New Learnings

“Change can be frightening, and the temptation is often to resist it. But change almost always provides opportunity – to learn new things, to rethink tired processes, and to improve the way we work.”

Klaus Schwab

This year, I have decided to be brave and not only learn a new modality of therapy but also a new hobby – mosaics.  Both are equally exciting and frightening dependent upon which aspect I focus on.

At the therapy training session, the other week, the instructor describer the learning as graduating from our Learners permit to Provisional license, in which our driving skills will be a little clunky BUT we need to stay in the car and push through regardless.

Whilst the therapy has been in existence for over thirty years, it is a new way of working for me and I need to work though the script and learn to adapt to this new way of working with a client.

As always, it is difficult being in the room (or virtual room on this occasion) with other therapists of many years of experience between them all.  Practicing with peers can be both exciting and frightening at the one time.  And many of us suffer from imposter syndrome or get performance anxiety whilst having to practice on our peers.  We also had to practice being the “client” in order to experience the process from the client’s perspective and to see how effective this therapy works.  This too was a little daunting as we were also exposing our own vulnerabilities to another professional.  Self judgements were no doubt happening from us all.

There are similar thought processes with the mosaic lessons.  We often compare our ability against our peers; our skill levels, choice of project, colours and patterns.  It is human nature to compare ourselves to others, however we also know that this can be to our own detriment. 

Some people are more creative and/or have a better eye for colour – however, this does not mean that you are less worthy to be in the same room.  We all learn at different rates and there will always be those who catch onto things quicker.

In hindsight and with a clearer mind – I have come to the conclusion that in both learning environments, I need to concentrate on my own learnings and not compare my abilities (or inabilities) to the other participants.  We all learn in different ways and in our own timeline.

I had best get back to preparing for both the new therapy and my mosaic class.  Will keep you posted on both outcomes.