“Hard Work Beats Talent When Talent Does Not Work Hard”
I remember reading this line somewhere “You can learn new things at any time in your life if you are willing to be a beginner. When you actually like the idea of learning to be a beginner, the whole world opens to you”. Anyone can learn anything if they want, at any age, at any time and in any kind of situation. One just needs to have the Belief and Hunger within themselves to learn new things. While learning new things, it is certain that we need not achieve everything or become successful at one go. We will learn when we fail and failure helps in learning things in a better way. Even if you should fall one thousand times, you must keep getting up and trying again.
Fall down seven times, get up eight
We all get to learn from our mistakes and the next time we put more efforts while attempting it again. In other words, we are BORN TO LEARN. The simplest example I could think of is, of a baby who just starts walking at some point. Initially, the baby falls, he gets up, tries time after time, but eventually someday he walks and one day, he starts running. We all have been in that place once, right?
Besides, we all have heard this often that practice makes a man perfect. To grow and learn new things or to excel in the any field, the main things we need is practice, engagement and commitment towards the work we are doing. Additionally, focus and motivation also plays an important role. If we are passionate about & want to achieve something, we automatically get that motivation and inspiration to learn from within.
This very important topic I came across in one of my training sessions is the idea of having a “Growth mindset”. While working on anything, we need to have that kind of mindset first. Like, Dr. Carol Dweck said in one of her interviews, “Why waste my time looking smart when I could be getting smarter and this could just be done with hard work, good strategies and under good mentorship”. A person who is having a fixed mindset is afraid of the challenges that he might fail, he has to compromise with the intelligence tag that he has been holding, or he might sound stupid in front of everyone. Some of us in some situations are ashamed of failing, constantly having this fear that what my friends/family would say if “I fail”. For that reason, they run from the mistakes and do not get engaged with it. This ideology has to be changed. While someone with a growth mindset will always believe in acceptance, knowing the fact that challenges will only help in growing thus they engage deeply. Feedbacks on our work we do are constructive and we learn from them. In my judgement, I know that my intelligence is not static. Failing or passing in a particular challenge or phase or life is not dependent on us, but what is more important than the result is our keen interest to learn. Keep trying and staying focused is the sole mantra here. My father always keeps on saying that whatever you learn at any point in your life is never a waste of time or knowledge. Someway for the other, it will come into use and believe me, this really happens.
Our Brain is US!
A very interesting and new thing I got aware of recently through video is the brain’s ability to grow. We know that our brain is what makes us “us” and does all the thinking for us. Our brain has neurons that grow similarly like the muscles of our body. Our brain makes “US” what we are today. In addition, with constant struggle, brainstorming and stepping out of our comfort zone we brain expands. Our intelligence is very fluid in nature. We need to understand that our abilities can be developed with time. When we learn something new by pushing our boundaries, the neurons in the brain form stronger connections like a bridge. The bridge gets stronger with continuous practice. The more strong this bridge forms, the smarter we get. Solving problems and putting our brain in a stimulating environment is the way we can train our brain.
Understanding the way to perceive things, not running away from the issue and most importantly understanding the significance of grit in our life is necessary. Whenever, we are in a low phase of life quitting should not be the option, instead one should have patience. Whenever we see ourselves making progress or failing at something we should record our achievements or failures and ask the 7 WH questions (Why, Who, What, How, by Whom, When & Where and How). This will help in analyzing the situation in a better way and can learn from it.
Passionate and dedication towards work is very necessary when someone wants to learn something new. Something that a person can do or want to do hours at a stretch and still do not get bored or complain about it of it. By all means, prioritizing work is very important and when passion is mixed with work, then people always look forward to for new challenges and stay motivated. Above all, working or interacting with like-minded people within the same domain, sharing common interest makes the work even more interesting. We all must have read this quote saying, “follow your passion” and it makes more sense when you can actually relate to it on a personal level.
It is important to engage yourself in a process, take feedbacks, learn from it and work on the mistakes that were being made during the process.
Team building and its importance
Team building and working with a team is important to excel at any task. Besides, how perfectly it works when executed properly. If a task given to individually and in a team and have to complete the work with time constrain, it is obvious that the team will complete it quickly and with a better execution. With that being said, what is unique about this thought is that different people having different set of ideas. Everyone comes from a different place, have a completely different perspective or thought about things, in general.
Team work makes Ideas happen for real!!
Have you ever thought, what’s the actual definition of Creativity?? For me, creativity was to think of a novel/new idea, or in other words, thinking out of the box. But, what I realized during the discussion with my team once is that before thinking of anything new, we need to know about the existing idea both inside out. If we want to create a product in a new or innovative way, we need to know about the existing one and have to break the existing product fractionally to deeper understanding. That would help to know the core elements of the product that we want to create and constraints, we might be having while creating something of our own.
Imagination, is a very basic yet very important tool.
Imagination is like a free passport and takes you to places you want to. Everyone can imagine, but a very few know how to use it in a powerful way. It is important to learn how to play with imagination, think of ideas in a better way, learn-process-execute and finally make it happen! Being from a design background, I have always admired the things around me, but after seeing Coldplay’s Up & Up video, I can certainly say that it left me awestruck. How beautifully it is ideated, improvised and implemented. The constant change of space and scale especially. (Do watch this video I am talking about if you haven’t already). I often think about the video every now and then that how can someone make it this beautiful yet so simple? The video not only change my perspective largely, but also made me appreciate the hard work it takes to make such things right from the scratch. Generally, we see a video, we don’t always pay attention to the detailing or even if we do, we do not usually acknowledge it much the way it should be, considering the immense amount of effort the whole production team puts into it.
“Everything is connected; we just need to learn how to see”
The above line is something that has always stayed with me. Moreover, things are endless and infinite. One just needs a clearer perception, the right mindset to connect the dots and just be a little creative. When it comes to ideation, the more we brainstorm, more ideas start generating and the more interesting and livelier it becomes. In the generation of new ideas, new content is not a one thing or one-person thing. It takes infinite people, infinite ideas, and infinite amount of hard work just to make that one perfect content/product that thousands of people get to see or use in the future. The team that works together, wins together. Mixing up real and imagination is a unique and powerful skill that one can acquire. One just have to follow a certain set of rules and real life constraints.
Importance of Referencing
The importance of referencing is to learn, get inspired and create and idea of our own. One thing which I’ve learnt over time is that, a person should not wait for an idea or motivation to come to him rather he should work hard to find it. To achieve what we want, understanding the pattern while connecting the dots is important. In addition, building up “intuition” is equally important.
Thank you for reading and staying till the end! 😍
The article you just read were based on a session, I attended, as a fresher during my job training. The session really helped me to keep looking up for ideas and learn from things around me. After this session, one thing changed for sure. As crazy as it might sound, but this really changed my ability to see things through a different perspective. I hope it will be helpful to you like it was for me in shaping my thought process and in Learning How to Learn!!☺
Also, did you know you can clap 👏 up to 50 times! I’ve invested a lot of time and energy in writing this article, so, you liked the article, please do not forget to clap and make me smile :))
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Here’s are some of the links related to the “Growth Mindset”
- You can learn anything: https://youtu.be/JC82Il2cjqA
- How to grow your Brain: https://youtu.be/GWSZ1DKjNzY
- Developing a Growth Mindset with Carol Dweck: https://youtu.be/hiiEeMN7vbQ
- The Growth Mindset (personal fav): https://youtu.be/wh0OS4MrN3E
