We don’t learn anything if we’re comfortable. If there’s no stretch between where we are and where we could be, there’s no tension to move.
I think of our brains like a rock tied to a rubber band. Most of the time, the rock just sits there with a loose rubber band just hanging around. But when we want to learn, to change, to move the rock from where it is to somewhere else, we have to stretch the rubber band enough that the rock shifts.
Failure is a really good way to apply tension. There’s a pattern of development you might have heard of that goes like this:
First we are unconsciously incompetent.
Then, we become consciously incompetent.
With a bit of practice, we become consciously competent.
And one day, we are unconsciously incompetent.
Continuing to have a go on the basis that failure is successful learning accelerates this process.
We only know we've failed when we get feedback. When we find out we’ve failed, we know we’re incompetent. Great work! We’re at step 2!
Because we keep trying, we get better. We try and get it right more of the time. And eventually, we’ll be getting feedback on our failure in other areas. We’re consciously competent!
Of course, at this point, we’re not actively working on some other area of our language we just realised we’re incompetent it. And so our conscious competence becomes unconscious.
So, fail successfully, fail courageously, fail to learn!
The Reo Project | Day 218