Learning is Achievement

We taught a new course on the weekend. Learning to Achieve is a development of previous personal development courses and our current coaching program. As we worked on noticing what is involved in learning that leads to achievement, I was also noticing that deliberate learning is achievement. When we decide to learn, we do not so much stretch as grow into a self big enough to hold the new learning.

Learning is a good model for achievement: by definition, we cannot know precisely what we will learn until we have learned it. If it were already within our experience, if we did not have to change to accommodate it, we would not have to learn it. Achievement is like that too: there is a dimension to achievement that surprises us, a confirmation that we have changed and learned and grown into what we have done. A dimension that feels so good that for a moment we glow with the pleasure of a baby discovering peek-a-boo for the first time.

That's what I remembered in the room this weekend. I remembered that learning is achievement and that achievement is fun. It doesn't put us alone at the peak of the mountain: it hooks us in to a wide, supportive network. When we learn to achieve, the learning and achievement are both exciting. The tension between process and product disappears and we enter a time and space where the best expression of who we are is to be just a little bit more than we think.