[Neurons] 2018 Neurons #45 LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2018 Neurons #45

October 15, 2018

Neuro-Semantics and Modern Challenges (#4)

 

 

LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE

 

Learning, like thinking, is inevitable and at the essence of being human.
If there is any mechanism or tendency or process that is a human "instinct,"
it is learning.   We see this in its most raw and primitive and essential
form in small children- they are little ferocious learning machines!  And
yet ... what seems so instinctual, so intuitive, so basic to humanity is
often, even frequently, lost.  By the time many people get out of school,
they are so turned-off about learning- they don't want to read anything
serious ever again.  Many others have completely lost their curiosity and
will only read or study whatever offers them some immediate short-term
benefit.

 

Given all of that, there is a very strange myth about learning-it is that
people learn best from experience.  Now while it is true that the best
learnings that we make seem to mostly arise from experiential learning, that
is not the same thing as "learning from experience."  In fact, I think I can
assert that if we're talking about actual learning that makes a difference,
then most people do not actually learn from experience.

 

To explain that assertion, I need to re-assert what real thinking and
learning is.  Merely repeating what you already know is neither actual
thinking and it is definitely not learning.  It is mere repetition of
previous thoughts that were once heard and possibly learned.  Real thinking
means entertaining something that you did not know before, something new,
something fresh.  It is questioning what you know and delving into
it-finding its premises and assumptions.  Real thinking means embracing and
entertaining what you do not know, what is unknown to you.  Repeating what
you already have thought and learned is, more often than not, an expression
of the Confirmation Bias.  You are using thinking to comfort yourself,
reduce your anxiety, dampening your curiosity, and squashing your ability to
learn.

 

When it therefore comes to experiences-most people do not learn from them.
Instead, they use their experience to confirm what they already know.  Or
perhaps they use the experience to validate some stereotypical cultural
perspective that they have grown up with.   "See I told you, disasters
happen in threes!"  Actually, given all of the human biases, distortions,
and fallacies- it is amazing that any of us learn from experience.  We are
so practiced in deleting information, distorting it, over-generalizing, and
thinking through the filter of our biases.

 

To actually learn from experience requires a lot.  The openness that it
requires is an openness to being wrong, to mis-perceiving, to leaving out
critical information.  The receiving of data without automatically
interpreting it through your meaning-making system means having a solid
sense of self, sufficient ego-strength, to not need all of the ego-defenses
that psychoanalysis and other therapies have identified.

To learn from experience requires also the ability to identify your current
frames and try on some new and different frames for understanding the
experience.  And that means the ability to step back from yourself and think
about your thinking.  But that level of meta-cognition is severely
under-developed in most people.  In fact, while most people find that the
Meta-State Model makes perfect sense and explains so much of their
experience- that's only after they come to understand it and that typically
takes some time.  At first, the meta-cognition in
thinking-about-your-thinking seems weird and strange and takes some time to
get use to.

 

Yet when you do come to the place that you can learn from experience- all of
life takes on a very different feel.  With the ability to truly learn from
your experiences, every experience every day becomes a potential place of
discovery.  You begin to have insights about things not just once in a
while, but regularly and eventually, every day.  You have insights into
yourself, into others, into how your career works, how your relationships
work, and a thousand other insights.  And with insights, you begin to have
truly Aha! moments that often lead to all sorts of creative solutions to
life's problems.

 

This is an art.  Let's call it- The Art of Learning from Experience.  And
when you develop this capacity, then your relationship to the results of any
action or communication becomes a cybernetic feedback system to you.  That
is, sudden what you have called "feedback" is not only no longer feared or
dreaded, it becomes your way to sharpen and refine every skill that you
have.  And now you can experience the high quality kind of practice that
distinguishes those who are experts in any and every field- "deliberate
practice."

 

The modern challenge today is learning, keeping up with all of the changes
and updates in knowledge, and from using one's experiences to learn from.
If you don't do that, you are sure to not keep pace with things and
therefore fall back, even regress, from your current level of understanding
and development.  The modern solution is to learn the art of learning so
that you can do something extraordinary, namely, learn from your
experiences.

 

 

 

References:

See www.neurosemantics.com for books on NLP and Neuro-Semantics.




 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D., Executive Director 

Neuro-Semantics 

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

               1 970-523-7877 

                    Dr. Hall's email:
<mailto:meta at acsol.net\hich\af31506\dbch\af31505\loch\f31506> meta at acsol.net


    cid:261CED33-4408-4124-862B-B9A4B37A367A

    

 

Dr. L. Michael Hall writes a post on "Neurons" each Monday.  For a free
subscription, sign up on www.neurosemantics.com.   On that website you can
click on Meta-Coaching for detailed information and training schedule.   To
find a Meta-Coach see  <http://www.metacoachfoundation.org>
www.metacoachfoundation.org.   For Neuro-Semantic Publications --- click
"Products," there is also a catalog of books that you can download.   

 

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