Applied Learning

The first Applied Learning blog post was written on June 14th, 2018. Today, June 14, 2023 will be the last. It is time. For every weekday since the beginning, sans one day, a single message was posted. Today is post #1,285, ending this chapter of continuous learning for me.

My original intent, at the urging of a few kind people, was to provide a brief daily thought or prompt for each reader to learn and to apply for themselves in their actions. I’ve always included a valid reference from a noted author to extend depth beyond just my own words that day. The daily writing was my modality for coaching others to continually learn along with me. You can’t write for everybody, so I learned to write for me on this journey.

As a coach of sorts by nature, I tend to keep score as an indication of the effort I am putting forth. The Applied Learning blog posts have now been viewed 15,275 times by roughly 9,500 visitors from well over 100 countries. The real score is kept though by the value created for others, not the raw numbers themselves. An occasional comment such as “you must have written that just for me” is a much stronger indication of value derived than the raw numbers.

I will move on to another way to learn continuously, investing in myself another way. I’ve learned a lot by reading and writing to put forth a conscious thought each weekday over this time frame. I believe a few others may have benefitted from time to time as well. Just pebbles dropped into the water along the way, but ideally, a learning habit and practice were formed or improved by the outward ripples for others as well.

“Just as ripples spread out when a single pebble is dropped into water, the actions of individuals can have far-reaching effects.” — Dalai Lama —

MITM #1,285 Thanks

If you want to learn, it is not likely you will do so if someone or something does the work “for” you.

If you want to learn, it is not likely you will do so if someone or something controls the pattern of thought and effort given “to” you.

If you want to learn, it is highly likely that you will do so when someone or something engages you to do it “with” them.

When our intention is to learn for ourselves with others, as a leader or a follower, engage together to discover the better way to think and act with one another. Each will be more responsible and accountable if they are fully learning the way for themselves by personal experience, all while helping another with their learning as well.

Learning for impact and sustainability, as well as for transference to other experiences, is best conditioned by the learners for themselves. Don’t give them the manual, give them the lived experience. Don’t give only compliance and control processes, give them the chance to think and act with you.

— William Glasser —

MITM

In our lives we take an opportunity to prove that we can be successful. Restart with goals and concentrate our efforts to meet and surpass those goals. We measure our success in terms of numbers so that we can keep score as proof that we won or we lost within a timeframe.

More important than the numbers and the beginnings and the endings is knowing for certain that we learned to a level that generates a greater contribution with others by our actions. We start to learn and continue to do so continuously throughout our lives. Measuring the learning, the application for a greater good and not just the start and end of unconnected goals. Toward a life’s purpose and not an incremental score of success.

A goal will have a beginning and an ending so that it might be measured, but learning for purpose should have no end. One lap around the track is nice, but to continue running is more than multiple marathons of learning experiences. No need to obsess one timed lap at a time to prove yourself and your success. For the continuous learner, the journey is for a lifetime of impact filled with applied wisdom gathered from each adventure and opportunity to have learned.

“You must learn to stop thinking in terms of beginnings and endings, success or failures, and begin to treat everything in your life as a learning experience instead of a proving one.” — Guy Finley —

MITM

By connecting several thoughts and realigning them together differently than they were before, we are able to learn again from the new experience. We read from the best in the fields of professional success. We observe another in what they are doing and analyze their variants. We experience and review our own outcomes, mindful of continuous improvement. We listen to other people doing the work to more fully comprehend their perspectives.

The wisest among us have a very broad field of information and data that they seek to set their own course and the direction of a group of people if they are deemed a leader or a coach. Lessons can and have been learned from everywhere and everywhere, they rarely would come from review of the originating training manual.

Lived experiences discovered anew and creatively reconnected provide the best and most progressive game plans. The applied testing of that plan will then promote the next lessons to be learned in stark reality.

The solution to any problem is there for the taking if we would learn and apply together in a closed and continuous learning and relearning loop. Less significant is one who is thought to be right in the moment, more significant is the one who arranges to do the right things.

“A plagiarist steals from one person. A true artist steals from everybody.” — Pablo Picasso —

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For important matters we must make committed decisions and act upon them. There will be barriers, but we would work through them to attain what we decided to do. There will be terrible days and tangled messes of intangibles, but we are as resilient as we decide to be. For a declared purpose in our lives, we can be unstoppable.

If you were to decide to take an important medication each and every day, you could easily do so. It’s easy and it makes a difference that you know you need to fully commit to. If you were to decide to exercise for 30 minutes each day to improve and sustain your health, it would not be so easy to do. In fact, most fail miserably at it because they don’t fully commit. They fail by making the decision “if” they will work out each day rather than “when.”

We are more than capable to decide to act, to change our lives and to fully control our direction, but we fall to be passive if it difficult for us. It is not easier for us to simply let life happen to or for us, it is far better when you control it by making the hard and resilient decisions. None of us will be anywhere near perfect, but barriers are where we learn, grow and prosper.

Too busy, too complicated, and/or too tired are bullsh*t excuses. Outcomes attained without effort are rarely worth having at all and they often come with regret. With great purpose in life, great decisions are made and kept. Yes, where there is the will, there is the way.

By example, today will mark the #1,260th consecutive day of exercise for me, averaging well over 60 minutes per day. My only decision is when, not if. I know of a person that has run over 13,000 consecutive days and I have set my goal to follow their lead because it is possible. Someday I will quietly arrive at that impressive milestone by persisting and then continue on.

“Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in.” — Bill Bradley —

MITM

On June 15th of this year, I will have written an Applied Learning blog post each weekday morning for the past five years as an endeavor to continue learning for myself. To write, I aimed to take a prominent thought and briefly share an idea in a somewhat cogent way so that others could maybe connect with it to enhance their applied learning practice as well.

From this concerted effort, today’s post now marks number 1,280. This total far surpasses any original goal that I would have imagined when I started this journey. As I’ve been known to do, when I fully commit to something I work to make the most of it.

Tenacity and durability of habit are characteristic’s that I was brought up with. My Father missed less than five days of work with being out sick in his 43+ years with the railroad. That is a demonstration of nearly unmatched tenacity by applied example I would say. I am honored to have this attribute to some degree for myself, it has been a difference maker for any success I feel that I have obtained.

Every beginning has an end. My last writing exercise, at least in this way, will be June 14th, 2023. It’s the right time to move on to another endeavor to fully invest my learning in. Writing has been a challenging learning opportunity for me, with a number of great moments along the way. Starting each workday with a new connecting thought in my head that might be shared for another’s creative benefit has been a great experience.

In the last five posts of Applied Learning, I will reflect and share a bit more on my writing experience lessons and what I believe I have learned along the way. The right time has come.

“Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time.” — Seth Godin —

MITM #1280

Most experiences that we move through promote at least an emotion or two. The same is true with those that we closely relate with. If we are truly engaged to learn and to grow fully from each experience, we are better to connect ourselves with empathy to understand one another’s perspectives and our own. The interpretation of feelings we derive serve to motivate a more determined improvement.

Be open to the emotions to more fully comprehend the next best steps for yourself and with others. The compassion found and shared along the way of application can be as critical as the results themselves. With empathy we can deepen our discovery capacity for a better and more sustainable way.

If we were never open to the connect the emotions along with the experiences of our lives and how they work together, so much can be missed. Circumstances, conditions and outcomes alone tell only a portion of the learning and application of learning story.

“Empathy fuels connections.” — Brent Brown —

MITM

The present is the only time we have the opportunity to apply what we have learned toward our future aspirations. It is critical to have goals in anticipation of the future, but anticipation isn’t yet the actions that you must take. We learn and evolve from past learnings applied to the present goals only in the moments of now.

Critical to have learned from the past and also to anticipate with what goals you plan to obtain. In balance, the present remains the only time within one’s control. Past and future can limit us if over-valued, center on the now.

“In time, and as one comes to benefit from experience, one learns that things will turn out neither as well as on hoped nor as badly as one feared.” — Jerome Bruner —

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To be patient is a decisive action more than it is a pause. Not to sit still, but to adapt to the pace of things around you in analysis of learning experiences and planning.

There is a right time for right actions. Accept patience as wisdom in setting the precise time rather than rushing through on a bullish or convenient schedule.

Know your audience, know their motivation and know the condition best suited for your strategic actions. The right time is discovered by the patient learner.

“Adapt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson —

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Every day of our lives we have the chance to advance. For both mind and body, if we fail to use it, we will lose it. Opportunity is regularly presented for us to exert ourselves to one degree or another. From the effort, we learn, evolve and move to thrive.

Plan to use it and you will have learned from the experiences. Set a goal, make a commitment and then follow through with the actions to have used the opportunity. A younger person even has more to lose than an older one. Any stagnant day is wasteful and then diminishing over time if one continues to hold still.

The active mind and body works to generate and regenerate what we were born with. Potential varies widely among people, but those who invest in themselves will find the greatest significance and meaning in their lives. To thrive as we use it stretches potential and builds significance with and for others. No excuses, use it.

That which is used – develops. That which is not used wastes away.” — Hippocrates —

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