Please take a walk down memory lane with me. Reflect, for a moment, on your professional and personal growth experiences over the years. Have you ever felt that you weren’t quite sure you wanted to do an activity or exercise suggested by a trainer, facilitator, or coach? It doesn’t happen to me too often. (What happens more often is having done the activity, I wonder about its purpose, importance, and usefulness.)

I’m currently taking an online course in learning how to draw in new and different new ways. I am really enjoying it and I think the teacher is very good. Those of you that know me, know that that is high praise indeed, as course design, development, delivery, and evaluation are my bailiwicks, and it tends to make me a hypersensitive (hypercritical?) participant.

In the second lesson of the course, we were asked to do an exercise and I hesitated. No doubt this is due, in part to my curious nature/the realization that I am a “Questioner” in Gretchen Rubin’s work on Four Tendencies. And, while I could conceptually see the POSSIBLE use of the task, it was stepping into a process I don’t often do—pure fantasy product creation.

So I hemmed and I hawed, and yet I didn’t want to step into the next lesson because if a course has a good design, I shouldn’t be skipping anything along the way, is my thinking. So I abandoned myself to the experience and I am glad I did! The exercise asked me to engage in thinking totally differently—and that was the beauty of it! The assignment was to make my ideal pan. I do love pens though I have never imagined what the perfect pen would be. I made the time to delight in a bit of whimsy and brainstorming… after the initial doubts about whether I could actually do it. This darling is the result! It is fun, practical, and incorporates my love of the undersea world.

So what about you?

How do you engage with your learning? Do you (generally) trust in what has been designed and developed or do you question throughout the experience? I do both! And I will tell you with no shame, that I will never say, and do not appreciate hearing, “Trust in the process.” If a teacher, trainer, facilitator, or coach can’t tell me why I’m doing what I’m doing, where it came from (tied to what earlier content and/or processes or the overall gestalt of the learning), and how I can integrate what I’m learning into the present or future learning of the course, work or life, I outta there!

What’s your thinking about your learning experiences?

With the shift to so much learning online there’s been a proliferation, if not a glut, of opportunities… some are worth their weight in gold (so to speak) and others are mere imposters of what learning is meant to be… I have learned to be in touch with the creators and ask the questions  I need answered/do my due diligence because I know how I learn best. What about you?

My time, energy, and resources are too precious—I guard them well.