LearningConnect has Something to Say - and I'm Listening

You know how you travel through life and then whap! You’re back in a place you thought you’d resolved. It’s like a board game that keeps circling you around to the beginning, to square one, over and over and over again until the game is complete. You might be different every time you pass or land on the first square, you might collect $200, and then again, you might not even notice. So here I am after years of working with the very alive and powerful LearningConnect matrix that is much more than a process, it’s the source of my two companies, the core expression of the values and tenants of what I stand for personally, and why I’m here at this time and in this place.

What comprises the core of LearningConnect created the seed that has become the Ah Ha! and IdeaConnect companies and in turn they have nurtured and supported LearningConnect. A clear metaphor doesn’t neatly come to mind to help explain how linked these are for me. Just let me say, they are living and breathing on their own. And as a living energetic matrix, LearningConnect has a unique personality that although it came through me, I am still learning about every day.

So this time I am noticing I’m back to square one. The little life dramas that are causing me to slow my pace this time round to notice are not all that unique or relevant other than they are getting my attention. And it’s clearly time to articulate again what’s at the core of LearningConnect and why what’s at the core makes a difference and why any of us should even care.

So here’s the start. I’ll be illuminating a different aspect of what makes LearningConnect tick every day over the course of a few days or weeks or however long it takes.

LearningConnect honors and supports the way human beings learn new things – slowly, experientially, individually, emotionally, multidimensionally, upon reflection, building on prior knowledge, sharing with others on the journey.

Let's start with "slowly."

Human beings learn new things slowly (over time): I know this is not what anyone wants to hear. We all want what we want right now! Fast! We don’t have time to sit around! Why does it have to take so long? Great question. The parental answer: it just does! But I’m not your parent. And anyway, when did “slow” get such a bad rap?

Learning new things takes time.

“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” Einstein

It takes time to be aware of what is presented to us in each new moment. It takes time to notice what has been unobserved. It takes time to understand the relevance of a new awareness, to help our new awareness find its place in our internal belief systems and mental models. It takes time for us to learn something truly new.

And, then it takes time to be ready to shift.

The shift itself can happen in an instant – can rock your outer world, can alter your inner world so profoundly you don’t remember what the world was like before this moment right now. And it’s easy to forget, maybe even desirable to forget, just how long the new learning took us.

Ready for complexity to the power of, oh I don’t know, a million? On a team, learning something new together, you guessed it, takes time. Everyone brings their own way of seeing and being and shifting. It takes time to slow down enough to get grounded and to be able to bring our unique perspectives, awareness and way of being into the collective. Some of us are great at seeing the whole big picture all at once; some of us are great at identifying all the itsy bitsy pieces; some of us can move easily between the whole and its parts. One way of seeing and being is not better than another, just different.

Bottom line, because I know that’s what you’ve been waiting for: It takes time to move from the many unique and individual new learnings to a collective new learning – and isn’t that why you work together in teams in the first place – to get to an aligned collective knowledge so you can make the big hairy decisions and take relevant and meaningful action?

So, I leave you with a few old adages that still work for me. Slow and steady wins the race. Go slow to go fast. Slow down and smell the roses. Speed kills.