Learning – Its a Paradox

Learning is a paradox. On one hand we can’t help but learn through our experiences. Our first few years of life are nothing if not an amazing feat of learning. The research tells us that we learn more in the first three years of our life than the rest of our life combined.

We are built for learning. Our cerebral brain thirsts for knowledge and problems to solve. Our hands are made for touching and experiencing the world around us. Our heart loves without a thought and feels pain without limits. We build, we explore, we test, we fail, we love, and we lose. It’s who we are.

Yet, we’ve built these crazy systems of education and work that actually stop us from engaging in this most basic function. We have misplaced education and instead we find things we must learn. We have dismissed work and replaced it with rules we must follow.

Our innate ability to be creative, to create, has been lost and squashed because our world is so constrained by rules and processes, that we are unable to find the time to engage in experimenting, learning and creating.

This is the paradox of learning. We have learned so much that we out think ourselves and have caused problems to solve where there need not be problems.

My very simple definition of learning, in the context of becoming a slayer is:

When you are a slayer you learn for passion, you learn for pleasure AND you take deliberate action to learn every day…on purpose. You challenge your beliefs and stretch your knowledge to think like a leader. You learn from every opportunity and you push yourself to think beyond your current ideas, paradigms and ideals.

Everything is an opportunity for learning.

I’ll pause for a moment so you can give me all the reasons that you can’t learn daily. Go on. List them out. Time, money, ability…write them down and spell it out for me. Keep writing and writing until you have filled the page.

I suspect that you have a page of similar reasons that I wrote down when I first embarked on this slayer inspired leadership journey. I know that life can get tough. I know that life can throw you lemons. I know that sometimes life can, at times, truly suck ass. I also know that when you are working on you slayer skills its much easier and more fulfilling to bounce back from this kind of adversity.   When you are working on your slayer skills, specifically the learning element, then you find new and unique ways of pulling yourself out of the challenges you face.

Having tough times is real.

Being time poor is real.

Being overwhelmed with responsibility is real.

Having a limited budget is real.

Being a slayer requires learning and dedication.

So you need to choose.

You will have to accept that there will always be reasons not to learn, be healthy, talk with someone, have some me time and be a slayer. This is the reason that your compelling future focused vision is so very important. Life is tough, and its supposed to be. Growth comes from discomfort.

This element is not going to teach you how to learn. You already know how to learn. What we are going to explore in this element is the ways in which you can re-engage a lost pleasure. That pleasure is learning and thinking.

Want to know how you can master the element of learning? You’ll find the answers you are seeking in The Slayer Codex VOL1: Unleash the Slayer Within.