Whose job is it to learn?

I've attended many, many seminars in my life on everything from how to make money in real estate to personal development. I love seminars and workshops, and I'm sure I'll continue to attend them until the day I die. I always leave these events with an experience of joy and aliveness. Although I receive great information when I attend, I realize that it is only when I apply the information that I create great positive impact in my life from increasing my income to reducing taxes to being a better father, leader, friend and husband. One of the great things about the seminars and workshops that we produce is that much of what we do is experienced rather than just talked about. Okay, enough for the plug. Quite often, I discover that people receive the information and because they have it as simple common sense stuff that I already knew about they walk alway with a belief that it was a waste of time. Now that's a tricky thing, because many times I see people talk like they know something, when really they don't know. What they have is knowledge. What they lack is knowing.

So what's the difference between knowledge and knowing. Knowlege or knowing about something is having a third party experience whereas knowing is a first hand experience. It's the difference between the picture on the menu and the actual meal. It's the difference between being in the stands watching and playing on the field. I'll give you an example. When I was younger, and before my first encounter, I knew about kissing. I imagined what it might be like. I imagined how it might feel. I sort of knew how to do it, I thought. It's only when I actually engaged in the act did I have a knowing. I gotta tell you the experience was quite a bit different than what I thought it would be...it was SO MUCH BETTER on one level and NOT AT ALL what I thought it would be like. Anyways, I digress. Where were we...oh yeah, knowledge vs. knowing. Let me give you another example. Let's say you needed to have heart surgery, and you could choose your doctor. Not that this would actually happen, but let's say your first choice was the "doctor" who graduated at the top of her class. In fact she could recite everything she ever read on heart surgery, literally word for word like she was telling you her name. She could tell you exactly what needed to be done, the only thing is she'd never actually done a single procedure, yet. Your second choice is someone who graduated at the bottom of her class, and she could not tell you a damn thing about heart surgery. What she has though is thousands of hours of actually performing heart surgery. Now I know this is a ridiculous example, but which one would you want to operate on you? on your loved ones? anyone on the planet? I hope you would choose the latter, the one not necessarily with the knowledge, but the knowing. If you said the first one, please stop reading this post, and please stop reading anything I ever write ever again. :)

How often do we pick up knowledge, but never apply it? Why do we do this? How often do we create excuses or reasons why it doesn't make sense to start now or why it won't work? Is that true? How could you possibly know, when you haven't actually done anything with that knowledge? Perhaps, you had an experience in the past in a similar situation that has you believe that it won't work this time. Again, new time, new opportunity what if it works out different this time? Again, you got to move from knowledge to application for you to create this knowing. You have a great idea? Put it in to play. Let's see how it works in real life application. You have the worst idea on the planet? Again, put it in to play. We won't know until we go. Even when we learn from other people's experiences, we still need to take that knowledge and apply it ourselves. Someone else's knowing does not become your knowing. It becomes knowledge. You must apply that knowledge for it to become knowing.

If we allow ourselves to accumulate tons of information and do nothing with it, we might be able to sound pretty darn intelligent and entertain people at cocktail parties, but in my mind we'd just be knowledgeable idiots. On the other hand, if we put in to practice the accumulated knowledge, we'd have a knowing. People who have a knowing might not sound as intelligent, but they have conviction. Conviction from having had the experience and those people play a different kind of music when communicating than those who simply have the notes on a piece of sheet music and could tell you all about it. That's another story altogether, though. Until next time...

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