Learning from Learners by Snehashree.

Guest writer for "The NZDream" blog

I was playing a game with my first teacher.

While playing, I had to do three things.

1. Understand how to play the game

2. Learn how to defeat people

3. Learn how to win

Are you wondering if learning how to defeat people is different from learning how to win?

Well, yes, they are as different as the day and night.

But sadly, we don’t realize it.

Living from day to day or even from night to night, we fail to realize that defeating people is very different from winning anything.

But then I learned it on the way.

I learned how defeating others was different from winning. Now, this is no ordinary job.

We learn it from the teachers who teach us.

How do teachers learn?

Of course, from their teachers and they have learned from theirs.

Ordinarily, a human understands their basic learning skills through a mechanism called conditioned reflex.

Conditioning happens in two ways.

1. You learn from your failures

2. You learn from others' failures.

Life is not easy and failures make it harder.

But failing is ideally the only way to learn.

People often name big achievements as wins and big, substantial failures in their lifetime.

But it is not the case.

We fail every day in life. Sometimes, we may even be failing from one task to another.

• It could be as simple as forgetting your steps during your Yoga or dance session.

• It could be forgetting the code you were planning to install into your blog.

• It could be failing to remember your home address, your telephone number, and so on and on.

The list is exhaustive, but we do not realize it.

Since we are conditioned by society to believe that we never fail and when we do, we must ignore it, which is good in many ways. But remembering your failures can make you good teachers.

By telling our children to get up when they topple while walking is one such scenario. Here, we are telling them to ignore their failures and so our mind conditions to this habit.

The result is, we see failures that people show to us. Failures that are glorified in our lives are known as failures.

In this competitive world, this is an easy technique that is being used implicitly by people.

Once the child grows up enough, our training focus on making them strong. How can you make their mind strong?

By simply telling them to defeat others?

Yes, true! Most houses are nowadays focussing on teaching their children about how they can defeat others.

Well, that makes them winners! Does it?

All this while, we are continuing the cycle of teaching and learning.

We are being taught by those who have either learned through failing and have not given up their bitterness towards their defeats. Others have learned from others' failures. This way some of us can easily prevent from failing in the obvious tasks.

We are taught only by these two kinds of people and they are both learners. One is probably more observant than the other. It could also be that one is more receptive to failures and has failed in the step before the one where he or she has observed well.

Now, whether you have observed or not, but the teachers who teach us are always of these two varieties.

- Those who teach us are people who have learned from their defeats

- Those who have learned from others' mistakes.

Which of these two are better? As teachers can’t be easily determined.

But, indeed, most teachers we get are not always bright minds but those who have failed.

Failure is quite effective in our memory cells and they always thus become great teachers since they can teach you 101 ways on how to not fail in a particular thing and they can also show you different ways by which you fail.

So, good teachers are often good failures who have learned to circumscribe their failures in some way or the other.

Let us, therefore, introspect on these raging issues which are right now hotter. It is these very basics if we can establish well would create a sustainable world.

Learning the difference between defeating others and winning, learning the source of the knowledge, and understanding the very core makes us richer as human beings.

Our very life has become machinated and artificial to such an extent that we have stopped introspecting on issues that can bring real transformations to society.

Therefore, I would end by saying that defeating others is easy and you can momentarily get rid of your competitors, but you cannot win when your whole energy focuses on defeat.

Becoming good learners and learning from the right sources is the only way to possess a clear vision, a doable life, and probably a future that is right now difficult to achieve.

https://www.mynzdreamblog.com/write-for-us-and-author-interviews

Follow the above link if you would like to be published on the blog