Monday, November 29, 2010

Learn To Be Ignorant

“The illiterate of the future will not be the person who cannot read. It will be the person who does not know how to learn.”

Alvin Toffler

I’ve Been Thinking . . . about learning to become more ignorant.

Learn to be ignorant? I’m serious. Sounds like a contradiction, doesn’t it. Wouldn’t it be better to say, “Learn to be an expert”? Not really. Siegfried and Therese Engelmann said, “The human animal is the only one on earth so intelligent that it can actually learn to be stupid.” Ignorance and intelligence are actually interdependent.

I convinced myself very early in life that it was not much fun to appear stupid. I had an excellent seventh grade teacher with a passion for American History. Unfortunately, I didn’t share her enthusiasm, which affected my listening skills during her lectures. Every lecture concluded with an interactive discussion about the materials we had just covered. Whenever she asked a question, I would hesitate until another student raised their hand and then I would cautiously raise mine, hoping she would not call on me.

I didn’t want to appear stupid so I disguised my lack of eagerness to get involved by raising my hand only when I was relatively sure I wouldn’t get called on. I rarely knew the answers to her questions and feared appearing stupid.

It is almost anti-social to use the words, “I don’t know.” Only uninformed people admit to not having the answers. Right?

The world is full of people convinced they possess bountiful wisdom to share with the rest of us. They’ve read it all, done it all, succeeded at it, and are now ready to tell you about it. These are the people moving up the success ladder. Right? Not necessarily.

William James insisted, “If I see myself today as I was in the past, my past must resurrect itself and become my future.” In other words, today will be a repeat of the things I learned yesterday, and tomorrow will be the result of the things I think about day after day and year after year. That’s no way to move up the ladder unless it’s lying flat on the ground.

The unending road to becoming and remaining a cutting-edge expert is to become a relentless continual learner. Cultivate your innocent spirit of ignorance. It’s not what you don't know that can destroy you. You’ll learn it. It’s what you don’t know you don’t know that’s frightening. Discover it.

Columnist Sydney Harris remarked, “A winner knows how much he still has to learn, even when he is considered an expert by others; a loser wants to be considered an expert by others before he has learned enough to know how little he knows.”

I figure this puts us all in the same boat. Whether we think we know a lot or don’t, we all need to continually build on what we learned yesterday so we don’t fall into the trap of being comfortable with our present level of knowledge.

Here’s the irony. When you accelerate your desire to learn and reduce your ignorance, you’ll often discover how much more there is to learn. Interestingly enough, those with an insatiable desire to learn more develop an unlimited repertoire of possibilities.

Learning to be ignorant involves more than casual effort. It requires a fundamental change in mind-set and skill-set, our habits. Psychologist William James said that to change our habits, first we make a deep commitment to pay whatever price is necessary to change the habit; second, we grasp the first opportunity to use the new practice or skill; and third, we allow no exceptions until the new habit is firmly imbedded into our nature.

What new information have you discovered in the last week? How have you used that information? In what ways will this information afford you new opportunities?

“Unless you are willing to admit your ignorance, you will never be able to acquire knowledge.”

E.C. McKenzie

“Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.”

Will Durant

“To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Monday, November 15, 2010

Ain’t It Awful

“Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will - his personal responsibilities.”

Albert Schweitzer

I’ve Been Thinking. . . a lot about the negative people I encounter and the potential impact or influence they have on my life. Let me tell you about one such experience.

"Good morning Ladies and Gentlemen! Welcome aboard United Express Flight 5362 to Chicago. Before we take off, please make sure that your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright position, and that your seat belts are securely fastened. This is a non-smoking flight and we remind you that smoking in the lavatories and tampering with smoke detectors is prohibited. Buckle up; have a pleasant trip and a nice day."

"They expect me to have a pleasant trip flying in this puddle-jumper?" the passenger next to me blurted.

"This plane is a sorry excuse for a jet," she continued. "I can't believe I paid to ride this thing just to spend a week with my mother-in-law. Oh well, we’ll probably never arrive anyway."

Biting my tongue, I smiled and nodded only to acknowledge I had heard her. I waited to suggest to my flying friend that her chances for having a super day were slim to none. Besides that, I sympathized with the mother-in-law having to endure her stay.

She continued entertaining me throughout the flight with everything that was wrong with her life. I just kept smiling and graciously nodding. When the plane landed, I assisted her with the luggage in the overhead compartment and struggled to restrain myself from giving her a bit of advice about life. Instead, I smiled and encouraged her to make it a great day.

I thought to myself walking through the terminal; “Could it be this person was not aware of her negativity? Was she really that fatalistic about her life? Surely she didn't intend to let this flight dictate the quality of her day.”

This lady was apparently unaware that she had given control of her day to an airplane she didn’t like.

A friend told me about a man who shouted the same three words each day from his street-corner newsstand. “Ain’t it awful!” he would say to each passersby while extending a newspaper. People bought a paper because they just had to know what terrible thing had occurred. People are attracted to, love to talk about and dwell on the “awful”.

Tragedy and dire predictions always make the front page, but if we become preoccupied with bad news, undesirable circumstances and unfortunate life events, we will succumb to a lifestyle of “awfulizing” – a pervasive pessimism that clouds every situation with gloom.

Charles Swindoll calls this “verbal pollution,” passed around by grumblers, complainers, and criticizers. “This poison of pessimism,” Swindoll writes, “creates an atmosphere of wholesale negativism where nothing but the bad side of everything is emphasized.”

In his classic book, Man's Search for Meaning, Dr. Viktor Von Frankl describes the incredible experience of surviving a Nazi concentration camp. He came to a sudden and dramatic conclusion that little would happen in this environment over which he had control. One thing Dr. Frankl knew: he wanted to live.

He learned to focus on small positive events. He savored them and let his mind dwell on their benefits. He took control of his responses to the brutal events and discovered that "one's ultimate freedom is the ability to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances."

The value of this principle for your life is phenomenal. Taking responsibility for your tomorrows is a life changing, awesome, exciting discovery.

In the absence of this decision, you are held prisoner to every situation, habit, experience, person, or environment which you encounter. Decide now not to let anyone or anything decide what your day will be like. Tell yourself this minute, “I will take 100% responsibility for the quality of my day no matter whom or what tries to influence me to become an “awfulizer”.


The important and decisive factor in life is not what happens to us, but the attitude we take toward what happens. Circumstances and situations may color life, but by the grace of God, we have been given the power to choose what that color shall be.”

Charles R. Woodson

Monday, November 1, 2010

The First Step To Making Things Happen

“If you don’t make up your mind, then your unmade mind will unmake you.”

E. Stanley Jones

I’ve Been Thinking . . . and observing how difficult it is for some people to make a decision.

When its harvest time in Idaho, farmers turn their attention to tons and tons of potatoes. One farmer hired extra help to assist him in sorting a mountainous pile resulting from a bumper crop. He instructed his hired hand to divide the potatoes into two piles - the big ones in one pile and little ones in another.

The farmer returned from the field at noon to check on his helper’s progress and was astound to find not one potato had been moved all morning. Stunned by this evidence of laziness, the farmer asked the man why he had accomplished nothing. “Well,” the hired hand hesitantly replied, “I don’t mind working, but all of these decisions are driving me crazy.”

Some people find making decisions to be harder work than work itself. Unfortunately, their indecision usually produces inaction. It’s just not possible to ride the fence and produce any significant achievement. When loyalties are divided between decision and indecision there is inertia.

A comical story is told about a man whose acreage was located on the border that separated the North and the South during the Civil War. Unable to decide which side to support, he wore a Confederate Army jacket and Union Army pants. That indecisive action produced unusual results. The Union soldiers shot at his jacket and the Confederates shot him in the pants. Either way, he was under fire.

Theodore Roosevelt said, “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.” Always remember that when you stall or refuse to make a decision, that, in itself is a critical decision. You are just as accountable for the consequences of indecision as you are for the results of making one. I’d rather take responsibility for something I decided to do than allow fate to run its’ course.

I am often at meetings where decisions need to be made. It’s incredible how strong the temptation is to spend time moaning, groaning, and whining about the issues needing to be addressed. The seemingly popular thing to do is complain and get everyone in the group caught up in negativity and crying on each others’ shoulder. Then people wonder why they dislike attending meetings.

I’ve often wondered what it would be like if every meeting chair took a pledge that read: “I hereby promise, as the leader of this group, to limit the conversation of all in attendance to three minutes discussing the issue. I will then turn their attention to generating and choosing options that will create positive outcomes.” I’m convinced people would not leave meetings cursing the waste of their time and energy as well as dreading the next meeting.

The same is true of personal indecision. Your success or failure will depend upon the decisions you make each day of your life. Bemoaning your situation, rather than making a decision to do something about it, snuffs out the spark of life. Remember the conviction of Wilfred A. Peterson; “Decision is the spark that ignites action. Until a decision is made, nothing happens.” Keep the spark alive. Decide to decide.

“The greatest difficulty in making decisions is not in knowing the right decision, but in making it.”

John Maxwell