Catalyzing Your Talents and Potential

Apply What You Are Learning When I was a freshman in high school, I started to play the electric guitar. Soon after, I was invited to join a rock band. The only problem was that I knew only three chords! But since I had my own guitar and amp, I was in, chords or no chords! A band member gave me a bunch of new chords to learn that were in some of the songs we would be playing. I had just a few weeks to learn the material, so I practiced my chops every day after school for about four [...]

The Reflective Practitioner

Thinking deeply is quickly becoming a lost art in our fast-moving Western so­ciety. For example, if you visit a country in the East and come across an elderly man working quietly in a beautiful and serene garden, you would not interrupt him because he’s doing something that’s culturally perceived as important. On the other hand, if you were in the West and saw someone running around in the office like a chicken with his head cut off, texting with one hand, stacks of papers in the other, and a Bluetooth fastened to his ear, you wouldn’t interrupt him because in American [...]

Overcoming Learning Stagnation: Randomization

Overcoming Learning Stagnation: The Practice Of Randomization The act of intentionally randomizing life helps us from getting stuck in our routines. Changing the environment, breaking up old patterns, and being exposed to new contexts fuels new learning. New learning increases capacity. We can all get in boxes very quickly and live our whole lives out of them. Most people gravitate to a life that’s comfortable, familiar, and routine-based. So, to prevent learning stagnation we must choose to inten­tionally create random rituals that randomize and break up the patterns of life. This helps us stay open to new ideas, people, perspectives, and [...]

The Discipline of Unlearning

The Discipline of Unlearning Unlearning is one of the most under-utilized approaches to learning. We often picture learning as adding to what we already have. For example, we have a certain level of knowledge or proficiency about something. So, to learn is to increase. Many people think of learning as something like the image of opening up the top of a person’s head and pouring more knowl­edge into it. But that’s not always true. Sometimes we get more traction in our learning by knowing what to unlearn. Fruitfulness Is In Pruning, Not Adding Picture a logjam in a river. When it’s [...]

The Power of a Wisdom Community

Live Out the Kaizen Way We’re influenced by the books we read, by the media we view, and by the people we hang out with. I’ve also learned that there are other ways to keep evolving, expanding, and increasing in our personal growth, career devel­opment, and spiritual depth. In this next series of blogs, I suggest four practical ways to feed your hunger for learning and to help you maximize your potential. These principles have worked for me, as well as for many people I know. They will work for you, too. The Power of a Wisdom Community Many well-meaning people [...]

Becoming a Kaizen Leader

What A Kaizen Leader Really Looks Like One of my favorite stories about lifelong learning is attributed to Jigoro Kano, the founder of Judo and a tenth-degree black belt. Mr. Kano is known as a role model who was committed to applying the Kaizen way of continuous growth in his personal, professional, and spiritual life. It has been told that on his deathbed, Mr. Kano, the highest-ranked black belt of his time, insisted that he be buried in his white belt instead of his normal black belt. The Secret of the White Belt A white belt was the sign of a [...]

Becoming A Voracious Learner

Increasing Capacity I love the saying, "God's gift to us in our potential, and what we do with our potential is our gift back to Him.” Fruitful lives are built as we discover, develop, and deploy our gifts, talents, and vocations (which in Latin means “calling”). One of the hallmark qualities of They desire to grow personally, expand professionally, and deepen spiritually. Wise men and women know that to do this they must be constantly growing and open to receiving instruction from a plethora of inputs. The wiser they become, the more they want to learn. Voracious learning is one of [...]

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