This isn’t a learner sign: It’s a ‘I’m going to make a mistake’ sign
Think of anything you’ve ever learned.
Anything.
Ever learned.
And the only way you’ll have learned it is by making a mistake.
Look at the act of learning the alphabet.
Speaking; walking; running; talking; dancing, and just about anything.
And you’ll never be able to point out even one instance in your entire life that was learned without making a mistake.
This idea of willfully making a mistake scares the heck out of most people.
It literally means that you have to make mistakes—and that if you don’t make mistakes you can’t learn. If you can’t learn, you can’t acquire a new talent. If you can’t acquire a new talent, you remain exactly where you are.
Are you scared?
You should be.
Because the younger you are, the less you’re afraid of making mistakes. The older you get, the more you tell your brain it’s bad to make a mistake. The older you get, the more you feel you have to learn something quickly, and correctly the first time.
Yet that’s not the way the brain learns at all.
The only way the brain learns is through actively making mistakes. The brain’s most powerful tool is to make the mistake, recognise the mistake, and then try to remember the mistake. This is so that it doesn’t make the mistake again, or doesn’t create mistakes of an equal intensity.
This process needs time and effort.
The smaller, and simpler the task, the quicker the brain is able to eliminate mistakes. The more complex the task, the more time and effort is required to make the mistake, recognise it, remember it and finally correct it.
And yet the correction factor is almost never 100%.
So let’s say you’re learning a new dance step for instance. The brain has to first goof up. Once it has goofed up, it has to recognise the goof up, or it won’t improve. Once recognition sets in, all your neurons have to fire in the right sequence to memorise this mistake.
The more you muck up the dance step, the more your brain has to work out what’s wrong. And with every mistake, it eliminates only a percentage of the error. It’s only when it eliminates 100% of the error, does it then get that dance step right.
What’s interesting is that you’re never learning one step at a time.
You’re learning several steps. And the brain has to go over this whole sequence of making the mistake, recognising it, memorising it and then fixing it.
And it has to do this entire sequence for every single mistake.
Luckily our brains have enormous computing power.
And they’re able to process these mistakes and make corrections in a matter of milliseconds—if we are willing to make the mistake, that is.
The biggest reason we don’t get talented is for a simple reason.
It’s because we can’t bear to make a mistake.
And as you can now tell, that’s the biggest mistake of all!
Note: During this lesson I had to go through this exact process, because I was trying to learn how to insert an ’em-dash’. On my PC, I have to press Alt + 0151 on my keyboard to get an ’em-dash.’ On a Mac, it’s different. I have to press Shift+ Alt + – to get the same result. I learned how to create the ’em-dash’, and then promptly goofed it up. I had to go back several times to learn it. And now I think I have it. Or do I? 🙂
Read the lyrics of the song (till you can stand it), and then scroll to the bottom. 🙂
Back to you. It always comes around. Back to you. I tried to forget you. I tried to stay away. But its too late.
Over you. I’m never over. Over you. Something about you. Its just the way you move. The way you move me.
I’m so good at forgetting. And I quit ever game I play. But forgive me, love. I cant turn and walk away. Back to you. It always comes around. Back to you. I walk with your shadow. I’m sleeping in my bed. With your silhouette.
Should have smiled in that picture. If it’s the last that I’ll see of you. It’s the least that you. Could not do. Leave the light on. I’ll never give up on you. Leave the light on. For me too.
Back to me. I know that it comes. Back to me. Doesn’t it scare you? Your will is not as strong. As it used to be.
This is our love song of failure.
Every time we fail, a similar song plays in our brain.
And we go back to the behaviour that causes us to fail. It always comes around. Back to you.
But it could also be a song of success.
The same lyrics that bring you down, take you to overcoming the silly hurdles.
It depends what you’re in love with.
Failure or success.
Making excuses or making things happen!
If you have a cancerous growth, how long would you wait to remove the growth?
If you had a cancerous thought, how long would you wait to remove the thought?
Most people let the thought cancer grow.
Then they say, ‘I’m not really talented’.
They say, ‘I wasn’t born talented.’
They say, ‘Talent is in-born, you can’t learn it.’
Ah, the cancer ‘groweth.’
Let it grow, let it grow, let it grow*
*(sung to the tune of ‘let it snow, let it snow, let it snow’).
Do we come into this world as conservative thinkers?
Or are we born with a radical bent?
Not surprisingly, we aren’t born with a blank slate.
We come into this world with Version 1.0 embedded in our brains.
So if you look at the most isolated to the most populated places on the planet, you’ll find we’re born with the same core Version 1.0 software.
And yet the software gets a sort of ‘virus’.
Some of us turn extremely conservative. We detest radical thoughts.
And some of us turn extremely radical. We in turn detest conservative thinking and actions.
But showing contempt for the other side is crazy. Because everything on the planet, including talent, is a matter of structure. Structure is conservative.
Talent is also a matter of art. Art is radical free-thinking.
Creativity and Talent do not exist in thin air. They need structure.
Structure is boring without creativity. It would make our lives drab and doom us to boredom.
Creativity without structure would lead to complete chaos.
Both must exist side by side.
Our iPhones, our cars, our houses, our computers: everything is based on someone’s ability to transcend their radical or conservative virus, and use both sides to create something new.
We can live with a virus that forces us to be ultra-conservative or ultra-radical.
Or we can understand that they’re like yin and yang.
That one cannot actually exist without the other.
The day you learn how to use the conservative as well as the radical part of your brain, that’s the day you’ll learn faster than ever before.
But can you do it?
Can you actually step over to the other side?
Try it. You’ll be amazed at what you find there!
(Watch this video by Jonathan Haidt as well: You may need to be online to watch it)
Here’s an interesting story about ‘creativity’.
It’s so interesting that I’ll reproduce it verbatim.
What’s even better is that it’s about a painting.
And how the painting linked to article-writing?
You’re dying to know, huh? Well read on.
This note is from Catherine Marechal, who lives in Italy and whose first language is French.
Happy Birthday Sean!
I want to thank you and let you know of an unusual result of the article writing course. I have been painting a lot with my left hand. I always had difficulty just finding the time to paint. Now I just do it almost every morning and have no problem finding the time…. and my painting is very different from my right hand work!
What is the link with article writing?
As you know I had problems with keeping only one idea in my article outline. After a conversation with Leah, when I told her I thought my problem was because I was mostly right brain. She asked me if I was left handed. I said no, and that as a small kid I was ambidextrous but the French school system decided that I would be right handed. and I became right handed.
After talking with Leah, I decided to do my article outline handwriting with my left hand. In fact it worked, you said that you could not see any change to do in my article.
My friend Celeste Varley (the painter and teacher) who I have been encouraging to take your article writing course, suggested that I try to paint with my left hand rather than doing with both hands (but mostly my right hand was predominant) after I told her the story.
So here is my birthday gift, one of my left hand painting
Catherine
Incredible, huh?
That a mere shift of the hand not only made her article-writing a whole lot better, but that Catherine is now painting frequently, and with great confidence. And that is indeed the power of the brain when it decides to achieve things, rather than just back away and pretend that about a lack of ‘talent’.
