Comfort is the position held before you begin to discover the limits of your potential.  With physical exercise, the realized benefit of resistance only comes past the point where you first become uncomfortable.  You have to leave a sense of comfort behind and proceed forward into resistance to discover what you are capable of.  The body decays without resistance.

The same is true with learning.  Applying what you are learning is first moving through  resistance, outside your comfort zone.  Applied learning to me is moving beyond passive knowledge and into discovering your potential and the realized impact you can generate.  The mind also decays without resistance.

If you don’t have an applied learning practice to push yourself through resistance, your potential and the possible contributions will remain undetermined.  I don’t recall hearing any person complain that they are just learning and contributing too much.  It still seems to me, that we all like to be appreciated.

There requires a passion to move into resistance each day:

• We all know that exercising for 30 – 45 minutes per day, five or more days per week is a key to good physical health.  This is a great practice that produces great impact for us.
• I’d like you to think similarly about a practice of continuously learning and applying what we are learning to generate impact as being critical as well.
  • A practice of applied learning is your navigation through resistance.
  • A practice of applied learning to discover the right opportunities before us.
  • A practice of applied learning to focus on what matters most for us, the organizations we serve with and the benefactors of that work.
  • A practice of applied learning to connect a creative pattern of approach with a reasoned plan to move through resistance.
  • A practice of applied learning to relate well with others so that they may also contribute more with you.

“The fact of the matter is that there will be nothing learned from any challenge in which we don’t try our hardest.  Growth comes at the point of resistance.  We learn by pushing ourselves and finding what really lies at the outer reaches of our abilities.”   —  Josh Waitzkin  —

Ideally, the references and insight offered in this blog serve to coach you in your applied learning practice each day.  There is certainly no shortage of resistance opportunities in our lives for us to work through.

MITM