Learning


Almost everything we do is something we learned. For most of the important functions, like walking or talking, we did not even have a teacher. At least not a direct one. The bigger part of what we do is automatic, based on habits, without having to plan or foresee our action. Habits save time and energy and provide the stability that is necessary for any behavior. But at the same time it is also an obstacle on the way to the changes necessary in order to better adapt you to your changing environment.

 

Very often we can find that something we know how to do is no longer the best choice, or that we tend to repeat it because it is familiar, but are unable to form an alternative.

 

Try to brush your teeth with your less dominant hand. How does it feel?. Now imagine a situation in which you can not use your dominant hand and have to do everything with the other one.....How would you learn to do that?.

In order to develop new possibilities and get beyond a habit, that is, to learn, one has to know to distinguish what is really being done, to be able to feel how he moves and what is the quality of this movement. In this gap between what you really do, and what you think you are doing, a new level of awareness might appear. The growing ability to listen to oneself and to organize oneself in more than one way in any given occasion, permits the individual to develop an ever growing degree of freedom and independence, in both thought and action, and to become more and more himself.

 

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