Never too old to learn

I've been surprised by quite a few people's reactions when I tell them about my visit to Dans Le Noir (see August 26^th - Kept in the Dark). Quite a number have asked , 'what would you want to do that for?'

Now, while in some ways I'm not always the most adventurous of souls, I do - or so a colleague told me recently (and I think she's spot on) - have what she described as an 'indefatigable capacity to see everything as an opportunity to learn'. And, more than a week later, I am still discovering and processing my learnings from that trip - and indeed from others' responses. (This  capacity has, incidentally, been stretched to its limits this week with my phone/alarm saga - but more on that another time...)

Actually, I think it's a pretty useful quality - consistent with  the NLP presupposition of there being no failure only feedback (and Edison is reputed to have said, of his many unsuccessful attempts to make what we now know as a light bulb, 'I haven't failed, I've found 10,000 ways that don't work')- though recognise that it can be counterproductive to be too gung ho or Pollyanna-ish about it.

Years ago when I assisted on occasional outdoor based training courses for young, high potential ICI recruits, I came across a quote on someone's wall that said 'to know and not to do is not yet to do'. (If you know the provenance of the quote-  please do tell). It's stayed with me all these years because , I think, it goes to the very heart of learning  and draws a distinction between 'head' or theoretical learning and 'embodied' or utilised learning.

So, for me - and I hope for you, a useful question to star tthe day with is 'what did I learn yesterday and what am I going to do as a result?' Note - not what am I going to do differently (although it may be useful to consider that) but simply 'what am I going to do?' This allows for me doing more or less of something. Or the same (because I've learned it works). Or stopping (because I've learned it doesn’t ). The 'anchor music' for my NLP Master Practitioner course was 'What have you done today to make yourself feel proud'. It could equally have been 'What have you learned today to make yourself  feel proud'.

~ Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.  ~Oliver Wendell Holmes