Learning to learn. A skill for Lifelong Learning.

All of us have many motivations when it comes to learning the subject of our choice. Many children learn as a result of exploration just like how my baby niece does. They do it through trying by trial and error many different ways of how to balance themselves on their feet, legs and hands to move forward or toward a toy that they may be interested to play with. Naturally, they also learn through mistakes that there are certain ways that do not make moving feasible such as walking with their feet pointed in so on and so forth. 

Why are you afraid to learn a new skill?

Then why else does an adult learn differently? How exactly does an adult learn at all and why is it that he or she doesn't learn a skill as well as he should have. Adults generally set limitations on themselves on the things that they want to learn because of the fear of people judging them. That they cannot do a better job that others can. That they are not good at a skill. Logically, it does make common sense to not do the thing that you can't do well.

 I realise that I fall into this trap where I would be afraid to learn something especially if people were able to judge me or look at how lousy I was. This is especially true of when I see adult swimmers in the pool whom had no swimming background trying to swim their laps for the first time. 

An example: Adult Swimmers

A  few minutes of close observation in a typical public swimming pool will reveal a stark reality of adult swimmers; that most of them will not even go back to learning how they used to as a baby or a child, via exploration. All they want is to get from point A to point B (i.e. one end of the pool to the other) in the shortest time possible. But with swimming being such a technique driven skill that is very much alike to walking, why is the adult skipping the steps of nature to get towards the desired outcome? Shouldn't we be learning just like how our children do? 

Race for knowledge vs Exploration 

As much as our pursuit of knowledge comes at a price, be it in time, effort or money, I believe that the learning of the knowledge through exploring the subject matter has more desirable outcomes than if it was to pursue the skill in the shortest amount of time. It drives the creativity out of learning to see someone racing to get learn the skill without going through the necessary steps to success. 

To put theory into practice, I have begun a personal journey of learning to learn again in various subjects. One of them being writing this blog, learning to swim, picking up new sports, learning German, revisiting strength training fundamentals and even learning to do a muscle up all in the name of fun. Although there were outcomes I knew I wanted to achieve, I knew the entire process of trial and error was inevitable for myself to achieve success. I look forward to learning more in my journey for personal development and I hope this article has inspired you to do the same. 

Learn to learn. It will feed your mind for life.