You’re being lied to. Constantly. Sometimes by yourself. We are all subject to an endless stream of misinformation about our constraints to our capabilities, and we receive this information so often that most of us have no other choice but to believe it. The problem is that these messages directly oppose your quest to become limitless.
According to Jim Kiwk, there are 7 Limited Ideas Entertained (LIEs) in our minds that can stall us or steer us in a direction we don’t want. In the following posts, we will examine these LIEs, demystify the myths behind them and expose ourselves to the truth we should rather believe.
Learning New Things Is Very Difficult
When we hear the word learning, the first thing that pops into our mind is school.
Many do not have fond memories of school, and even if they did well academically, it is still a place associated with the growing pains of youth and so many memories. It is where some of us felt romantic love for the first time (our first crush which probably ended in rejection).
For those who struggled in school – those who had experiences similar to that of Jim Kwik – there is the added emotion of doubt, shame, low self-worth or esteem as well as the feeling of not being good or intelligent enough to understand.
Jim tells us the story of Carol Greider, an American molecular biologist who won a Nobel prize in the year 2009 for her part in research to discover how telomeres change with age, which has enormous potential and has played an important role in how we understand and treat cancer.
Greider has the distinction of being a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor and a Daniels Nathans Professor. She is also the director of molecular biology and genetics at John Hopkins University.
With such a prospering career one would think that she whizzed through school, but the opposite was actually the case. According to Jim, Greider was considered a poor speller and somebody who couldn’t sound out words. She was put into remedial classes and was diagnosed with dyslexia, a learning disability that affects parts of the brain that process language.
Those who struggle with dyslexia have problems identifying speech sounds and relating them to letters and words, which results in difficulty reading and sometimes speaking. So Greider felt stupid and the situation seemed hard to overcome but she didn’t give up.
Even though school was hard at first, she found other ways to make up for her disability, and because of her ability to adapt, she became the kind of problem solver who could not only learn but could contribute to research that changed the way we (the world) view cancer. Learning was hard for her, but she figured out how to work around her disability. After all, it’s not how smart you are, but how you are smart. Because Greider had to problem-solve her way through learning, she now has a career that is having an impact on the world.
The truth is that learning won’t always be easy. In fact, learning is meant to be a bit uncomfortable; otherwise, you’re mostly reinforcing what you already know.
If you’ve ever tried to cut wood with a dull blade, you know that it takes far more time and energy to accomplish the task than it should. In much the same way, lacking motivation or having inadequate methods will slow you down and make you feel as if learning is too hard.
It will require you to cultivate patience, to have a positive attitude, and to be adaptive to your own needs. If you are the kind of learner who does best with a book in your hands, that’s fantastic. But if you already know that doesn’t work for you, why keep trying the same thing? There is more than just one approach to learning. Look for other ways to learn that do work for you.
Know that it will require effort and the key is consistency. You must have the patience to consistently come back at it again and again.
Here’s the truth: Sometimes it is hard to learn new things and it is important to know that learning is a process.
It is a process that can certainly be easier when you don’t just focus on learning alone but also on knowing how to learn.
New belief: When you learn new ways how to learn, the challenge of learning new things can be fun, easier, and more enjoyable.
