You Have the Power to Transform Your Life

You can overcome!

There are forces at work that are committed to making sure that you never succeed, never triumph, never learn. You can’t see them and you can’t touch them, but they are deadly. Here’s the hard part: they live in your mind.

Can you overcome these enemies? Absolutely, says Chris Majer. Here are some keys to success:

Knowing. The number one enemy of learning is knowing, or more precisely, the assumption of knowing. This is the minds automatic response of, “I already know this,” that arises whenever you are exposed to something new. Your mind is lazy and its default response to anything new is, “This is just like X, and I already know that.” This is a great way to close off possibilities, as once you think you know something you tend to quit paying attention and lose the possibility of learning.

You can overcome!

The unwillingness to be a beginner. The most critical first step in the process of authentic learning is being a beginner. A beginner makes all three of these critical declarations: “I commit to learn,” “I authorize a coach to instruct me,” and “I am at peace with being a beginner.” While it may be obvious, there is no possibility of learning without you making a commitment to do so. Learning doesn’t just happen, it takes focused committed action. “The first action is to authorize a coach,” advises Majer. “No one learns from reading books or listening to tapes. The reason most adults never learn anything is they refuse to be beginners. There is nothing graceful or cool about being a beginner but its where everything starts.”

You can overcome!

The desire to be comfortable. Comfort is the enemy. When confronted with new ideas, most people react strongly. When our familiar patterns, associations, and responses are challenged, often we respond with fear and anger. Our minds cling to stability and predictability, and we tend to judge something new as dangerous. The notion of learning and changing, moreover, always looks good from a distance. In fact everyone is in favor of learning, as long as it doesn’t mean me and it doesn’t mean now. When presented with our own opportunities for change and growth, however, discomfort arises. The array of excuses, dodges, and delays we toss out can be astonishing. In short, beware of the perfectly natural desire for comfort. Unfortunately, comfort and authentic learning are mutually exclusive. You have to get out of your comfort zone.

You can overcome!

The insistence on understanding everything all the time. Any new idea or practice seems difficult, complicated, and unclear, simply by virtue of being new. And yet, along with our desire for comfort and safety, we also crave understanding, falling prey to the notion that clarity yields safety and certainty. When an unfamiliar situation lacks clarity, we tend to label the agents of change as “wrong.” “If the coach really knew what he was talking about,” the quarterback grumbles after practice, “then this new offense wouldn’t be so confusing.” “If this is so great, then it should be easy to understand.” In both instances, a person grants himself permission to dismiss the new practice and retreat into the comfort of the familiar. That retreat closes the possibility for learning.

You can overcome!

Confusing opinions with learning and confusing awareness with competence. An opinion is not the same as a thought. Human beings endlessly churn out opinions about every aspect of their lives. This is natural and normal, but it’s not the same thing as thinking and has no connection to learning. Thinking is the process of generating an original idea or distinction. Thinking requires energy and attention; having an opinion requires neither. Learning is the process of developing new competence and requires consistent practice. Under the sway of our opinions, we wall ourselves off from learning as we think that because we have an opinion about something, we must “know” it. A related enemy appears when we confuse awareness with learning; we mistakenly assume that a new awareness automatically equates to a new competence. The attainment of awareness and the development of competence are two entirely different processes. The main failing of most personal or professional development work is that it settles for providing you with awareness as opposed to building new competence.

You can overcome!

We want it all, and we want it now. The disorder is especially prevalent in the business world. Developing genuinely new management practices requires months and often years of work. The more senior the executive, the more deeply embedded her style, and the longer it takes to learn and change. It’s foolish to assume that any 2-day corporate retreat can prove sufficient for reshaping practices that have taken decades to establish. Indeed, presuming such instant change to be possible can cause lasting harm to individuals and organizations. Don’t be deluded by the zeitgeist of instant gratification and the failure of our society’s established learning practices. If you want to really learn, then you need to get past the quest for the magic pill, the latest and the greatest, and work to build new practices.

You can overcome!

Forgetting the essential role of the body. What we learned a long time ago working with athletes and soldiers is that while the mind understands, it is the body that actually learns. Understanding can occur in an instant but authentic learning, the development of new competence, takes recurring practice and that takes time. If you think about anything you have ever learned, you didn't learn it from books, tapes, motivational talks, or tips techniques. They might all provide awareness and inspiration, but not learning. Authentic learning takes practice over time as it is only through practice that competence is built. Top athletes don't read books about their sport. They go to practice. The same is true for anything that you want to learn. You can become aware of something that you want to learn or some way that you want to be from a book but authentic learning will come from lots and lots of practice as that is the only way the body learns.

You can overcome!

The quest for novelty can be debilitating and, ironically, undermine your future. If you’re constantly on the hunt for something new, after all, you’ll never focus your time, attention, and energy on the long process of developing the competence that will deliver authentic change. Under a media bombardment touting the latest fads, theories, and systems, the lure of the next big thing at times proves overwhelming. In the business world, this enemy shows up as the “buffet table” approach to training. We take a bit of Tom Peters, a dash of W. Edwards Deming, a habit or two of Stephen Covey’s, a notion from Warren Bennis, a theory from Peter Drucker, lash it together with some Six Sigma, spicy quotes, and colorful PowerPoint slides, and voilá! The result is a “greatest hits” training program. Lacking coherence, however, the patchwork program fails to deliver. With no unifying design or structure, the result is a very expensive piece of junk instead of a dream car. Yet we continue to cling to a blind, unreasoning faith in novelty. You cannot learn to be an effective leader by chasing after every new interpretation that comes along or trying to cherry-pick tips and techniques from a host of teachers. The same is true in the transformation you are undertaking.

You can overcome!

Living in constant assessment. You are exposed to something new. Your mind’s first response is to assess or judge it. The most common and basic assessments are: I like/don’t like this. I agree/disagree with this. These simple, automatic assessments close down the possibilities for authentic learning. If I like something, then I tend to quit listening as my mind moves quickly from liking to knowing: “I like this because it is like X, and I know X is true.” Similarly, if I don’t like something, then the mind tunes it out: “I don’t like this, therefore it must be wrong; if it is wrong, then there is no reason to pay attention.” The same thing takes place with agreeing and disagreeing. Either assessment tranquilizes us into closing down the possibility that there is anything new to learn. If I agree, then there is no reason to keep paying attention, because I know what she is saying to be true. If I disagree, then there is no reason to stay engaged, as this guy is obviously an idiot, and who needs to listen to an idiot? Living in constant assessment closes the possibility of learning.

You can overcome!

Characterization. We make up stories about ourselves and the world, and confuse these stories with reality. We seize upon our incompetence in a single domain, for instance, and cement that into the foundation of who we are. But lack of competence does not equate to a lack of character. The fact that I can’t seem to hammer a nail straight doesn’t mean that I’m dumb, lazy, uncoordinated, or incapable of learning. Far too often, we use a simple beginner’s mistake to start a story that begins with the line, “I can’t do this, I’m too old, too young, too busy, too fat, too uncoordinated. . . .” The ways to fill in the blank are endless. This self-sabotaging statement is often followed by another: “I’m not smart enough, I’m not fast enough, I’m not good enough; it’s too late for me.” Another variation on this narrative goes: “I can’t learn that; it’s too sophisticated, too complicated, too technical.” Common to all these statements is one underlying, unspoken theme: There’s something wrong with me. This unfounded interpretation, which chokes off learning and stunts our growth as human beings, is no less tragic for being so common. That it happens is a part of life. That we let it stop us from living the lives we want is no longer acceptable.

You can overcome!

Learning is challenging and takes place only through practice, patience, and perseverance. Indeed, these three qualities are the hallmarks of a committed learner. The only way to embody a new competence is through recurrent practice. Practice takes time and requires patience. The committed learner must continue to practice, persevering through doubt, weariness, negative assessment, and the occasional rotten mood. All of these enemies of learning have likely attacked you at one time or another. You are probably more vulnerable to some than to others. While fierce and relentless, these enemies are at the same time as insubstantial as shadows. Rather than manifestations of reality, they are elements in a story of our own creation, and as we now know, we can change our stories and our actions, and in so doing, we can change ourselves.