This week I took myself off for some learning for the sake of it. What I mean by that was, that I wasn’t sure what I would learn specifically or how I would specifically apply it but I wanted to be in a learning environment in a somewhat pure form.
 
The course was on handwriting and whilst I can justify this to the tax office as a primary tool of my trade is flip charting, and therefore my handwriting needs to be on point, I really wasn’t sure about how much would be applicable. 

I was surrounded by (much younger!) graphic designers and immediately fell into several of the traps of learning:
 

• Comparison - I’m shit compared to them
• Relevance - I don’t do design
• Denial - I can’t do this
• Blame - They didn’t say it was just for graphic designers
• Justification - I haven’t had the same experiences and training that they have

 
After a quick internal slap upside the head, I decided to be fully present and throw myself into the class with abandon! It reminded me that I’m in the business of learning (physician heal thyself, right?) and that I’m asking participants to be in this place all then time during my own programs. So I paid close attention to my own experiences, and how I overcame them.  Here are some observations: 

1. Decide to stay in the game. It’s easy to succumb to the traps of learning and smart people are very good at validating and justifying things. Take a breath and sit with the discomfort.
2. Do something, anything. Rather than sit with the unhelpful internal dialogue, take some action. In this case, I picked up a pen and started doing some writing which was totally crappy until…funnily enough…. things got better.
3. Play your own game. Don’t pay attention to what others are doing. Learning is incremental and totally dependent on past reference experiences. Someone (and there were plenty in the class) who makes a living from design and hand drawing or writing is always going to be better than someone who uses a keyboard most days to communicate. So, I focused totally on my own progress rather than how my page looked against the person next to me. 

Here is the before and after.  I’m pretty happy with the result. 

When was the last time you found yourself well entrenched in a LEARNING ZONE?