24. Learning is NOT Life

Life happens.

In life, there are moments when it is best to forget yourself completely, when accomplishment becomes an immediate NEED and all thought of learning must be abandoned. The world is full of examples of people who exhibit super-human strength, who risk life and limb, in their efforts to save another or themselves from impending doom.

Drama aside…

To live fully is to allow yourself to act according to circumstances.

It also means differentiating a true state of emergency from that which is self-imposed.

Allowing yourself to learn – slowly and without struggle – brings you to that place where you CAN act quickly and powerfully when you need to.

Learning prepares you to perform the tasks of your life – be they highly skilled or ordinary – with grace and ease. In other words – BETTER.

Whatever demands you face in the future, know that all your mucking about, all the trial and error and going slowly with attention that you experience while you were learning are what bring you to the level of expertise that allow you to do what needs to be done with grace, skill and intuition.

What we have been talking about so far is explicit learning – the act of consciously setting out to learn something, anything, better. But there is another, deeper kind of learning that happens as a result of all that explicit learning. It’s called IMPLICIT learning.

Implicit learning is what happens when you no longer have to think about what you are doing. It is that deep knowing that does not require conscious thought. It is the result of hours of practice, focus, awareness, patience, and all the things we’ve been talking about. Implicit learning is what you experience when you’re in the zone. It’s what happens when you make appropriate choices without contemplating those choices. It’s what you exhibit when you are acting without thinking. In fact, shifting into “thinking” mode when you are in the zone takes you out of it and brings you back to a state of raw learning. Thinking, you become a novice once again and all your skill means nothing. That’s what happens when someone who is highly skilled chokes — they start to think about what they are doing rather than rely on and trust the deep well of knowledge that resides inside.

To create that deep well of knowledge, however, requires explicit learning. To live fully, to reach your own “zone” requires much learning.

So… Learn on!