Trying New Things

The gift of patience

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Early in the first film of the series, we learn that Neo (Keanu Reeves) is able to connect to “the Matrix” by having a cable plugged into a jack implanted in the back of his head. One of the perks of this odd-looking piece of hardware is that, in order to quickly learn new skills, Neo can have simulations uploaded into his brain. In a matter of moments, a man who used to spend his days sitting in a beige office in front of a beige computer in a beige cubicle becomes an expert in martial arts, guns, and piloting a helicopter.

If these headjacks were available in the real world, I’d jump on the opportunity to have one.

The night before I finished this post, I was sitting in a restaurant in Tokyo struggling to order food and drinks from a menu where the only characters I recognized were the prices. How much richer could my experience have been if I could simply upload Japanese into my brain and read and converse with ease?

But while headjacks don’t yet exist, the motivation behind them is pervasive. I’ve seen dozens of books offer the promise that you can “Teach Yourself X in 21 Days,” along with online bootcamps and other services designed to accelerate the learning process. And it’s not just knowledge: our entire society is built on the desire to do more in less time, from diet pills designed to help us lose weight faster, to smart phones that accelerate our access to information.

These inventions may work to an extent, but they also have repercussions. Diet pills have led to a laundry list of side effects including death. And smart phones have begun to erode our mental health while giving us the attention spans of goldfish.

I don’t take diet pills and I’m pretty disciplined with my phone, but I’ve still suffered the consequences of my impatience. When I visited Yosemite to climb to the top of Half Dome, I was in such a hurry that I barely stopped to take in my surroundings. The result was that while I reached the top, as I made my descent, I took a wrong turn and ended up lost in the woods for hours with no water.

Sometimes, as with my Yosemite trip, my lack of patience makes it hard for me to appreciate how far I’ve come. I’ve been taking Spanish lessons for over two years. I’m sure I’ve learned a lot, but all that seems to matter to me is that I’m still far from fluent.

In other cases, the goal is so overwhelming that it’s hard for me to find the will to even try. At the beginning of this year, I decided to write a novel. But the more I’ve thought about it, the more things I discover are left to do and the more daunting the task becomes. After nine months, I have a couple dozen pages of notes but haven’t even started creating chapter one.

I need to accept that there may not be a headjack in my future; that big goals usually take a long time to achieve. Perhaps more importantly, I need to learn to appreciate the small moments along the way.

Last night as a I sat at the bar in that small restaurant in Tokyo, I was surrounded by Japanese people talking and laughing and being served all sorts of intriguing dishes and drinks. Meanwhile, I was the awkward American, staring at my menu for several minutes before I realized it was upside-down. I had to point to items that looked good and hope for the best.

Yet somehow, I ended up with a delicious meal and a nice buzz.

When my plates and glasses were empty, I looked up how to ask for the check. After rehearsing the line in my head several times, I decided to take a chance and open my mouth.

“Sumimasen,” I said. The server looked in my direction. “Okaikei onegaishimasu,” I continued. She nodded and gestured for me to wait a moment. A minute or so later, she handed me my bill.

As I looked around the restaurant once more, I felt a little bit more at home. I paid my bill and said “arigato” to thank the server. As I stood up to leave, the customer sitting next to me looked up at me, smiled, and waved goodbye.

We may only achieve a handful of major goals in our lifetimes. But small yet fulfilling moments like this can come at any time as long as we allow ourselves to see them.

Reflecting on my first year of consistent blogging

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Several weeks ago, I told a group of fellow writers that I was having trouble coming up with a topic for this month’s post. “Why don’t you write about writing?” one of them proposed. At that moment, I wondered, how many months in a row have I been posting? I checked the history. Since I started my blog back up, the first post I published was on August 31, 2020: exactly one year before I’d click “Publish” on the post you’re reading now.

On this monumental occasion, I decided to reflect on what I’ve learned after a year of consistent blogging.

One post per month is enough.

This is actually the second incarnation of “Trying New Things.” Nearly a decade ago, after years of telling people, “I work in Information Technology, but my real passion is writing,” I was part of a “workforce reduction” (a.k.a. laid off). I decided it was time to try writing for a living, so I conducted a one-year experiment as a self-employed copywriter. This blog was supposed to be a vehicle to help me promote my business.

That year sucked almost all the joy out of writing for me. I spent a lot of the time trying to promote myself with little response. I did land a couple of good clients, which was fun. However, most of my prospects had unreasonable demands: some wanted to pay me a fraction of my rate, while others wanted me to basically lie about what their product could do in order to lure in more customers.

Then there were all of the “experts” out there with infallible formulas for generating blog traffic. One of the keys, many insisted, was to write as often as possible so subscribers would be perpetually bombarded with new content and my high activity level would boost my ranking on search engines. The notion of constantly churning out new content felt like a chore, and I only published two posts on my blog that entire year.

When I restarted my blog a year ago, I decided to give myself a clean slate: I archived my posts and rewrote my “About” page to focus on helping people with no strings attached. Knowing my tendency to overcommit, I decided to start with the humble goal of publishing one post per month. But as I went along, I realized once a month was perfect for me: it alleviated the pressure of “publish, publish, publish” and instead allowed me to take my time with each topic. If I wrote every day or even once a week, I wouldn’t have time to really process what I was writing. But after a month, I’d not only have a more thoughtful post, but it might even change my own life for the better.

This leads me to my second realization.

Writing helps me learn.

When I was in school, I always did better in classes that favored writing essays over taking standardized tests. I assumed this preference was due to my love for writing. But this blog helped me realize there’s more to it. When I write about a topic, it forces me to put ideas into my own words and to relate new ideas to things I already know. It’s these mental connections that make the difference between storing information in short-term memory (i.e., just long enough to pass a test) and in long-term memory.

For example, I wasn’t a very good student in science classes. My grades were average at best in biology, chemistry, and geology. I always found either the teachers or the subject matter boring. The one exception was a particular assignment in my physics class. We had to measure the relationship between the slope of a ramp and the speed of a marble rolling down the ramp. In retrospect, it seems like it should have been tedious–setting up the ramp, measuring the angle, measuring the time the marble took to roll to the bottom, tweaking the angle slightly, and starting again, and again, and again. But because our main assignment was to write an essay on our findings, I was able to turn the experiment into something personal. I wrote a thorough analysis and my teacher gave me a perfect score along with one of the most glowing evaluations of my academic career.

As with that paper, every blog post I’ve written in the past year has been a learning experience.

I’ve been trying to “hack” my clutter problem for most of my life, but it wasn’t until I decided to write a blog post about it that I took the time to dig beneath the symptoms and unearth some of the root causes.

Before I wrote about my experience climbing Half Dome in Yosemite, all I could focus on was getting lost in the woods on the way back down. But once I drafted my post and shared it with some colleagues, they showed me what I couldn’t see: reaching the summit was a big accomplishment, regardless of what happened afterward.

The 3-part series I wrote about exploring career paths taught me more about how to find fulfilling work than I got out of decades of job hunting and reading self-help books.

But as rewarding as writing these posts has been for me, that has never been my main motivation.

I’m a people pleaser, and that’s OK.

I’m much more likely to get something done if I feel like I’m accountable to someone else. Ever since I recognized this tendency, it’s bothered me. Why does something have to benefit someone else in order to be worth doing? Why isn’t doing it for myself enough?

For years, I’ve seen this as one of my deepest flaws. But recently, I decided to just accept this weakness and use it to my advantage. As much as I enjoyed writing, I had never managed to stick with a writing project for more than a few months. Then, late last year, someone introduced me to the concept of a “writing mastermind group.” Think of it as a support group for writers: we get together, share our writing goals, and then hold each other accountable and help each other overcome whatever obstacles we might be facing. My goal was to maintain a habit of publishing a post per month throughout 2021.

My group checks in once a week, and each week we share how much progress we’ve made and help each other get “unstuck.” We all feed off of each other’s momentum, so I feel like I need to stick with my commitments in order to help the rest of the group stick with theirs. I think a big part of the reason I’ve managed to publish a post every month this year is because I don’t want to let my group down.

Even the “trying new things” theme, at its core, is based in accountability: I believe that in order to persuade you of the benefits of trying new things, I need to lead by example. This drives me to not only stick with my monthly publishing schedule but to really think every post through before I click that “Publish” button. I spend almost the entire month thinking about my topic, drafting ideas, challenging them, learning about the subject, and learning about myself. I make sure every post I share is about something I strongly believe can help my readers.

But as with every other post, developing this one helped me discover a valuable lesson. Yes, I’m a people pleaser. But doing things for other people feels good. It validates me as a writer. It helps me feel like I’m able to do something meaningful, and possibly even leave a positive legacy someday.

This blog is my gift to both of us. Thank you for making it worthwhile.

How Aikido helped me rethink my education

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I’ve now reached the point where I’ve been out of school as long as I was in it. Over the past two decades, I’ve experienced multiple long-term relationships, homeownership, an evolving professional career, and leadership roles in volunteer organizations, among other things.

Yet despite all of this, it wasn’t until recently that I realized that many of the habits and ideas I picked up in school–whether inherent in the education system or in my response to it–have hindered my ability to function well as an adult.

That realization–and my subsequent, gradual transformation–came largely due to my exposure to Aikido.

Why Aikido?

The book, “Journey to the Heart of Aikido: The Teachings of Motomichi Anno Sensei” by Linda Holiday, defines Aikido as “a martial art and spiritual path founded in twentieth-century Japan by Morihei Ueshiba, known as ‘The Way of Harmony’ or ‘The Art of Peace’ (lit. ‘Harmony-Energy-Way’).”

The concept of a “martial” art that’s about peace and harmony rather than conflict has appealed to me for much of my life. But until recently, I’d never found the motivation to pursue it.

Then, a little over a year ago, I was talking to a friend on the train about areas we felt were lacking in our lives. I realized I wanted to improve in many areas; socially, physically, and emotionally. But how would I select where to start? Then something clicked: with Aikido, I wouldn’t have to choose. I’d be training with other people in a physically active discipline that would develop my self-awareness and emotional maturity.

I quickly found and joined a local dojo (classroom, essentially). Soon afterward, COVID-19 struck the U.S., but thanks to the ingenuity and resourcefulness of my sensei (teacher), we were able to sustain our practice online and through socially-distanced, outdoor training.

One year and a few months later, I’m beginning to recognize the growth I sought. Much of that growth has come from identifying and gradually rewriting the mental patterns I developed in school.

Overcoming my fear of failure

If there’s one aspect of traditional schooling that I feel needs an overhaul, it’s the grading system. For many kids, grades are everything. The grades you get on your homework and exams affect the grade you get in class, which impacts your GPA, which determines which colleges will accept you, which affects who will hire you, which influences the entire trajectory of your life.

Within that grading system, the letter we were all taught to fear was “F.” None of the other letter grades are short for anything, but the masterminds behind this system made a point of skipping right over the letter “E” so they could designate “F” for “Failure.”

In his popular Ted Talk, “Do schools kill creativity?” (search for it on YouTube if you haven’t seen it), Sir Ken Robinson discusses the consequence of the stigmatization of mistakes and failure:

“…kids will take a chance…if they don’t know, they’ll have a go…By the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They have become frightened of being wrong.”

Early on in my Aikido training, I experienced this fear of failure, of making mistakes, every time I showed up to class. While being part of this group was a social opportunity, it also meant everything I did was observed by others. I wanted to be able to show my teacher and fellow students that I was “getting it.” And every time I stumbled on a turn or used too much force or my posture wasn’t quite right or I locked my elbows and knees when they should have been bent, I silently berated myself.

Sometime after our classes went “virtual,” I heard different techniques being referred to more by their Japanese names. True to my academic form, my reaction was to break out my notecards and dedicate each one to a different term and a breakdown of the movements involved. Yes, I made Aikido flash cards.

But over time, my senseis helped me begin to relax. They told me these techniques can take years to internalize, even referring to one as the “20-year technique.” They said my mistakes were natural, that I could simply train myself to notice what I was doing wrong and correct it. And they told me the notecards were unnecessary–all I needed to do was keep showing up, the terminology would begin to sink in, and the movements would eventually become muscle memory.

I now know that I will never stop making mistakes. But instead of beating myself up, I’m learning to do what a fellow student referred to as “embracing the struggle,” knowing that once I get through it, the reward will be that much sweeter.

Embracing exams

I’ve probably ranted about testing methods in school almost as much as I have about grading methods. My memory of most of the tests I took went something like this: I would stay up late the night before, cram for the exam, show up to class a nervous wreck, be told I couldn’t talk to other students or ask questions, feverishly work to fill in the answers before time was up, turn in my answer sheet, and then agonize until I got my results. Sometimes, I’d continue to agonize after I got the results depending on how bad they were. And sometimes, such as with statewide and national proficiency exams, all I got back was a score so I didn’t even know what I got right and what I got wrong. One thing was almost certain, though: I would forget nearly everything I had studied within the next 48 hours or so.

Not too long ago, I picked up a fantastic book called “Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning” by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel. This book taught me a lot about learning how to learn, but one of my favorite insights was regarding school exams. To paraphrase, the authors believed that the problem wasn’t the tests themselves but how they’re traditionally used. Tests shouldn’t be used so much as testing tools as learning tools. Their research indicated that the very act of taking tests and searching your brain for answers reinforces learning. So does getting the answer wrong and then being given the correct answer. If tests were administered based on this understanding, with tests being a means to help students learn rather than the end of learning, students would learn more.

In Aikido, we also have exams. We have to take an exam to move up a level. Each “level” is called a kyu (pronounced like “cue”) until you earn your black belt, after which each subsequent level (yes, there are levels of black belts) is called a dan (pronounced like “Don”). But because of my relationship with grades and exams, I was utterly confused when students explained to me that, at least in our dojo, these exams weren’t really “graded,” nor were they “pass/fail.”

I asked some of my fellow students to explain this concept since I’ve yet to go through an exam myself. I’ll attempt to summarize their explanation here.

First, there’s no rule as to by what date I have to take an exam. My teacher won’t even have me take it until she feels I’m ready. There will also generally be some practice exams before the “real” one. Once I’m ready, my sensei will call out various techniques and ask me to demonstrate them while she and other dans observe me. If I get stuck–for example, if I don’t remember what a Japanese term means or how to execute the technique–I can ask and they’ll try to help me. When it’s all over, I will understand where I was stronger and where I need more work, but I will likely be allowed to advance.

In Aikido, exams are another part of the continuous learning process–they help to “make it stick.”

Learning voluntarily

Although I enjoyed many of my classes in school, most of my formal education was motivated, at least in part, by a sense of obligation. Growing up, I was legally required to attend school thru high school (not that I would have ever dared to consider dropping out). I then went on to undergraduate studies, which, while not mandatory, were something I believed were a prerequisite to being hired by a good company. Most of the skills I’ve learned through concentrated effort since then–business analysis, public speaking, technical skills, etc.–were pursued mainly to meet the demands of my employers.

In short, for much of my life, I’ve learned things largely because I felt other people expected me to.

Now that I’m taking more time to learn things simply because I want to, I have to keep reminding myself of that fact. In the case of Aikido, I sometimes find I’m putting pressure on myself: pressure to learn techniques faster, to study more for my first exam, to practice more (even though I’m already practicing at least 3-4 hours per week on average). But why? My teachers don’t require it of me; they repeatedly reinforce a beginner’s mindset, praise my dedication, and remind me that if I keep showing up I’ll keep making progress.

I started practicing Aikido so that I could enjoy a better life socially, physically, and emotionally. And if there’s been one common thread through my blog posts up to this point (other than “trying new things,” of course), it’s been that if I want to enjoy life, I need to slow down, not go faster.

Maybe someday I’ll earn a black belt or even open my own dojo. In the meantime, every mistake, every exam, every lesson is a gift I choose to receive.

Although I hope Aikido is something I will continue to learn throughout my life, for today, I’m giving myself a “A.”