How to Learn from Experience
Here are a few simple steps to learning from experience - any experience at all.
Reflect on these questions while day dreaming, writing, drawing, painting, or creating something, even cooking.
What happened? Describe it.
How did you feel? What was your inner reaction?
What thoughts went through your mind during, and not long after?
How do you feel now about the experience?
What questions or unresolved issues remain, if any?
Some clients use this format for writing an email to a therapist. It gives them a more clear focus.
They end up learning heaps from the exercise, and then they get helpful feedback from their counsellor.
Learning is fun. Who says?
People who live with disability often learn through these steps.
Have an experience.
Repeat it.
Briefly talk about it, see if you like it.
Try it again. Repeat.
If it feels good, keep doing it.
The trick is not to think too much. Disability often involves making things simple, or things are kind of simple already.
When you think too much, it can complicate things. Just do it. Try it. Repeat.
Once behaviour becomes a habit - it sticks. You do not need to think too much.
Habits form fast when they are fun. It is when we are trying too hard to change that change gets hard.
But even shifting into a new habit to replace something not safe or helpful can be easier.
The key is to find the smallest way to change that is fun, feels better, and has a bit of motivation.
Motivation is everything.