What is the learning process?
I mean… how do we learn things?
How do we learn to walk? How do we learn our native language? How do we learn to draw? How do we learn to catch a ball?
If we can take a step back and think about how we learned to do these fundamental things, then we can begin to apply these insights in order to learn the things we learn later in life.
How do we learn a foreign language? How do we learn to quilt? (Hi, Yvonne!) How do we learn to play piano? How do we learn to improvise jazz? How do we learn to accompany vocalists? How do we learn to write songs?
All fo these skills are very close to learning how to walk.
Take a few moments and think about how a toddler learns how to walk. (Hint: They began preparing for this when they were in the womb, feeling the steps their mother took.)
The more we can understand the learning process as it relates to these fundamental activities, the better we’ll be able to learn the new skills we choose to learn.
Hi Ron, great question! I actually think about this question a lot. Children are fearless and we often remark on it to one another now that we are older. The thing about learning is that it requires not doing something right. A lot. And the older we get, the more afraid we get of being seen as a beginner; being seen to fail. I think if we can embrace the missteps and laugh when we stumble and fall (like toddlers) as we are learning whatever it is that is new, it goes a really long way.
Great points, Yvonne! Thanks for mentioning how in order to learn something, we have to mess it up, a lot. People often forget this. When I’m learning a new recipe in the kitchen, for example, I’ve come to accept that I’ll probably mess it up the first time. But it doesn’t bother me because I know that this is a step towards learning it. And besides, I’m still having fun, right? Thanks for commenting!