Learn To Engage Constraints

On your way to excellence and growth, you must engage constraints and challenges that require more of you than what you have experienced to date. You learn best when you practice three disciplines consistently.

A Good Example

A good example of someone learning to break through a challenge is a coaching conversation I had with a talented, seasoned partner who was struggling to work with a colleague. She (partner) found herself regarding her colleague as one trying to control a solution to their favor. It soured their relationship and stalled their progress. When she learned how to lead a collaborative conversation with someone who was more combative, she adjusted her mental position from being protective of her own needs to finding a solution that satisfied both of their needs. Not only did she lead to a solution they both could live with, the partner is now better equipped to engage other situations like this with more effectiveness. Her confidence and effectiveness will continue to soar.

3 Learning Abilities

Here are three learning practices that will accelerate you to greater heights. Briefly, you learn best when:

1. You suspend judgment. Your views and opinions were shaped from previous experience and, regardless of how well they have served you, they are lacking for the moments you will encounter going forward.
2. You accept that new situations require new learning. It’s so difficult to let go of what has worked in the past. Holding on and trying harder won’t take you there. This may be the primary discipline you must confront in yourself.
3. You are willing to be vulnerable to ideas and behavior that are not in your comfort zone. Exploring alternatives naturally make you uncomfortable and demand your admittance that you have more to learn.

By practicing these three abilities, you learn. And when you learn, you extend and expand your perspective, capability and attitude beyond where you are now.

A New Day

This is a new day, a new season, a new time. What you know and experience were formed at an earlier time that no longer exists. In order to make your mark in the world, you must adapt your understanding and perspective of yourself, other people and the world through a different lens. You must be better than you are now and you learn best when you suspend judgment, accept that you are incomplete and are willing to be vulnerable.