You Can Learn Anything You Want to Learn - Part IV

You Can Learn Anything You Want to Learn

If You Are Willing to Learn – Part IV

In addition to realizing that personal application combined with discipline and focus empowers anyone to learn and master any subject, I finally understood just how dangerous harboring anger, resentment and other negative emotions are.  Those toxic emotions equate with leaves, hair, paper towels, food particles, broken branches and other items that clog drains and pipes.  Negativity impedes free flowing mental and emotional channels.  “Anger turns off the light in the mind.”  That maxim expresses the truth of the ways in which anger’s acidic nature corrodes creativity.  It is hard to allow your mind to wander imaginatively if anger immediately kills each new thought.  If you harbor resentment toward something or someone, it nullifies any new concept you may have about anything relative to that person or experience.  As it relates to the standardized test I had to take; each time I sat and attempted to study, my mind and emotions flooded with vitriol.  Within a millisecond, I rehearsed thousands of “reasons” why this was so unnecessary in my instance.  Then, past poor performances on similar tests would arise from the depths of my consciousness.  I would surrender to the fallacy of aptitude as it relates to earning good scores on these types of exams.  Add the fear of failure and an inability to achieve my heartfelt dreams and goals.  That cocktail of emotional bile relegated my study time as worthless.  A subsequent inadequate score confirmed the ineffectiveness of retaining any mental blocks.  Fortuitously, my epiphany came as I admonished my students to doggedly apply themselves to improving their math and science grades.  They did not lack cognitive abilities.  Simply, they needed to discard their useless emotions about their teachers.  They further needed to realize that they were students and not instructors.  Regardless of how they felt, they still needed to earn better grades to raise their grade point averages.  As I lectured them, the words reverberated within my mind and heart.  Eureka!  By the grace of God, I apprehended the most needed dimension of my preparation for this test and ambition to enter field of my childhood dreams.  Consistent with my longstanding belief in a just society that affords each person the right to self-expression and self-actualization, I had to study diligently to achieve and excel.  The door opened to this vista of creativity and comprehension when I ceased to stoke the live embers of anger, fear and resentment.

Parenthetically, complaining is lethal to creativity.  In fact, complaining and creativity are as dualistic as darkness and light.  These intellectual activities cannot coexist.  One will obliterate the other.  Each of them commands a person’s undivided attention and full mental energy.  Without question, if you exert any time and effort complaining about anything, you will not have any resources with which to create.  Complaining culminates in any number of venomous emotions.  If you think of an idea, you immediately consider ways it may fail and then trash the thought.  You are unable to conceive success.  You see every torpedo in the water.  The mountains loom larger than they are.  Fear becomes bigger than life itself.  Complaints boom within your consciousness.  Like Goliath in the Valley of Elah who verbally frightens and paralyzes the army of Israel, complaining and its thousands of minions awaken each morning to kill your imagination.  Conversely, if you preoccupy yourself with sketching ways to transmit a novel idea into a product, policy, procedure or paradigm that will enhance the quality of life for countless people, you will not have any time or effort for complaining or negativity.  Rather with exuberance, you will conceive a million pathways to success.  I encourage you to apply this concept to learning new or difficult subjects.  Arrest each complaint.  Redirect your focus and energy towards constructive activities.

After honesty, humility and open mindedness, willingness is the final requirement to learning anything you want.  Willingness is not an emotion.  It is the flint-like commitment you make when learning something new.  Your willingness is the cumulative acts of faith you take as you acquire greater knowledge and facility.  You demonstrate your willingness through focus and discipline which together yield success and excellence.  You begin with a mission statement.  “Within the next three years, I will attain the same command, fluency and knowledge of the Spanish language that I have of English.  I will be able to speak, write and read Spanish with facility, functionality and quality.  I look forward to enjoying travel, cuisine, literature, music and conversation with 500 million global citizens who live in twenty Spanish speaking countries.”      What an amazing personal learning goal for someone who wishes to the embrace our global village!  To achieve this admirable goal, you must dedicate time, singleness of purpose and whatever necessary effort it requires.  Discipline in learning this language necessitates decline in watching television, searching the web and other recreational or competing activities.  Keeping your goal in mind is another demonstration of discipline as it maintains focus upon your primary purpose.  Your focus and discipline will produce excellence if you commit the mandatory amount of time.  In his critically acclaimed and universally well received book, The Outliers: The Story of Success, journalist and author, Malcolm Gladwell, posits success emerges for persons who commit a minimum of 10,000 hours to their craft.  Lest I oversimplify his research and conclusions, I highly recommend this beautifully written, enlightening and informative book to you.  Gladwell explores how a person achieves success.  He studies musicians, athletes, academicians and persons in other professions to ascertain the difference between the outliers who attain superlative achievement and others who merely achieve or succeed.  The commonality amongst the persons who excel was their willingness to dedicate the time necessary to be one of the best in their field.  Without exception, the persons who rose to the top one percent in their professions had spent at least 10,000 hours or more in individual study or practice.  Therefore, can you achieve your formidable goal of excelling in speaking, reading and writing Spanish?  The simple answer is “Yes.”  The more detailed answer is. “Are you willing to commit to attaining this goal by devoting the time, effort, discipline and focus necessary to know Spanish as well as a native speaker?”