Let’s Talk About Learning

Your brain changes quite significantly when you decide that you would like to start learning something. What fascinates me is how we learn to do something different in a psychological sense, and how that impacts our physiology in a mechanical sense in our brain.

Every single time we learn to do something new, we change our neural pathways.

I’ve been thinking for a while that I wanted to learn something that I haven’t learned before, and I decided that I would learn to run. That may sound like a funny thing to say, but I’ve never been taught how to run. I’ve never been someone who was a runner at school, or was particularly athletic back then. I’ve never had anybody teach me, or train me, or coach me on what all the right techniques are. Any running that I do is done with just the courage that I can muster with pretty close to minimal to no technique!

So I decided to go out of my way to grow new neural pathways and new connections by being taught how to run.  For you, this could be anything.

You might want to learn how to run Facebook ads to your business. You might want to learn how to run a business. You might want to learn how to become a leader, if you’re in an organisation and you want to progress. There are so many things that could be in your area that you would like to learn and go outside of your comfort zone and really stretch yourself and grow those new neural nets and neural pathways.

There were two or three things that came out of my initial training session that I could immediately apply to my running. Those two or three things on their own weren’t massive, but the minute I put them in place together while running, I suddenly had a whole different experience of my run.

One of the things that I learned is about relaxing when you run. For people that are not really comfortable running or it feels clunky to run, you’re not very relaxed. You hold your body in a way that’s stressed and stiff and different to a relaxed pose. I learned yesterday the power of being able to relax my arms and my upper body, particularly as I’m learning to run.

The cool thing about this is that I’m applying this kind of thinking, creating new neural pathways and making sure things connect that haven’t connected before, and also unhooking old ones.

In my brain, I had particular neural pathways that were like super highways, ways that my brain knows is the “right way” according to me, to run. I would implement those every time I went for a run, and what I didn’t know was a whole bunch of those things were actually wrong – I’ve been doing a lot of it incorrectly. That explains why I often feel the way that I feel at the end of a run. I call myself a reluctant runner, and what I want to do is get to a point where I’m not being reluctant anymore. I’m getting out there, I’m doing it and I’m loving it.

I know my brain fairly well, and I know that if I feel confident in knowing how to do something, then I will practice practice, practice, until I nail it. It’s just how I am, that’s  just the way that I do things. I’m very confident about practising till I nail it, it’s just getting the right tools and techniques and the right way to move my body in the first place.

What’s something that you would like to do that really puts you on a steep learning curve like this? What’s that activity that you’re going to learn? What’s the new skill that you want to learn? Declare it, even if you’ve never said it out loud before!

Learning is the currency of being human. There is nothing more leveling than having a room of people together or a Zoom room of people together, who are collectively learning and changing the world step by step.

In these unpredictable times, when we’re feeling a lack of control over our own environment, it’s more important than ever before for us to be focused on what we can control and operate in our zone of genius. Learning is perfect for this. When you’re learning something new you’re also exercising something that is specifically within your control, which is a very empowering thing to do.

If you want to learn more about how this kind of thinking works, we have two free learning sessions we’d love to invite you to on the 19th of August!

We have a free webinar with BRAVE Wellbeing for Business that will show you how health & well being and healing can impact organisational culture. If you’re looking to create a thriving culture in your organisation, this session is for you!

We also have a live interview with money mindset leader Denise Duffield-Thomas on money energy. This will be a really interesting talk about our relationship with money and spirituality and how these two concepts are inextricably linked together.

We would love to see you at either or both of these learning sessions! Click the link on each to register and access the learning on the day – one will be held via Zoom and the other on Facebook in our Superhuman Summit group, which is free to join.

I look forward to seeing you there!