Are you growing? Not in height, but in your capabilities, your character, your walk with God? Here’s one way to check: how often lately have you been frustrated, overwhelmed, and uncomfortable?
Yes Benefits, No Discomfort
It’s a little funny sometimes how we always want to have the capability, the strength, the skill, but we avoid the exact things it takes to develop those parts into us. I’ve heard it said that the place where success resides is outside your comfort zone. I think that describes it pretty well. Have you been there lately?
I’ve been learning what some may think is an odd skill lately, and even though it might not be the most important capability in the world, the experience has been very enlightening. You probably can’t tell, but this article is being written with a different keyboard than usual. It’s called the Dvorak keyboard layout, and I encourage you to Google it and learn more about what makes it worth learning.
But keyboards aren’t what we’re talking about: we’re talking about learning. And it’s what I learned about learning that can encourage and propel you to success in what’s important to you. What I learned is this:
Embrace the Stages
Learning involves progressing through four distinct stages. Only if you persist through the hard times, the times that make you want to quit, will you get to experience the benefits on the other side. If there’s only one thing you hear from this entire article, let it be this: you must persist. When all seems most hopeless, you must hang on—you are so close to a breakthrough!
The four stages of learning are these: enthusiastic beginner, frustrated learner, capable but lacking confidence, and master. When I first learned of the Dvorak keyboard layout, I got really excited! I jumped into an online lesson and flew through it happily. This enthusiasm lasted a few days…
By the next week I had a few of the letters down, but by no means enough to type at a decent pace. I used the backspace key like nobody’s business, and it seemed typing three sentences would take me all day. It was at this point that the thought of giving up entered my mind. To make matters worse, I told a few friends about what I was doing and how it could benefit them. Rather than getting excited like I did, they told me that this was a waste of time and not worth the effort. This was the low point of my Dvorak experience, and only my commitment to learning and growing helped me hold on.
Don’t Give Up!
I’m happy to report that as I persisted, I began to improve and the new style of typing became more and more fun. Better than that, I began to see some of the lessons I’m describing for you here, and that made me even happier that I stuck with it! I still have some room to grow before I become a master Dvorak typist, but I’m at a strong pace and am moving forward—taking the lessons I’ve learned and applying them to growth in the areas that matter most. Will you get out of your comfort zone this week and start learning something new? Let us know what it is by registering (which is free of course) and posting a comment below! Thanks for including us on your path to a thriving life!