Posts Tagged "learning"

Teaching Oneself

Posted by Arthur on Jun 15, 2010 in Confidence, Life Coaching, Personal Growth, Thought-Management | 5 comments

Have you ever been to school? Been taught anything by anyone?

If you have, chances are you’ve had some good, some bad, some moderate learning experiences.

Have you ever taught? To a friend, to a co-worker, to a child?

If you have, chances are you were able to remember those things in a much better way. Enjoying it the whole time.

I have been attending an RMT (Registered Massage Therapy) course recently, and the teacher is a super entertaining, awesome human being and a natural at everything: drawing, humor, simplifying difficult concepts into baby food that people can swallow and even into micro-organisms for the former-scientists in the classroom.

He recently talked about what he calls “active memory”, the first time I’ve heard of such a concept, where he suggested in examples about it where you can make flash cards, with the question, for example:

What is the origin, insertion and action of a trapezius? And you would have the answer on the back.

Of course, there is always another layer behind what people say. And he later went on to say that “active memory” has nothing to do with flash cards, but the ability to teach. He even suggested that one could teach oneself. Obvious, yes?

And then I realized, on my drive home. Who’s the best student I can always teach? The answer, was myself!

I was quite surprised. Though I knew what he meant at the time, because isn’t teaching yourself just… “learning”? It’s something more.

A little more conscious. A little more love is needed to teach oneself, or myself. Basically, really be able to teach yourself in the way that isn’t just habitual.

For example, brushing your teeth.

Do you really know how to brush your teeth? Can you explain to a 5 year old, why and when is the best time to brush? Do you just say to him or her, the little wee thing, just put the toothpaste onto your toothbrush, and start brushing?

Then make a slightly sarcastic joke, which only you find funny, about working on tying their shoes tomorrow (leaving abruptly).

Or do you tell them kindly, it’s fantastic that you are learning to brush your teeth by yourself! When you brush your teeth properly, you can not only look better to your friends and family, but also you feel and smell better.

You remind them about how, didn’t you know? An apple once a day makes the doctor go away. And relate it to how when you eat an apple, the natural fibers actually clean your teeth!

And you keep sharing your knowledge, about that time you had a funny teeth brushing incident where you used your little brother’s toothbrush and started freaking out because you were still afraid of germs at the time.

More and more, about this and that, flossing and brushing twice a day and balabalabla.

To see their eyes widen, as they realize you care about them and that they will always remember these funny life stories combined with little lessons you shared with all your heart. It also takes something out of your essence to give to them, courage that your jokes, your information and how you present yourself is received well. Teaching well requires trust. Which can be hard, especially when their attention spans are about as focused as a dog surrounded by bone-like toys. Maybe the kid didn’t listen to the joke, or only heard the joke, but that doesn’t matter. What made it a great teaching and learning thing for everyone was that everyone had a great time, and learned as much from the experience as they could absorb at the time.

To teach yourself like this, it’s also a beautiful thing.

What were some of the best experiences where you taught yourself something? Think.

Maybe it was how to talk to a girl you were attracted to without being nervous. Some people (like me), just talked to/ asked out a 100 attractive girls in a row, in a span of a month, and was done with it.

How is this related to teaching kids teeth brushing?

Well, it just is.

While I talked to these random girls I met on the subway, on the street, at Chapters, in the library, at the school cafeteria or in the shopping centre, I kept teaching myself like so:

“Hey sweetheart, how about a date?” I already have a boyfriend (while looking at me up and down humorously).

It was awesome, I didn’t actually want to date them, as I chose to be busy with school and work, and most of them already had boyfriends. Or at least that’s what they told me. Some of them actually invited me to a bar or parties they were going to that night or to go to their cottage with their friends.

I regret not having enough courage at the time to say yes to any of these events, especially since I was deathly afraid of alcohol, but those are stories for another time. Soon, I promise

Anyways, what made this a great learning experience for me? It took courage, and trust that the conversations would go over well and that it would be a great time for everyone involved. Not all of them did, some didn’t care and didn’t respond, but it was clear that everyone had as funny or as eye opening experience as they could receive at the time.

It’s just fun to teach yourself. You develop your capacity to express more love. And I find I like to separate teaching oneself and “learning”. It’s not the same thing. One is putting everything on the line and putting yourself out there and giving it your all, and the other is related to boredom and grind.

Choose what’s on your menu, but for me the choice is obvious.

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A Good Teacher

Posted by Arthur on Dec 2, 2009 in Life Coaching, Personal Growth, Relationships | 5 comments

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Value or Val-You?

Posted by Jason Fonceca on Mar 3, 2009 in Abundance, Conscious Creation, Life Coaching, Life Purpose, Personal Growth | 4 comments

Boo!

Did I scare you?

No?

Well, that’s probably for the best, as I wasn’t trying to, I just wanted a slightly uncommon way to start my post on Value. Its fun writing ‘Value’ with a capital V. Every human being has tremendous value. Huge value. Nearly incomprehensible amounts of value… the thing is, a good portion of the world acts and behaves as if they themselves, as well as others, have very little value.

They’ll put more value on money and greed over the value of other people, scamming them and ripping them off and looking at them as just a sale or a number. Or they’ll place their life-mate’s time and wants and needs consistently above their own, as they repress themselves in a relationship. Or any other number of situations that I think we’d all choose to avoid if we were aware there were alternatives, of which there are many!

"A cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." – Oscar Wilde

Price vs. Value

In most western countries, the current prevailing mindset (and if you look carefully, its changing) is that of the capitalist. "Save every dollar, scrounge every penny, cut every corner you can get away with – its the only way to get ahead of this struggle." This mindset produces exactly what it sounds like it would produce, a bunch of people fighting to get their piece of the pie, we’ll call them, the pie-cutters. I personally run in a different circle, I spend my time with people who have a different understanding of value, they are the ones who feel the world is a beautiful, abundant place, with more than enough for everyone and if we simply manage our thoughts differently, we’ll see the evidence of this, So these people are happy to give their all and go the extra-mile for themselves and others. We’ll call them the extra-milers.

Now let’s take a look at a case study together. Let us imagine that you’re looking to buy or invest in something in your life – lets say you’re tired, sore, tight, and your body could use some TLC. So you’d like a massage, for example.

So you head onto craigslist and find what looks like 2 reasonably priced massage therapists. You can choose to do business with a massage therapist from the pie-cutter camp, or from the extra-miler camp. Let’s say they’re twins — exactly equal skill, they’re both intelligent, both charge the same amount — The only difference between the two is one has the mindset of "struggling to get his piece of the pie," and the other has the mindset that "the world is an abundant place and he and everyone else will be taken care of as soon as we start valuing each other."

Now, unbeknownst to you, these two twin massage therapists are both just starting up their business, they both recently invested and have rent and debt hanging over their heads, and they both could really use your business.

Our pie-cutter therapist thinks like this: "I need to spam simple craigslists ads, psychologically if I keep making people see my same ad over and over they’ll eventually crack and come to me. After that, I’ll charge them $70.00 an hour cuz that’s as little as I can afford to cover the costs of my massage equipment and rental space. I’ll also use this cheaper oil I got from a supplier in China, sure its not the greatest but I’ll just keep that a secret from the client." – I can see this therapist may attract a trickle of clients, who likely won’t be ultra-satisfied.

Our extra-miler thinks like this: "I simply love giving massages. I love being the best I can be. I love helping people and I love having people know that, so I will make an amazing craigslist ad. Then, I’ll charge them only $35..00 for their first session, and even though I’ll lose money and its scary cuz I can’t pay rent, I know that what I do is so beneficial and such good value, that people will come back to me as repeat business *and* tell all their friends. I’m glad I studied biology, anatomy and essential oils, so now I can use some hand-crafted oils made and researched specifically to have a healing massage, and I can’t wait to share this awesome info with my clients." – I could see this therapist attracting a ton of loyal, excited, clients who loves him and his work.

After a brief e-mail or chat with each of these candidates, which would you choose? I think its safe to say we’d all choose the extra-miler. If you look at most successful and fulfilled people in life, they’re extra-milers. The way they treat people, friends, clients, suppliers, employees, bosses, whoever. They hold an amazing mindset, even if things seem risky or scary, and it pays off for them a million times over.

Often when I discuss this situation with any of the pie-cutters, I end up confronted by tons of resistance and many excuses as to why changing their mindset is too scary, risky, unaffordable, etc. and often despite knowing that I’m a creative thinking person, just brimming with solutions, they’ll tell me that there *is* no other way and they can’t believe I’ve taken the risks I’ve taken, let alone for them to do it — and so they remain pie-cutters, reaping a pie-cutter’s results. When I discuss this situation with extra-milers, they invariably share their joy in life and express an intense desire for all the pie-cutters to join us in success, and for them to change their mindset and do things a different way.

Value is the essence of things which improve one’s life. Price is simply the nearly arbitrary money/time investment required of us to gain the essence of Value. When you offer something to the world, it doesn’t matter so much what price you charge (OK, it matters a bit ,) but it matters how much value you’re offering. When you are investing in something, it doesn’t really matter how much you’re paying as much as how much value this investrment will bring to you and the people around you.

So that’s a quick look at how value vs. price works in day-to-day to life, but that’s not all. Possibly more worthy of your attention, is the value you place on yourself.

Do you value You?

Have you ever known a musician who’s obvious true calling was so bright and clear to you, but they chose to work in another field where they were miserable? An artist who creates the most beautiful things, but spends most of his time in a retail store, barely making ends meet? Someone with brilliant ideas for a new career but with "no idea how to start?" This situation wherein someone brilliant and talented with large amounts of goodness to offer the world ends up settling for less out of fear, ignorance, brain-washing, abuse, lethargy, misplaced priorities, or whatever — is something most of us have been witness to.

Often people do not acknowledge their own value, nor do they realize that to truly appreciate said value, is to develop it, risk with it, devote time to it, and definitely not to squeeze it in after an unhappy or ho-hum 9-to-5 grind. Again, what occurs because of this consistent lack of perceiving our own value, is a world filled with people with huge wells of talent and true-callings and idea-people and big-thinkers who wander around our planet moving boxes and settling for being locked in cubicles. These are the same big-thinkers and talented artists who can influence large bodies of people. If Beyonce said "Hey, I support the 1% for The Planet movement, it’s one way I’m an independent woman." Then so would a good chunk of the audience at her concerts. That’s the only work she needs to do at this point. However, she did not start out with that kind of power, she developed it. She kept giving and offering and letting go of worry, as she continued her singing. She has developed her value and launched her career and now she can influences massive amounts of people. You probably know musicians who have similar value potential, but are currently taking half-assed steps towards using it.

Do you value yourself?

Its usually not too difficult to look at other people and notice that they might not be living up to their potential, and its often less apparent for us to notice our own potential (possibly because we’re often focused on everyone around us instead,) or if we do notice, sometimes we live in denial for awhile.

"It is easy to pick fault with other people. In fact, often we gain a subtle enjoyment from highlighting the faults of others. If we are truly honest, however, we will see that when we criticize other people we actually have the very same weakness ourselves. Perhaps we may not make this mistake quite as frequently or as badly, but we still share it to some extent." – Tejvan Pettinger, PickTheBrain.com

Sometimes we just hold a very limited perspective. We may have feelings of inferiority eg: ”Other people can sing, live healthy, and make money…why can’t I?” and feelings of inadequacy eg: ”I have no talents…look at so-and-so, she’s just so talented, but I can’t do anything.” and feelings of worthlessness eg: "’Nothing I do really matters, so why try?” These things aren’t true; you’d be hard-pressed to find someone in the world who had little or nothing to offer, whether obvious or hidden. Stephen Hawking, crippled in body and indirectly voiceless from Motor Neurone Disease (or Lou Gherig’s disease?) kept up with the world of quantum physics and finished an amazing literary work. Nick Vujicic (of lifewithoutlimbs.com) leads an inspiring successful happy life, despite being born limbless. Even people who at first glance may seem powerless, have great springs of talent hidden within.

"Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you." – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sometimes the only way out of this mindset of low-worth, is faith. Faith in ourselves and our abilities, faith in our friends and family and support systems, or faith in angels or spirit guides or a higher power. If it helps you to use a different word than ‘faith’ which some people find to have too many religious connotations for them to appreciate, we’ll substitute the word ‘confidence.’ They are basically the same thing, regardless of what dictionaries may say. Confidence is knowing, deep-down, somehow that something is true. Confidence in oneself is having faith in one’s own abilities, confidence in one’s friends, is having faith in those friends to deliver. Confidence that "everything will work out for the best," or that one "has a special purpose here on earth," is faith in a higher power.

If we’re not focused too much on others, and we don’t have a very limited perspective, sometimes we’re just afraid. We don’t want people to think/see/say such-and-such about us, so we don’t do anything, in fear we stagnate.

"What’s holding us back? Ultimately, it’s fear. It’s almost always fear. Fear is the number one reason why people stay in their safety zones. It’s why people don’t start new businesses. It’s why people stop looking for love. But what are we afraid of?" – Susan Baroncini-Moe, Lifehack.org

If we stagnate in fear like an artist who hides all his work in his basement shying from criticism, then until it is out in the world, adorning walls or being viewed as often as possible, we’re hiding our talents and under-valuing ourselves.

Here’s a youtube video by Paul Evans on Value.

 

The case he is looking at is the case of someone who thinks they have very little skill. They have some though. They can make a simple youtube video or maybe a blog, and in his example, they don’t value this ability or use it. He has an interesting model of how people tend to look at value, and compare themselves to other people they deem as "high-value" people, it also analyzes things society tends to de-value and dismiss as not valuable. When we see the people who are executing their skills and talents as a very very high level, we can often downplay our own abilities, thinking "Hey, my skills are nowhere near as good as that guys," but there are tons of people in the world, who know nothing, and need tons of help, that the high-level guys won’t even bother with. There is nothing bad or wrong in offering to help those people who are behind you in certain skillsets, and there’s nothing wrong with learning from the people who are ahead of you in certain skillsets. Whatever the case, there is value to be demonstrated.

Valuing others

How do we value other people?

"The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings." – Albert Schweitzer

Its important to love and value yourself before you do anyone else. If you feel yourself respectable and worthy of affection, people will flock to you because they will want to be around someone who loves themself and feels joyous about their own life and existence.

Its recommended to genuinely be interested in people. Make eye contact with them when they speak to you, listen to what they tell you. Listen, by focusing and clearing your mind and try to feel their feelings. Avoid keeping an inner monologue or planning what to say next or your next conversational move. Sympathize with them when they share their problems with you. Make it a priority that their words matter to you, and help them believe it.

People enjoy being with people who are fun to be around. It will be impossible for them not to be attracted to you when they see you have a good sense of humor and a positive outlook, and eventually you will attract amazing and helpful people into your life.

Act kindly towards others; an unexpected gift, will empower both you and them.

If you find yourself being upset or miserable make a point of changing how you feel. The most helpful people you can meet may easily shy away from being around miserable people.

If you can take time to work on yourself, you will automatically being valuing others. If you give yourself goals such as being extremely attentive, extra generous, super-positive, etc., then you will express those qualities to others, and naturally and habitually leave them feeling valued and appreciated.

The long and short of it…

Basically, what I’d love to encourage, is for all of you to truly value yourself and others. Value yourself, and in doing so, you will understand and be aware of value, and it will then allow you to truly value others.

And hey, if there’s anyone you feel would benefit from a little public valuing or linkage here, feel free to mention them in the comments

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