Why It's Essential You Learn Something New (especially if you think you're an expert)

Cass: 00:00:00

This is Crappy to Happy and I am your host, Cass Dunn. I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist and mindfulness meditation teacher and of course, author of the Crappy to Happy books.

In this show I bring you conversations with interesting, inspiring, intelligent people who are experts in their field and who have something of value to share that will help you feel less crappy and more happy. Foreign hello and welcome back to Crappy2Happy. Such a pleasure to have you here today.

I want to talk with you about something that I myself have been experiencing and I thought it might be relevant and helpful for you as well. And that is why it is so difficult, but also why it is so essential to be a beginner, even as an adult.

And specifically I want to talk about not just why it's important to be a beginner and learn whole new skills that you don't currently possess, but why it's important to keep that beginner's mindset and to continue to learn and go back to being a non expert, even when you are already an expert.

So even in those areas of those fields, like in your profession, in your job, where you have loads of experience and training and accreditations and qualifications and you've been doing things for a long time and why it is so necessary and important to give yourself the opportunity to go back to being a beginner and learn new skills, but possibly even unlearn some old ones. So for context, let me tell you what's been going on.

I am obviously a registered psychologist in Australia and I have been doing that work for a long time.

Even before I registered as a clinical psychologist, I had a master's in coaching psychology and I first trained as a life coach well over 20 years ago and I did that work for a while. So combined between my coaching work and my therapy work, I've got many, many hundreds and thousands of hours of experience.

I moved to the UK in: 2022

And the process for getting registered, you know, getting qualifications recognized just seems like arduous and expensive and I'm not really up for that. And so while I'm here in the uk, I'm just practicing as a coach.

All means get in touch with me if you're interested in some coaching because I do have some spaces available at the moment. Being a registered psychologist means that I have to do professional development every year.

And so what I decided was that I might look to get my ICF accreditation. Now, if you don't know what that is, ICF is the International Coaching Federation.

And it was set up to be like an association that sets the guidelines about proper standards of practice and a way to try to bring some regulation into a very unregulated industry. Now, I have never bothered to get ICF accreditation because why would I? Because I'm a registered psychologist.

I have a master's in coaching psychology. I've got my own whole set of professional standards and ethical codes of conduct that I need to adhere to.

So getting an ICF accreditation was really not a priority for me.

But I thought, oh, well, I'm in the UK and I need to get some professional development hours up and I can't work as a psychologist here that want to put my hours to towards getting my ICF accreditation. It's internationally recognized and maybe that would stand me in good stead if I continue to do coaching work.

So I decided first of all to enroll in a coaching certification course.

Obviously, I mean, there was a lot of stuff in the course that I already knew, but there was some approaches and some coaching processes and, you know, ideas and skills that I hadn't necessarily used in my own practice. So I spent last year doing this course and that was great.

It served its purpose for me to, to get the certification that I need to apply for my ICF accreditation. And it also taught me some new coaching approaches and skills that I hadn't used before.

And I'm not gonna lie, sometimes that was really uncomfortable. I mean, there was a whole mix of people in this program.

There were people who, like me, have therapy backgrounds who already have been working as coaches and they were complete beginners.

So it was really interesting to me to observe my own mindset in that environment and how much I, I would sometimes default to I know this already or I'm, I know better than this, or I think actually you're wrong about that. I mean, there's a bit of just the fact that I do have that experience, but there's a bit of ego involved in that.

And when you have been doing something for a long time and you have a whole sense of identity and you know, your self concept is wrapped up in your professional role and experience and expertise, etc. It is uncomfortable to go back to being a beginner and learn new things from scratch, even in a very safe, supportive environment.

And it's also really interesting how much we do kind of attach ourselves.

Our ego gets kind of attached to knowing better or being an expert or thinking or wanting to feel like we know better and that we have nothing to learn. Not that I ever felt like I had nothing to learn. Don't get me wrong at all.

I've just want to point out or just want to share that was curious to me that I did notice that coming up for myself. And it was just something that I had to really work on myself. Now, fast forward.

The next step in the ICF accreditation process is that you have to go through mental coaching.

So this is where you have to actually coach somebody, record it on video, and send it off to a mentor coach who has many, many, many hours of coaching experience to assess your performance. Now, this is like stuff that we used to do at uni. This is really going back to being a student again.

And when you go back to being a student again and being professionally evaluated by a peer in an area where you feel like you already have experience and skills and expertise, it is so uncomfortable. And what I have learned from this process is that, Jesus, I have really got a lot of bad habits.

Like, I have developed a whole lot of bad habits and things that I need to unlearn and things that I can definitely do better. Now, the other thing about this mentor coaching is that the ICF has a particular. Has particular competencies that they're looking for.

So there's particular style of coaching and particular things that you would do in a session that's being assessed, which might not be exactly what I would actually genuinely do in a session with a client. Every coach has their own particular set of skills, their own approach, their own style of coaching. You know, people do a lot of somatic work.

People do a lot of mindset work, some emotional processes work, different kinds of techniques that people bring. And so with that mentor coaching, it's not like you can necessarily have the space to bring all of that.

My point is that it would be easy for me to say, oh, things that I got pulled up on that don't tick the ICF boxes. Well, does it really matter?

Because we all have our own style when the actual fact is, like, there was some stuff that was wrong with what I did do, and there's a whole lot of room for improvement. So this just got me thinking. That's a lot of backstory.

Just to give you context about why it is so difficult for us to be beginners and to go back to being students again in our area of expertise.

I'm not talking about going and learning the piano or going and learning Spanish or going and learning the saxophone when you're an accountant doing something completely different. I'm talking about even in the area, especially in the area where you already consider yourself to be the expert.

Why it is so important to put yourself in situations where you become a learner again and you become a beginner again. So first up, let's talk about why that's so hard. I've already said there's so much ego invol involved in this.

There is so much identity wrapped up in being the professional, being the expert, having skills, having experience, been doing this forever, been doing it for 20 years, blah, blah, blah.

And having that challenged or feeling like maybe you're not as good or maybe you're not as expert as what you're telling yourself and what other people see you as. I think that's a big part of it too, is uncomfortable. That feels really uncomfortable. We don't like that. The other thing is that we have blind spots.

Like, we have been doing the same thing for so long that we don't even know what we are missing or what we're not doing to the standard that we would have done when we were beginners. This is the thing, right?

Like, there's research that shows that even doctors learning particular spinal surgeries, they don't make mistakes on the first go or the second go. They make them on the 15th go. And pilots tend to make the most mistakes after like 800 hours of flying. Not in the beginning.

We're so vigilant, we're so on it when we are just learning. And then over time we get lazy, we get complacent, and we start falling into these bad habits.

Once we form those bad habits, then they can be really hard to break. And that's what I'm kind of finding now.

What I'm needing to do now is to unlearn some bad habits and actually go back and really train myself to go back to being a beginner again. The other reason that's uncomfortable is because people pay me as an expert. Like, people pay me for my skills and they pay me for my experience.

So you have an expectation and you perceive that other people have an expectation that you're going to show up as a professional, that you're not going to show up as a beginner. Like with your textbook and with your in practice mode, with your training wheels on learning something new.

And our brains are just wired to do what's familiar and to stick with what's familiar. It's what feels safe, even if it's not in the interest of our growth. It is what feels safe. So our brains will default back to doing what's familiar.

I don't know about you, like how many times have you gone and learned a new process or a new skill, even in your profession? And it's been really interesting and it's really great.

You've done a training course, you've done a professional development course, and then when you actually get back on the job, you just default back to the old way of doing things. I'm pretty sure I could pull up some stats about that. I'm pretty sure that is quite common.

In fact, I remember years ago somebody telling me that they had done some research and like 8% of what is learned on those professional development courses that people go on, they actually retain and apply in the workplace. 8%. That was several years ago.

So I don't know if the number has changed since then, but I think we all have had that experience where we have learned something, particularly a skill or a new way of doing something, but then it's too easy to default back to the old way of doing it, so we don't actually apply it. Therefore that doesn't stick. We might as well have not bothered.

And to do that applying and learning and rewiring your brain and creating new default patterns and behaviors, it takes time. It takes really significant time and effort and energy and who's got bloody the energy and the time for it.

We are at a stage in life where we feel like we're done with that. I don't want to do that anymore. I just want to do it the way that I've been doing it.

So what I want to talk to you about today is not just like why it's so hard, but why is it so important and why do I think that we should all be pushing ourselves and challenging ourselves in this way? So number one, a little bit of humility. I think a little bit of humility goes a long way.

It's humbling to have to present yourself, your skills, record yourself doing something and have somebody else assess you on that and note all of the areas for improvement. It doesn't feel pleasant.

But in that humility and in that willingness to take on that feedback and criticism, that there is so much opportunity for your own growth.

And you know, when we get very attached to our identity and our self concept as an expert and as having all of these skills and experience and that's what's on our website and our CV and all of the rest of it, there's a lot of ego wrapped up in that, like I said before, and there can be potentially a bit of arrogance about that too.

A bit of I don't need to learn anything new, it can cause us to be a little bit more concerned about protecting our self image than learning and growing and actually being the best at what we want to do. And if we're people who pride ourselves on our expertise and our skills and knowledge, then we do want to be the best that we can be.

And therefore, paradoxically, it is necessary for us to maintain that kind of status as the expert and as being very highly experienced and credentialed and very good at what we do. It requires us to actually drop all of that and be willing to just have that humility and be a beginner.

Now, there's some really interesting benefits to having intellectual humility and being humble in the workplace in particular, you are more open to other people's opinions and ideas, much more open to hearing about different perspectives, rather than needing to defend your own approach or your own view or your own way of doing things. When there's a lot of ego wrapped up in this is how I do it and this is how I've always done it.

And I don't need to be told because I have always done this. We can feel threatened by feedback or criticism or alternative approaches when we are not threatened by that. There is so much more to learn.

We're more willing to collaborate. Therefore, it fosters stronger relationships in the workplace.

Collaborations that are in everybody's best interests and versus being competitive and a bit territorial and a bit defensive because we think that we know it all. We just become more curious. We just become much more open to new ideas and approaches.

The other reason this is so important is that we are wired for struggle. We are wired to grow through struggle.

And if we are not putting ourselves out of our comfort zone, if we are continuing to do things the way that we have always done them and just relying on our reputation as being an expert or on our years of experience and having done this for so long, then we're not putting ourselves in a situation to be uncomfortable. And it's only from the discomfort that we actually, really, truly grow and elevate. And if we're not growing, we're stagnating, we're decaying again.

It's not in anybody's best interest.

Now, I personally have a view that I think some people in intellectual professions and some people, you know, in careers, for example, like mine, I think we keep that curiosity alive and we keep that intellectual stimulation alive. By reading a lot, by learning a lot. We can learn a lot of information. I can do it all day and all night.

I would Read all of the interesting things about psychological theories and tools and concepts, et cetera, that's fine. It keeps us feeling inspired and it keeps us feeling interested, and it keeps us feeling like we're learning, which we are.

But unless that is translating, like I said, into actually doing something different into the next time you go into a meeting, a session, something with a client, something that you do normally in the course of your work and doing something different, something's lost there. I think sometimes intellectually we kid ourselves.

We avoid the stagnation and we avoid the complacency and the laziness by learning with our brain, but not actually applying in an actual real life do something different scenario. And it's the doing something different in real time that is what can feel really uncomfortable.

The thing about the, the stagnation and the relying on our reputation or relying on what we've always known is that we also can fall into this fixed mindset.

You probably know a fixed mindset is this mindset or a belief, whether it's conscious or unconscious, that we each have a certain set of skills or talents or knowledge or intelligence that is fixed. Like there's some stuff that we know and we're good at, and there's some stuff that we're not that's kind of out of our remit.

And when you have this fixed mindset, your whole sense of yourself as an intelligent, competent, capable person is attached to your knowledge and your experience and your skills and your expertise.

And if that gets threatened, if that gets challenged, criticized, that threatens your whole sense of yourself as a competent, skilled, capable, expert person.

So therefore, when there is this fixed mindset, there is this tendency to get very defensive and protective of doing things the way that you've always done or continuing to need to prove yourself over and over within this narrow confines of what you think is what you do and what you do well.

With a fixed mindset, criticism or feedback or failure or something not going well for you feels like, like a threat to your sense of yourself as a competent person. Whereas a growth mindset, of course, is about, well, we're all capable of learning and growing in any area. And therefore feedback is great.

Feedback helps me to know what I can do to improve and be better.

And people with a growth mindset will put themselves in situations where they will get hard feedback or put themselves in situations where it is uncomfortable because they thrive on that. But it's a very different mindset. Obviously, with neuroplasticity, then we're growing new neurons all the time.

But again, it's the neuroplasticity or it's our neural pathways that make it so difficult to unlearn things that we've always done, because those neural pathways are so wired that it's hard. And that's why we tend to avoid learning and doing things differently.

We've got some really, really solid neural pathways that have been developed, often through years of doing things a certain way. And so unlearning or doing something new and different feels really awkward and uncomfortable. Can be done.

And when we do, then obviously there's all of this potential to grow and to really keep our brain healthy. And it's not just about keeping our brain healthy. It is about staying our game and staying inspired and curious and staying relevant as we get older.

Might I just add, staying relevant is pretty important the older you get.

So if you know in yourself, I don't know how much of this is resonating with you or what you do for work, but if you know in yourself that there's areas where you feel like you've been doing this for so long, this is just the way you do it, and other people got different ideas or they bring in some new system or whatever it is, and you are resistant to that, and you are a little bit getting a little bit set in your ways, we can all fall into that trap.

Then I just would really encourage you to think about the benefit of putting yourself in situations where you are having to be stretched, where you are having to learn a new skill, a new way of doing things, even if you have been doing it a particular way for a really long time, and really think about the benefits of that. Even if you don't buy into that, you'll get a better outcome in terms of what you do.

Think about it in terms of your own emotional, psychological growth, in terms of your own willingness to be challenged, to be uncomfortable, to grow, to be humble, to just stay curious, and all of the positive benefits in your brain. In your brain, you know, and. And in your skill development.

But I really think, honestly, the more I talk about this, I really think that that humility like, that psychological adaptability and flexibility is so key here.

And look, can I just say, I think we have all had the experience, I know I have of being a young person in a workplace and being fresh and excited and inspired and like, really learning, like everything's new.

And looking at people who have been in the workplace or in their role for years, and the cynicism and the attitude of this is the way we've always done it, and being very closed off to new ideas. You know, I can think of. I can think of two or three in my mind right now. And maybe you can too. And nobody wants to be that person.

You don't want to be that. We don't want to be that person. And it's easy.

I think the older that we get, naturally we have so much more experience, we can find ourselves sliding into becoming that person.

And that's not relevant to the story that I'm telling now in terms of my ICF accreditation, but I just think it's relevant to this whole topic about being a beginner in your career or in your profession.

Just wanting to avoid that stereotypical kind of slide into cynicism and being the grumpy person who is very closed off to new ways of doing things and new ideas.

We want to be fresh and energized and inspired and keep ourselves mentally agile and psychologically flexible and keep on upskilling, keep on learning, keep on being on top of your game. So one last thing, and this is kind of related, but slightly different.

I said at the beginning that the learning new skills, it's still challenging, but it can feel less humiliating, it can feel less humbling. If you're learning something that is completely new.

For example, if you're an adult and you go and learn to play the piano, and I know many people are doing things like that, don't get me wrong. Still really difficult. Because as adults, we have a sense of ourselves as being competent. We like to be competent.

It's good to be competent and to know how to do things.

And we have typically avoid putting ourselves into situations where we are not competent, where we are very conscious, consciously not competent, that feels uncomfortable. We tend to avoid it. But if we do go into that situation intentionally to learn something new, then we kind of expect that we're going to be humbled.

You know, it's going to feel uncomfortable, which I think is still. There's so much benefit to it, which I'll talk about. But I still think that's very different to being the beginner in your profession.

Like learning a new skill, having to relearn something in a space where you are, have an identity as an expert. I think that's very different ball game, which is why I wanted to focus on it in this episode.

But let's go back to the learning something completely new. Let me tell you about this study, if you're not convinced.

I read about a study where they took older people, people in their 70s and in their 80s, and they put them through basically like a short course, like a 12 week course, like what you would do at uni, for example. And they had to do three concurrent skills, three things. So it might be learn Spanish or piano or painting.

They had to do three all at once over this 10, 12 week period. And then they put things in place where they had lots of individual sort of scaffolding and support.

And it was a very shame free environment where they were encouraged to make mistakes as they grew, etc. Basically replicating what kids do, what little kids do. And they had to take three, but they could take up to five.

So there was an option of five different subjects or skills that were sort of randomly allocated.

But if they got their three and they said, oh, you know what, I want to do photography as well, then they could add it, they could add up to a total of five. So when they started, they did these cognitive tests.

They assessed cognitive functioning, like executive functioning and working memory, and they were equivalent to their age.

They did the course, three months later, they put them through the same tests and their cognitive function and memory were the equivalent of somebody up to 30 years younger, like up to like a 50 year old. And they might have been 70 or 5 or 80 at this time. So astonishing.

Like up to three decades younger in terms of their cognitive functioning and memory. God, that's a mouthful to say.

And then they followed up 12 months later and their cognitive functioning and memory was the equivalent of an undergraduate student all the way back to being like a uni student again. How incredible is that?

And the whole purpose of this study, the whole hypothesis of this study was that cognitive decline is not necessarily a given and it is not necessarily just tied to biological age. They said cognitive decline is essentially use it or lose it.

So if you think about what we do with kids, we send them to school and they learn bloody five or six subjects at a time, all at once. They have lots of support, they're not shamed for mistakes, they're expected to be beginners. And what do you know, they learn a whole lot of stuff.

Their little brains grow and they learn all these new skills. Then we get to being an AD and we stop all that we might learn for our profession.

We might do the occasional professional development, but then we stop being a beginner. And so we think that our cognitive decline is because we get older in it.

Maybe it's actually because we are just not in that environment anymore where we are primed to learn. And so they replicated those conditions in these older people.

And what do you know they learned all these skills, their cognitive decline was reversed and those people just continued to learn stuff on their own. They just kept on learning. So there is really something compelling about that.

If you had been on the fence about picking up a new skill, then maybe that's your sign to go and do it. And that's not to take away from everything else I just talked about, which is to keep being a beginner in your job.

I don't want to get distracted by the saxophone or the guitar lessons. Stay focused, unlike myself. So the question that they asked as well, this is the other thing I thought was really interesting about that.

That was, you know, when you hear people say, oh well, if I do Sudoku every day, will that keep my brain sharp? If I do crossword puzzles every day, will that keep my brain sharp?

And what she said, this researcher, she said, well, ask yourself if you gave your child a crossword puzzle every day and expected that to be sufficient for them to keep their brain sharp, to keep them brain developing and growing and learning, do you think that would be enough? Do you think if you gave your kid a Sudoku every day and said there you go, go for your life, do the sudoku and.

And let's just hope and pray that your, your brain grows, probably not, right? So good little question to ask yourself. If you're asking yourself, is this enough to keep my brain sharp, to keep me from cognitive decline?

Would you give it to your 8 year old and expect that to be enough? Would you give it to your 10 year old? Maybe not.

So it is the continuous learning, synchronous learning different skills at the same time and good support, good scaffolding, shame free, no mistakes, no fear of failure. There is a few other conditions as well, but you get the point, right? So I hope you have found this interesting and helpful. I would love to know.

Send me a note. Send me a voice note on the Crappy Tappy website.

Send me a message and tell me what you are doing, learning what new skill you are challenging yourself with to keep you sharp and humble. That is it for me. I cannot wait to catch you next week for another episode of Crappy to Happy.

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