What I learned in my writing workshop last week.

The workshop I took last week was probably the best I’ve ever had. Yes it was about writing and the teacher is just amazing.

But as I have had time to process the experience, I found that the reason it excelled had nothing really to do with writing.

Huh?

Let me explain. This was a total of 17 1/2 hours of learning. Being that I’m 77 years old, you can imagine I’ve been exposed to a lot of learning experiences.

For me they are usually associated with tremendous anxiety and I’m constantly wary of having to speak up or tell about “how things went”, answer questions, or take tests of some sort. The worst ones are those with practical exercises that everyone has to participate in.

I learn very little in those courses and I just sit and sweat (figuratively and sometimes literally) watching the minutes and hours tick by until it’s over.

I had none of that last week.

Why?

Because the teacher gave us freedom. She said we could do the exercises – and there were several- then or at another time. She would even say at the beginning of the next one that we could continue to work on the previous one.

At the end of the day she gave us suggested assignments but didn’t require us to turn them in or report on them if we didn’t want to.

There was plenty of opportunity to speak up about what we did or ask questions.

I felt great the entire week and it was – as I realized later- because I had the freedom to be me. My creativity was through the roof and my retention was unbelievable. All because I didn’t have to perform.

Performance is such an intense pressure on people and yet we don’t even realize it anymore because it’s usually pressure on the teacher AND the student. When one feels the need to perform, it’s transferred on to the student.

Then everyone has anxiety and I’ve talked many times about the effects of anxiety on the brain. That the functioning of the frontal lobe is diminished. With the anxiety response the flight or freeze response is triggered and with anger the fight response is.

When the frontal lobe doesn’t work, learning is essentially cut off. Isn’t it interesting that the thing that is intended to promote learning actually hinders it. What a shame.

How can you take this fact and my experience and apply it to your everyday personal and professional life?

Just think about it- nowadays even asking how are you had a hidden agenda and is performance based. When asked that, you know that the other person is just being polite and most of the time doesn’t really care how you’re doing.

What things do you say to your kids, your spouse or your friends that expect some sort of response that once dissected may actually be performance based.

Take some time to examine your language AND consider asking the person you’re talking to how they feel when asked certain things.