embody & do
Some would like to believe that learning can be done alone, in a tower, with a laptop. But in fact, until we interact with other people or systems, all we’ve done is absorb, we haven’t yet understood.
-Seth Godin
Seth Godin published this on his blog yesterday.
This hits close to home because I’ve been trying to learn how to actually understand, experience, and interact with the lessons and growth in my life. There are opportunities to take in knowledge and wisdom, but I’m trying to always remember there’s a huge difference between taking in — absorbing — vs. embodying and doing.
I was a really “good” kid and got along marvelously in school, fit into the world of academics, homework, and grades spectacularly, and loved to learn and go to class and do well on assignments and tests. That’s all fine and dandy, except the real world isn’t very analogous to that format. What we live through teaches us far more than what we just take in. In some ways, it was/has been really hard for me to transition from that worldview of “safe learning",” into the rough and tumble of living and experiencing life and humanity. Realizing how much I didn’t actually know yet and only conceptualized.
We can know things logically without knowing them deep in our bones.
We can absorb things from a computer or read hundreds of books without any of it having a true, realized impact on our actual, lived lives.
Once you hear, learn, or absorb something, if you think it’s useful and true, it’s your job to implement. It’s your job to act. To let it change you. To make something better because of what you’ve learned.
The learning cycle isn’t over until you’re employing and embodying the change.
So as the argument goes, you can’t really learn merely from a book or a classroom. Life is the grandest teacher of all, and there are no substitutes.
This is like a weak apology, with no follow-through — feels flaky, right? There’s no point. Similarly, it doesn’t really matter how many books you read or how much info you consume if you aren’t doing something with it, if it isn’t helping the trajectory of your life and your own becoming as a person.
Experiencing things is scary. Doing something about it involves risk. Change isn’t usually comfortable. Taking action requires impetus and courage.
This is not the path of least resistance.
But if we’ve established that isn’t the path we want to be on anyway, it’s good news! Here’s a way we can move forward!
By going out and engaging with the world;
by doing the things you’re reading about or watching YouTube videos on;
by being a crappy beginner and practicing;
by building something;
by diving into the process and staying committed;
by channeling your learning into doing and being;
by going somewhere you’ve never been before;
by leveling up your skills in awareness, listening, humility, communication, vulnerability;
by evolving constantly and questioning your own self-made limitations and beliefs.
At any time, you can make a change.
At any time, you can “interact with other people or systems” and begin to understand, not just absorb.
You have to show up for this, though. It isn’t passive.
It’s so much better.
P.S. Related: resilience.
