Learning from Others Who Know More
Like most people, I went to school while growing up. I also played on sports teams and I went to church on a regular basis. Whether I was being instructed by a teacher, a coach, or a pastor, I just assumed what they were telling me was right. They were supposed to know more than I did and I’m sure that most of the time they did.
Even though I generally believed what I was taught, I can remember a few occasions where I did ask myself if what some of my coaches were telling me was right. The reason for this was that there seemed to be a contradiction between the way some of the best players performed skills and the way the coaches said to perform those same skills. Nonetheless, it really wasn’t proper to question our coaches, so I kept my thoughts to myself when I saw these contradictions.
Challenged to Think for Myself
It wasn’t until I was in college that teachers purposely challenged students to question and evaluate what was being taught. The teachers would often bring up different points of view in science, or teaching methods, or exercise methods, and give us the opportunity to learn how to look at differing opinions with an objective mind in order to form a rational conclusion.
I eventually learned that listening to an expert authority in a given area of subject matter is a good place to start learning if you want to improve yourself in that area. However, they may not always have the best method for development and success in every step of your journey towards improvement. There may be other approaches to success that work better than the one a given expert happens to favor.
Questioning Discrepancies
It is important to be teachable and trust those who are instructing you and helping you to improve. However, if there seems to be a discrepancy between what you are being taught and the way successful people are doing things, you may need to find out why. I don’t mean you should do this in a rude or defiant way, but in a manner that helps you clarify a discrepancy so that you can resolve it and come to an honest conclusion. Since I’m into sports, I’ve provided some videos that demonstrate the discrepancy between what coaches often teach and the way various sports skills are truly done.
The first video is about a basketball coach who was taught to point his toes directly at the basket, and to face his body square to the basket when shooting a basketball. But when closely watching the best shooters in video after video, he found that most of them turn their feet and their body at an angle to the basket when they shoot.
The next video blew my mind the first time I saw it. I almost went into denial and could hardly believe what I was seeing. When shooting a basketball, I was always taught not to watch the ball when it came out of my hand and traveled towards that basket. The instruction I always received was to fix my eyes on the basket until the ball either went into the basket or missed. But in a study on how good shooters actually shoot, I was shocked to learn that a lot of them watch the ball fly through the air as it leaves their hand instead of keeping their eyes on the basket.
This is a video by Malcolm Gladwell who discusses how elite tennis players think they roll their wrist forward upon contacting the ball while doing a top spin forehand. But when their hitting technique was actually studied, it was found that they roll their wrist forward after the ball has already left the racket.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXGragWF00M
Rethinking
In order to reach your potential and develop the treasures of ability within you to the fullest degree, there may be occasions when you need to rethink what you are trying to improve at from a different point of view, even if it violates what you have already been taught.
Mindsets that Determine The Method you Choose to Follow
When striving to improve at something as much as possible, it is likely that you will have to learn from the methods of others. How are you going to know which methods to use? I have found that there are different mindsets that cause people to follow the methods they end up choosing.
I think it would be beneficial to consider the mindsets that lead to the reasons as to why people follow the methods they follow. All of them have benefits, but they may have drawbacks as well. You must be able to identify when you are being blinded to the possibility of doing something a better way because of a mindset that keeps you from having an open mind. The following are some examples of these mindsets:
Mindset #1: Imitate a Pro or Big Name Celebrity in Your Field
In any given field, there are usually a group of people who are considered to be the top performers. Multitudes want to know how the big names succeeded and made it to the top so that they can follow the same path. If you are in a field where there are top performers, you may have a favorite among them. If you have a favorite, you may be persuaded to imitate their methodology more than anyone else’s methodology because they are your favorite. This is ok unless there are valuable things that you can learn from others.
If there is a star that you want to imitate within the field you are pursuing, and you identify so strongly with this person that you can’t deviate from their ways in order to do what would be best for yourself, you may be hindering your development.
It’s easy for a person to feel validated in their developmental approach if they are identifying themselves with the success of someone else who is highly esteemed. If it becomes more important to you to imitate a star than it is to achieve results for yourself, then you can miss out on finding the best way to do things for yourself.
Learn from the best. Consider their methods and their approach, but don’t let your identity get so wrapped up in theirs that you can’t be open minded to the best way of doing things. There may be another person in your field that you don’t admire nearly as much, but their approach would be more practical for you. Let the results you receive speak louder than the voice or the popularity of a big name within your field.
Mindset #2: Follow the Group
Social dynamics can greatly influence the approach you choose in order to improve at something you want to be successful at. The approach you choose will greatly influence whether you succeed or not. If you are trying to develop your abilities within a group setting, and the group has a set way of doing things that they believe in, it’s possible that you will feel obliged to do things their way. Of course they will be much more encouraging and offer much more approval if you follow their ways, which is a good thing if their ways are working for you.
Also know that within a group setting, there will usually be someone who is a top performer. The top performer is often the one who gives evidence in the minds of the others that the methods being used are valid and highly productive. However, it has been said many times that some people have the talent to succeed in spite of what they do, not because of what they do. Even if others seem to be succeeding by doing things a certain way, you must assess whether or not you are developing and progressing.
If you find that the methods of the group are working for you, then it would only make sense to stay with the group. If not, you may be able to persuade the group to try new methods. If they are not open to this, you may consider being among the group but doing things your own way when you feel it is necessary, or you may need to developing outside of the group you are with. I know that for many people the group relationship is the most important thing. If this is true of you, you may want to stay with them even if you believe that there is a better methodology that would help you more. If not, you may need to develop more independently from the group or find a new group.
Mindset #3: It sounds Logical
Some people can give wonderful reasons that sound highly logical for everything they do. Logic and reasoning can be very persuasive, but logic can be built on assumptions that seem to be true when they are not. If you watch the video that Malcolm Gladwell does about class rank and how it affects persistence and future success, you get an example of how logic has the potential to fail. For example, it would seem logical that a better school would help someone get a better education and that their education would be more credible to others because they came from a better school. It’s logical that this would lead to more success and better job performance, but Gladwell shows that there a ways in which class rank seems to be more important to certain types of accomplishments than the quality of the education. In other words, what we think would be logical doesn’t always play out in reality.
In my own experience, there are oodles of examples in sports and fitness where people give very logical reasons for why they do a skill or a fitness activity a certain way. For example, some coaches believe that lifting a weight very slowly removes momentum from the lift and puts the muscles under much more tension. It feels like your muscles are working much harder when lifting this way and many people believe it is the most logical way to build strength. But a simple law of physics states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, which means the harder and faster you push against a weight, the more force it pushes back with against your muscles. This is why most of the best lifters in modern times lift weights fast and explosively to develop strength.
I say all of this to emphasize that people can give reasons that seem very logical for why they do things a certain way, but good sounding logic can be misleading if the underlying reasoning is not correct. Even if someone seems to have a logical explanation for everything they do, it doesn’t hurt to question their logic when considering the best way for you to accomplish something.
Mindset #4: Science
Anecdotal Evidence
There are all kinds of science. Anecdotal science is one type of science, although strict scientists may not think it is. Anecdotal science usually consists of isolated cases. For example, it could be true that a certain nutrient helped one person recover from a disease or physical problem. They could claim that they have found a cure for their physical problem, and it may be true for them, but it is insufficient evidence to know that it will work as a cure for everyone else with the same problem. Ask yourself if you are being persuaded to follow a certain path because of anecdotal evidence as this type of science is not always conclusive.
Misunderstanding of Variables
Another problem that arises in science is the consideration of variables that are responsible for the way things turn out. For example, there could be people on an island who live much longer than average. A person who visits the island may notice that everyone on the island eats a certain vegetable that is somewhat uncommon in the rest of the world. They may study this vegetable and find that it has nutrients that are beneficial to your health and conclude that this vegetable is responsible for the long life span of the people on the island. However, there could be multitudes of other variables as to why the people live long. It could be the water quality, air quality, stress free living, healthy lifestyle, good genetics, or something else, but someone could use their knowledge of nutrition to convince people that this unique vegetable is the key variable that is responsible for long life.
The Scientific Method
Then there is the scientific method of research approach. It tends towards the other extreme by disregarding any evidence as valid unless it’s been proven over and over again using a pet model of scientific research protocol. This type of science often de-validates a lot of things that have merit. If something does work that the scientific community hasn’t gotten around to putting through decades of their research model, they may say there is no scientific evidence that it works.
In my own experience, there are a lot of good training methods for improving fitness that are complex enough that they don’t fit neatly into the scientific research method. And if a training method works, but the scientific community can’t get a perfect grasp as to the specific roles that each variable played in making it work, they may throw the whole thing out as non-scientific with the inference that it doesn’t work at all when it does work. Furthermore, the scientific community often ignores any evidence or research that has taken place outside of its own community as invalid. This is not to say that the scientific method and the scientific community is bad, but much has been discovered long before the scientific community ever confirmed it to be true. If someone in a given field has an approach that is helping a lot of people develop their abilities, but their approach doesn’t have the stamp of approval by a certified scientific study, don’t assume that it’s invalid, it may be an approach that can help you.
Mindset #5: Statistics
It’s nice for someone to have data to back up what they are saying, but data and statistics can be conveniently manipulated to say whatever a person wants it to say. Someone can use data and statistics to convince you that their approach to helping people improve is valid, but don’t you must be sure that the data is telling the whole story and not just the part they want you to hear. They may give you data that shows they’ve helped hundreds of people succeed at getting better at a job or a skill, but neglect to tell you that they weren’t much help to thousands of others that went to them for help.
Standing for What is Right
Throughout history, there have been scientists who discovered a scientific truth, but it was rejected and so were they. You can read about this by clicking on the links below. There have been others in religion, politics, and just about any field who were rejected because they deviated from the norm, even when they were right. Jesus and his disciples were not exception to this. It’s possible that you may have to suffer rejection at times in order to take the path of excellence that deviates from the norm. Make up your mind ahead of time that you will not let it stop you from fulfilling the destiny that God has for you.
Follow Results
Why do I mention all of this about standing for what is right, and to discuss things such as: data, science, logic, group dynamics, and imitating a big name? Because it may play a role in regard to the methods you choose to use to develop yourself and accomplish something of value. Out of all the choices you can make, there may be benefits and drawbacks to each of them. There may be times when it is necessary to keep an open mind and look at several points of view, and let the results that you get do the most talking. Follow results.
One caution about following results; they can change with circumstances. What worked during one phase of your development, doesn’t always work in the next phase. Sometimes there are ways of doing things that bring quick results that are not the best way for gaining long term results. It is also of major importance that you have a realistic expectation about what type of results you should be getting at each stage of your development. I believe in following results, but you must be learn how to interpret those results.
A Teachable Spirit
It is possible to over-do it with questioning. You can question everything that you are doing to the point where you have no confidence in your approach to developing your abilities. This can cause you to jump from one approach to another without ever having a consistent strategy that’s needed to develop yourself. Remember that the purpose of questioning is to find the truth, not to confuse yourself with endless possibilities or challenge those who are trying to help you. In order to learn from others, you’ll need a humble, teachable spirit, rather than to be in a constant state of suspicion towards their help. No one knows everything, but we can all learn from both positive and negative results, and make necessary adjustments along the way.
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