Mistakes - To Get Better You Have to Get Ugly

today's plan is to squash some myths of learning to ruffle some feathers to call some people out and to talk about what learning really looks like these next few minutes are hugely important for anybody that's trying to get better at anything it's hugely important for coaches for teachers for parents for students for athletes in other words this is hugely important for you let's do this if you're watching this you've most likely learned how to walk and you've most likely learned how to ride a bike and when you learn those two things what did you do a lot of that's right crashing and falling you stumbled you fell down you scraped your knees you made hundreds and hundreds of mistakes on the way to mastering those two skills now there's two things I'd like to point out first these mistakes these crashes and Falls were totally necessary in the learning process nobody's ever learned to ride a bike and nobody's ever learned to walk without falling down in order to figure it out you had to make mistakes second these mistakes were celebrated somebody in your life your mother your friend your brother was there cheering you on was there celebrating the mistakes was there telling you to get back up and to pedal faster and to try it again this is a highly effective but very straightforward approach to learning you try to walk or you try to ride a bike you fall down and you crash you celebrate the mistake you learn from the mistake and then you do it again and this is how we learn lots and lots of things when we're young however somewhere down the road this changes and there's a shift there's a shift from celebrating the mistakes from making lots and lots of big and glorious mistakes from leaning into situations that are going to make us make more mistakes we shift from this to punishing mistakes becoming embarrassed or ashamed of mistakes to avoiding any situation where we might make mistakes in his amazing book self-renewal John Gardner talks about this shift one of the reasons why mature people are apt to learn less than young people is that they are willing to risk less learning is a risky business and they do not like failure in infancy when the child is learning at a truly phenomenal rate he is also experiencing a shattering number of failures watch him see the innumerable things he tries and fails and see how little the failures discourage him with each year that passes he will be less blithe about failure by adolescence the willingness of young people to risk failure has diminished greatly and all too often parents push them further along the road by instilling fear by punishing failure or by making success seem too precious by middle-age most of us carry in our heads a tremendous catalogue of things we have no intention of trying again because we tried them once and failed or tried them once and did less than our self-esteem demanded according to Gardner and lots of great research on growth mindset this shift from wanting to learn and wanting to grow and wanting to get better to worrying about how we look wanting to fit in and wanting to be perfect puts a huge damper on our abilities to learn and grow but where does this fear of failure and desire to look good come from there are two sources that are the driving force behind this shift first there are some external forces at play how we're praised what's rewarded what's punished at school and in sports and at home in a really important study Carol Dweck and her colleagues actually discovered some amazing insights about feedback so they gave hundreds of students a really really easy test and after the test half of the students were praised for their abilities so they said wow you're so smart at this now the other half was praised for their effort or the process and they said wow you must have worked really hard at this after this one cent of feedback some some interesting things started to happen first they presented all of the students with a choice for their next test they could either take a harder version or they could take another easy version of the test now I think we'd all agree the harder option would be a better opportunity to learn and grow however the crazy thing was 67% of the group that was praised for their abilities chose to take the easier test while 92% of the group that was praised for their effort chose to take the harder version now this is no joke this is like black and white night and day now let's unpack this a bit why do you think that nearly 70% of the abilities group took the easy way out you got it because they wanted to look smart again the progression goes student takes the test student gets praised for being smart student wants to look smart again and their main focus shifts to how they look of course 67% of them are going to take the easy test they want to look good on the other side 92 percent of the effort group took the hard one because instead of worrying about how they look they were focused on putting an effort and taking on the challenge the next part of the study is even more compelling this time they gave all of the students a hard test and during this challenge Dwight noticed that the group that was praised for their abilities quickly got frustrated and had a tendency to give up early while the effort group actually enjoyed the challenge and worked harder and longer which group do you think got more from this opportunity the effort group did no doubt about it this is key both groups were presented with the exact same challenge and opportunity to grow one group missed out because of the type of praise that they received the praise that shifted their focus to how they look the other group took advantage of the opportunity and got way more out of it cuz instead of worrying about how they look they were focused on putting an effort and taking on a challenge and all goes back to the shift in focus so quick recap this group does well on a test they get praised for their abilities their main focus shifts to how they look they take the easy way out they don't want to take a risk and they don't want to take on a challenge and when they're met with adversity when they're met with a challenge they back down they give up and they're frustrated all because they're worried about how they look now the other group took the test they were praised for their process and the effort their focus was all on the process this group was more likely to take on a challenge and when they were faced with the hard test they didn't back down they showed some grit they showed some perseverance and they enjoyed that opportunity to learn seriously this is an incredible impact that this had and remember this was all from one sentence of feedback imagine the destruction a few years of this has also a not so fun fact in a feedback poll we recently conducted 76% of all of the feedback someone hears throughout the day is directed at outcomes and abilities aka it's the kind that shifts their focus from what matters their process effort taking on a challenge and learning to how they look he'll wonder this shift happens only worrying about how we look or wanting to be perfect all the time is actually one of the worst ways to approach learning this can be really destructive best-selling author brené Brown weighs in on this in her book daring greatly perfectionism is not self-improvement perfectionism is at its core about trying to earn approval most perfectionist grew up being praised for achievement and performance grades manners rule following people pleasing appearance sports somewhere along the way they adopted this dangerous and debilitating belief system I am what I accomplished and how will I accomplish it please perfect perform healthy striving is self focused how can I improve perfectionism is other focused what will they think perfectionism is a hustle as we grow older and hear about all of the things that we can and can't do as we're rewarded for being perfect as we're punished for making mistakes as 75% of the feedback we hear is the destructive kind that pushes us farther down that road this shift happens and we abandon our childlike our mistake filled approach to learning this second driver of the shift is actually happening right inside of your head mate your lizard brain let me give you the quick breakdown the scientific name is actually called the amygdala but it's more fun to say lizard brain so that's what we're going to call it it lives right by your brainstem and it's the size of about two almonds it's like the og part of the brain it's the part of the brain that we share with wild animals obviously we've evolved quite a bit and we've built this human brain on top of it but the amygdala is the same and thinks the same as a wild animal it is hot-wired to seek safety and it is hot-wired to help us survive it is the source of fear so like if we were at a baseball game and a bat was flying at your head you would duck because of your amygdala it's also the reason that you jumped in your seat when there was a screaming goat on the screen the lizard brain is why we get nervous and it's why we freaked out some of its likes include comfort zones doing things that you will be good at fitting in the zoo easy things safe things and especially looking good the lizard brain absolutely hates change struggle effort the wild hard things taking on challenges speaking up making mistakes and especially looking bad now this comes in handy if our life is in danger but the problem is when it comes to learning all of the things that the lizard hates are the things that help us learn and grow so you have this lizard at the wheel that sits deep in your brain and it does whatever it can do to stop you it's the voice in your head telling you to slow down that you aren't ready to play it safe and to start tomorrow it's why we hate speaking up it's why we hate getting called on and it's why we hate asking for help it's also the reason I've been on reddit for the past hour instead of animating this video it's clear that the lizard is kind of the worst when it comes to learning and it's obvious that it's a huge source of this shift that we've been talking about the big problem here is it's not going anywhere you cannot kill the lizard brain you cannot conquer the lizard brain you cannot pull the oh it's not you it's me on the lizard brain you cannot bargain with the lizard brain by telling it to settle down or to not worry when we do these things it just gets stronger but what we can do is we can learn to run with it the best marathon runners don't learn how to not get tired they just learn how to deal with it and how to get better at running with it the lizard brain is the same and the best learners and the best performers have just figured out how to run with it and dance with that fear and resistance another cool thing you can do with the lizard brain is to use it as a compass and do the opposite of what it tells you to do so when the lizard freaks out it's just a sign that you are in the right place that you're doing something hard that you're doing something outside of your comfort zone that you are right where you need to be the more it matters and the more you need it the more the lizard freaks out so the more fear you feel now the key is to see that the fear tells us what we need to do when you're in a challenge and it starts to get hard and it starts to get ugly and you start to make mistakes are you approaching that situation as a learner or as a lizard a learner realizes that every situation the good the bad the hard the easy is an opportunity to grow she sees a challenge as a precious opportunity to stretch to fail to stumble and to learn she leans into the challenge she jumps into the challenge with her head up looking for the lessons and with this approach she learns a lizard will miss out on these opportunities because he's worried about how he looks he's worried about being judged she's worried about the critics he's worried about making mistakes he's worried about being perfect he holds back he has excuses he'll give up and sometimes he avoids the challenge altogether the key thing I want you to understand here is that learning is one of the most important skills that you can have but in order to be good at it you have to understand how it works that the mistakes and the ugliness are totally necessary in the learning process we have to fall we have to crash we have to stumble we have to fail we have to embrace those mistakes and we have to get back up learn from them and try again that is how we're built to learn Forbes writer Erica Anderson expands on this idea when you're really learning acquiring new skills or understanding behaving and operating in new ways you're going to be a novice that means you're not going to be an expert and you won't have all of the answers you'll make mistakes and have to ask dumb questions and you'll have ideas that you think are genius that will turn out not to work at all and becoming comfortable in that situation staying curious and open and continuing to explore and improve that's the essence of real learning hi my name is Seth Godin I'm the author of 17 bestsellers I started a bunch of companies I write a blog but mostly I fail I fail often and I fail with relish because I understand that when I do something that might not work I'm doing my best work the people who are good at learning say I like the feeling of not knowing yet the same way that people are good at skiing say I like the feeling of being just a little bit out of control that's how you get good at skiing and that's how you get good at math the difficulty comes from the fact that if you are not open to living with the tension of being stupid you can't possibly learn it I call it thirstiness if you are thirsty it means that you are willing to feel stupid you are willing to try you are willing to expose yourself to the unknown in order to see what your desires are to get to the next level the people who become great no matter their field or area of endeavor are those who are willing to be uncomfortable over and over again on the way to mastery if you can continually challenge your own preference for being good at things for being competent and be willing instead to be in the awkward place of I don't really understand this right now well then the 21st century is yours it is our job as coaches teachers parents role models to be in a constant state of learning and to create an environment where it is safe to do that we're falling down and stretching and making mistakes and getting out of our comfort zones are not only okay but where that is actually encouraged I guess to confront all of this there are a few questions we have to ask can you handle the ugly that comes with learning can you take a step back let things go a little longer a little faster get a little messy here so real learning can happen can you look at a miss shot a wrong answer or a low test score as an opportunity to grow as simply a stumble or fall off the bike do you want to look good or do you want to get better are you in learner or are you a lizard

Channel: Trevor Ragan

Views: 122,803

Keywords: Learning (Quotation Subject), mindset, growth mindset, carol dweck, learning, Developmental Psychology (Field Of Study), science of learning, train ugly

Id: 5Nymq7IVFSE

Length: 18min 45sec (1125 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 27 2015