Learning

Many decades ago I read somewhere that Edison discovered dozens of ways of NOT making a lightbulb; and then discovered THE way.

I often quote this in coaching to reassure people that there is no shame in “not knowing”, in experimentation and testing things out (providing one is doing no harm to other sentient beings!). Recent reading (*) in the field of neuroscience has highlighted the fact that “making mistakes” is an important part of the learning journey. Certainly, my education (and it still appears to be the case in many instances) was based on a punitive model – there was always some form of deprivation following making mistakes of any sort. The most telling punishment though was the impact on one’s beliefs about one’s intellect – usually that one was intellectually impoverished – what a dismal legacy!

So, I do hope you can learn to have fun with “not knowing” and use it as a spur to discovery.

· * How We Learn by Stanislas Dehaene - Penguin Random House, 2020

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay