Learning Vs. Conscious Learning – Which Works Better?
“It’s easier than you think – if you just let it” is the battle cry of the Beattitude blog and The Beattitude System (both of which focus on personal growth and success strategies for self development). And so it is with learning … but let’s start at the beginning. You are no doubt reading this article for one of two reasons. Reason one, you feel stuck in some way – in which case you can bank on it, the Beattitude System will help you to “destuckify” – or reason two, while happily cruising along you’re proactively looking to turbo-charge your life, or some aspects of it, to do even better. Either way, you will we glad to have found your way here.
Sometimes you’re in the zone where good things just happen naturally, and detours and bottlenecks amount to little more than temporary setbacks. But other times things don’t seem to go your way, you feel lost or at a crossroads, or find yourself stuck without a paddle up the famous creek. In these and similar cases, achievement of your dream may require the conscious learning of something new, hence today’s topic: Learning.
Instinctive
The “instinctive” learning we share with “lower forms of life” such as plants and animals. Equipped with instinct only, plants and animals, sometimes in cooperation with each other, perform feats that puzzle the snobbiest of scientists. Instinct is a tremendous force in humans, too, but it is also vastly underrated and under-utilized. Creation does not short change man. In fact, man is especially blessed with the capacity to learn and know.
Unaware
The “subconscious” learning we also share with animals, to a degree. As indicated by the label, subconscious learning takes place while the captain of the ship is a little asleep in his cabin. It has the potential to lead you to enlightenment, as well as to superstition, or to love, as well as to fear, or to happiness, as well as to despair.
Conscious
Conscious learning leads to knowledge for the sole purpose of getting you to the object of your imagination (regardless of the object itself). It is a uniquely human feature to be created with the ability to emulate creation itself and freely create in turn. Think about it, every book, chair and chewing gum – everything mankind created and takes for granted – was created in imagination first, before it was created by whatever process subsequently chosen. Ironically, but key to the creative process, conscious learning is also the door to understanding how to still consciousness. When I speak about stilling consciousness – equivalent to giving up resistance and struggle – some resist the idea. In doing so they add more resistance to their lives, not less, and struggle even harder than before. Only in stillness, when the “noise within” is reduced or switched off, are we open to receive.
The learning covered by my series of articles on learning, is the “conscious learning.” It is aligned with conscious living and thus fits into the scope of Beattitude and The Beattitude System. Given the complexity of the topic – learning styles, methods, materials, etc. – we’ll chunk it up into article-size pieces. The typical learning pattern is a four-step process similar to the typical drawing pattern:
Typical drawing pattern: 1. Dots, 2. Lines, 3. Circle, 4. Assemble the three together for an image (human face) representing “Them.”
Typical learning pattern: 1. Learn about the World, 2. Learn about Life, 3. Learn about Success, 4. Assemble the three together for an image representing “Me” or “I.”
These patterns will serve as the template for the series of articles on learning, starting with today’s “Learning To Learn.”
Learning To Learn
The first thing you would want to learn are the basics of learning. All arts and sciences – dance, music, math, physics – start at the basics, but in learning we’re often shoved into the thick of it right from the start. To learn about learning is generally considered an oxymoron – you are supposed to know how to learn. Even though the first time around even drinking out of a sippy cup involves learning (and specialized equipment), later in life learning is taught in ways that are akin to learning to swim – throw the student in at the deep end and see what happens. It might be a great time saver, but it’s not effective. Many “drown” in divorce, indebtedness, addiction, mind-altering drugs (legal and otherwise), loneliness, anxiety and worse. The lines between instinctive knowledge and learned knowledge are blurred, at best. Schools are as much about memorizing and recalling, as they are about learning and thinking on your own. For many, the purpose of learning is reduced to survival. We naturally learn how to lace our shoes, that’s how it goes, they argue.
What Would You Teach Yourself?
What if you had the knowledge and the skills of the world’s best teachers, what would you teach yourself? Sit back for a moment and imagine yourself the teacher. Do you see a hungry, highly focused student? Does the student’s body language shout interest and participation? Is there joy, harmony and anticipation? Do you look into the eyes of a student eager to learn and explore? It might be reality, or a distant dream, but for teaching yourself and propel student performance, your task is to make it real.
Learning Involves Teaching
When you boil it down to essentials, the best teachers are Authority, Repetition, Intensity and Timing. When all four come together, the lesson is learned for life. As a youngster I ran after a ball onto the road and into the side of a passing taxi. A fraction of a second earlier would have had me run into the front of the taxi, with potentially fatal consequence. As it was, I simply bounced off the vehicle’s metal frame. Stunned, reduced to the sorry mistake-maker I had just been, I was about to regain my footing by the time the taxi driver had made his way out of his vehicle. I expected him to enquire, in a concerned tone, whether I was alright – as anyone in my known world would have. Instead, he smacked a good one onto the left side of my face, yelled “Never, ever, ever, ever do this again!”, turned, and left. In teaching terms, the perfect storm – authority (grown-up, driver), repetition (in my mind I repeated the man’s words over and over), intensity and timing working together. Five minutes later, coming from another person, the smack and words wouldn’t have worked as well, if at all.
The Perfect Teaching Storm & “At Will Learning”
The little story illustrates the awesome power in teaching when it’s done right. The trick, of course, is to create perfect teaching storms “at will,” rather than sit there and wait for it to happen. In “learning at will” the teacher and the student are the same person – you. The goal of “learning at will,” even more than in ordinary learning, is to enhance the learner’s ability to gain mastery in life, and produce accelerated learning. It requires you to be(come) a great teacher and eager student at the same time. A tall order, for teaching is complex.
Right To Teach Is Earned, Not Given
To begin with, you don’t have the right to teach – not even yourself. As you might have found out for yourself, you can force secret and positive thinking teachings all day long (and all night), it won’t necessarily do the trick. Teaching is an earned right, granted by the student. You must build a bridge, as it were, to your inner student. The teacher must take into account the student’s self-image. Do you see yourself through kind and smiling eyes, or are you judgmental and severe? Your inner student will tell you, if you take the time to ask and listen. With the answer you’re free to enter a world where both the teacher and the student are learners, confidence reigns and new understanding is actually applied, rather than stored for future use.
“At Will Learning” Eliminates Waste
A feature in education is the large amount of waste between teaching, learning and doing. Much of what’s taught never grows bigger than the brain cell it fleetingly occupied in the mind of the student. It is comparable to the mighty oak tree that produces thousands of acorns every season, but only few grow into an oak tree in turn. As described in an earlier blog post, learning is important, but from whom you learn is even more important. In “At Will Learning” where you are both the teacher and the student, authority is extremely high, and in this way greatly reduces or even eliminates waste.
In upcoming installments of “Turbo-Charged Learning”
• How to boost comprehension and retention
• How to increase engagement and participation
• How to awaken the genius in the student
• and much more
If you would like to talk further about your own learning style, email me at coachbeatschindler@gmail.com I’ll be happy to write back and get a dialog going.
QUOTES
“Ideas are changed not by will, but by other ideas.” – Maxwell Waltz
“Imagination is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” – Albert Einstein
“Imagination rules the world.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
“The world is but a canvas to the imagination.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Maybe reality isn’t all I imagine it to be.” – Anonymous
“I see no dividing line between imagination and reality.” – Federico Fellini
“We can live out of our imagination instead of our memory.” - Stephen Covey
“Everything you can imagine is real.” – Pablo Picasso
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” – Albert Einstein
“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” - Henry David Thoreau
“There are many ways to be free. One way is to transcend reality by imagination.” – Anais Nin
“All of us invent ourselves. Some of us just have more imagination than others.” – Cher
“Saddle your dreams afore you ride ‘em.” – Mary Webb