Do you ever feel like you’ve hit a wall? Nowhere to turn, no way forward?
It can happen very frequently when we are learning. We call them learning blocks.
The question is, though, how do you deal with your learning blocks? Or rather, deal with them more effectively?
The secret lies in discovering your inner animal...
Did I ever tell you the story of the sheep and the goats? It was told me many years ago by one of my students and I never forget it. She asked me one day, do you know the difference between sheep and goats?
When she was a little girl, she lived on a farm, and she used to have to help bring the sheep in at night. Sheep, she said, were very easy to contain, very easy to guide. Very, very easy. To the point she and her dad just had to hold a rope at the eye level of the sheep and they would stay within its confines. A goat, on the other hand, she said, would take one glance at the rope and just hop right on over...and be gone.
Yes, we can only imagine she may have spent many a frustrating, if not funny, an evening chasing after the goats, but what does this have to do with learning blocks?
First, learning blocks are not going anywhere. They are an integral part of learning.
The secret lies in how you see them.
Are you going to be like the calm and placid sheep and focus on the block to the point that it prevents you moving forward and it becomes all you see?
Or are you going to look beyond and take it in your stride like the tenacious persistent cheeky goat and jump straight over it? Yes, it may mean you have to push yourself to jump that bit higher, perhaps even higher than you ever jumped before, but in achievement and surmounting difficulties there comes a sense of accomplishment and a level of satisfaction you will find nowhere else.
And that is where the real secret lies. Because in persistence in spite of difficulty, this is where you find your inner strength, your focus, and your drive to keep pushing forward.
Ready to jump?
