To this, some people like to gauge their learning outcome from the test scores.
We often hear phrases about learning like “learning progress has slowed down”, or “learning takes place at….”, “support your learning curves by….”. Phrases like these are aimed for us to really understand what it means to learn because deep down we understand how important it is to learn something.
General in life, we can experience a lot of things that supposedly teaching us new stuffs. From how to ride our bike to how to keep a lover close. It can be as concrete as learning new hard skills like cooking Chinese food to as abstract as maintaining sanity in the workplace. Then, we must know some people around us that we think never learn from their experiences, looking like they just let go of the learning momentum to a waste. What actually happened there?
Reflecting from my personal experience, learning can take place when we are ready to receive it. A sign of readiness to learn is indicated by few things:
Vulnerability
To readily absorb new knowledge and skills (be it hard skills or soft skills), we must admit that we are in the position of someone who know lesser than the other. This does not refer to the real, objective amount of knowledge or skill mastery that we have, but the mental state that we are ready to learn when we admit that there are something we don’t know about and be open. It requires our vulnerability to accept this so that it also requires us indirectly to lower our guard down and not to be in a defensive mode.Humility
There will be cases when someone who teaches us an important lesson delivers it in a way that is unsuitable to us. This can make us put up a shield and defend ourselves, rejecting any potential learning we can gain from the experience, because it hurts a lot when someone points out our weaknesses. Being vulnerable definitely expose us to a risk of being pained by others, but with humility, we can readily accept the fact that we still have something to learn from others, that we are not the best in our field. Not in a sense we are having an impostor syndrome, yet in a sense that we are humbled to learn from others not because we are lacking something, but in order to enrich ourselves.Perseverance & patience
Learning does not always happen in flat, upward skill-by-time curve. Rather than depicted by a parabolic upward line, it is more accurately illustrated by a stair-like curve, where our skill can significantly increase in a short time period, followed by a period of long, plateau. Without perseverance and patience, the plateau period can discourage us and make us think that we are no longer learning anything, a feeling of being stuck, that will lead us nowhere but despair.
Learning can be painful emotionally because we are forced to bend and stretch beyond our comfort zone. Not to mention we are being vulnerable and humble, which are not easy chores to do. In fact, when we feel discomfort and pain during learning is where the learning takes place. It means that we are really doing something. The moderate pain we feel during learning is not a signal of something dangerous or bad, it is just our brain trying to absorb all the new stuffs and being plastic: the brain is doing some rewiring inside, hence it feels uncomfortable.
Some people keep up with this pain of learning, but some people don’t. Based on my personal experience and some book readings, I noticed a few difference between those who thrive and who do not.
Among my reflections, the most important thing is about mastery. It is a totally an important feature of learning. We can only thrive and bear the cost of learning when we feel a sense of mastery, that at one point, we understand at least one thing about the subject at hand. At least we can produce something out of it and feel accomplished enough. Without mastery and sense of accomplishment, it will be very easy for us to drop from the learning path, being discouraged, questioning ourselves whether it is the rightest path for us, doubting our abilities, to finally give up learning all along. We would not feel the learning pain is worth to bear.
Beside these feelings, another thing I’ve noticed as well is the eagerness to learn just for the sake of acquiring knowledge, without attaching any labels or values aside of knowledge, to the learning process, is just as important. Sometimes what makes learning so painful is that we are afraid of failing, of not totally understanding what we learn, the anxiety to think whether all these stuffs are even worth it, afraid that our peers, leaders, subordinates will ridicule us when we fail or appear too dense; too focused on anything else than our desire to improve ourselves and know more. When we are motivated by and focused on the drive to understand, to improve ourselves, the process of learning will become more enjoyable.