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hey leo here for actualised org and in this episode i want to show you a more effective way to think about learning [Music] people suck at bridging the gap between theory and practice they don't know how to take concepts and then put them into action and that of course is the most important part for actually getting the results that you want to see in your life so what I'm going to share with you today is a very simple but also somewhat counterintuitive insight which is the missing link which will take you from theory into application I want to give a credit to Evan pagan and why it would small from whom I learned this lesson at one of their seminars so what is this important insight well it's this it's very simple but listen close it's this learning equals behavior change learning equals behavior change learning equals behavior change that's it it's very simple but it's also somewhat counterintuitive so we need to go through this and some depth what this means is that you haven't learned anything until your behavior has actually changed so whatever lessons or concepts or beliefs you think you're learning in school or here with me or after reading a book this is not really learning it's only learning when your behavior changes that's when learning has taken place until then it's just mental masturbation so this is an interesting perspective on learning what it does is sort of tightens the reins raises the bar and sets a very strict notion of what learning is so no longer do we accept the following things as learning schoolwork reading lectures changing of your beliefs these do not constitute learning and this is tricky because you spent 12 or more years of your schooling career and into university and what do they teach you they taught you that learning is memorization of facts and learning theories that's what they taught you except after all of that how much do you really have to show for it not much because that form of learning you could call that learning but it's it's really too generous of a word right we want to we want to save this precious word called learning for when we really make action happen in our life when we get traction with things otherwise it just becomes intellectualization and nowhere is this a bigger problem than when you start to get into the more advanced stages of personal development work I mean it's all it's a this is a very important site for newbies but then when you start to get into consciousness work and maybe towards moving towards enlightenment that sort of stuff then it becomes even more important because intellectualizing there becomes very easy and it's more and more challenging as you get the more advanced stages because they're more abstract it's more and more challenging to figure out okay how do I actually start to embody some of this stuff and not just think about it so what I'm giving you here is a redefinition of learning it's a application-centric definition now of course this isn't the only definition of learning this is a perspective a lens through which we would look but it happens to be pretty effective especially when what you care about is getting some stuff done so let's talk about how to apply this there's some questions that I want to give you which are very very effective for applying this principle because even though it sounds very simple the reason I'm belaboring this point is because you'll see you're not going to get it the first time you hear it you're gonna have to hear it multiple times and you have to screw up applying it to learn what it really means to learn so here's a couple of questions grab a piece paper and write these down these are critical so the granddaddy question that you want to keep in the back of your pocket whenever you're in any kind of learning situation is the following how will this information change my behavior how will this information change my behavior so if ever you think you learn something ask yourself this question and if you're not clear as to how your behavior will change that means you haven't learned anything okay but there's also three more minor questions which are also helpful they're helpful just for for forcing your mind to articulate the lessons because the mind is a slippery Beast it loves abstraction zit loves vague generalizations and as I'll show you what some examples coming up here that's just not going to cut it when it comes to getting the results you want your life so the other questions are what did I learn number one and the follow-up question is how will my behavior change from number one what I learned and the third question is what did I learn about myself what did I learn about myself and of course when you asked that question what did I learn about myself it's also not just a vague thing like oh I learned something about myself no it's how will my behavior change with respect to what I learned about myself you see that word learn we're changing what it means here I hope you're getting the significance of that it's a little bit weird to just to think of it that way at first but really what you're doing is anywhere that you're seeing the word learn replace the word learn with behavior change got it okay so let's give you some examples so let's say that you're an entrepreneur and you're reading a business article maybe some fortune 500 magazine or some Wall Street Journal whatever and you know they have all sorts of articles in there about how to run your business more effectively maybe here you're reading an article about how to hire your employees better you read it it's a great this article is awesome it has some great insights in there okay but what did you learn if you cannot identify how your hiring practices will actually change from having read this article you haven't learned anything no matter how good you think it was or how cool some of the concepts and ideas in it work see how about you're watching the news maybe politics and you're noticing so stuff in the news there's a lot of violence in the news a lot of big events happening and maybe you think there's some lessons to be learned there about personal development or about humanity as a whole about our country whatever but did you really learn anything from watching that thing on the news not unless you have a concrete way of it changing your behavior see no lesson was actually learned how about the example of you fighting with your spouse or a girlfriend boyfriend / boyfriend so in this case you have a fight like you sometimes do and then usually guys make up and get back together and maybe we can save yourself oh yeah I learned a few lessons from that fight but did you really learn anything usually people learn some very vague lessons they don't mean the word learn in the way that we're talking about it here but here you're going to force yourself to come up with some concrete ways that your behavior will change in the future with respect to your relationship and to your spouse see that's a very different thing and also it's important to point out here this other trap that exists when you're going through this process the other trap is what I call moralization or shooting so notice that it is not a valid lesson to say that oh well next time I shouldn't get angry or next time I should just be nicer or next time I should just be more peaceful and not get annoyed by whatever she was doing that sort of thing see that's not you learning anything that is not behavior change you shooting on yourself telling you what you should and shouldn't do in the future that only makes the problem worse you're not changing anything you're just creating a bunch of rules in your head for how you should behave but then of course we all know how you should behave and how you actually behave our night and day see so which you need is actually specific action steps how will your behavior change how about this example of you working on a project and the project fails as an Avenue maybe an art project a hobby a business project well what did you learn from that failure did you learn anything you only learn something if you can identify how your behavior will change in the future with respect to new projects see that's very different than just sitting back and saying oh well yeah you know I should have done bad you know if I work a little harder than uh not know it's like no what are you actually going to do that's when learning takes place when you get it you see when you actually get something when you grok it as they say something special happens in your mind when you really understand something at a deep level it's not just an idea it's not just I should or a little moral that you have your behavior changes see real wisdom results in living a certain kind of life like if you know you really know why you should brush your teeth then you will brush your teeth but if you're just kind of forcing yourself and you're telling yourself you should and you're telling yourself yeah well it would be a good idea to and yadda yadda yadda and you know in theory it's nice I know the theory of of why brushing teeth is important no but you got actually get it when you really get it then you'll do it so if there's some area in your life where you keep doing something but it's not working it seems like your your wheels are spinning look into a little bit deeper ask yourself what am I not really learning here how am I not learning the lesson what you'll find is that it's not enough just to know it's like oh yeah I know it's like oh no I know and like oh I know see when you get to that really beep all I know that's when your behavior starts shift but that's a tricky thing about the example of you seeing an inspiring piece of art maybe in a museum maybe a magazine maybe on the internet and maybe you're an artist so you get inspired by that sort of stuff and maybe somehow relates to your work and you want to say oh I learned something from that did you how is your behavior changing how about when you learn some model like spiral dynamics I talked about the spiral dynamics model quite a bit I have some old episodes about that I'm not going to go into what it is here it's basically just a model for how human consciousness tends to evolve for individuals and also for collective societies and organizations it's a very powerful model and you might learn about that modeling said oh yeah now I understand I know spiral dynamics wow that was a great lesson but how did your behavior change as a result if nothing you're doing in your life is actually different after having learned spiral dynamics then you didn't learn anything it's just an idea it's just a nifty idea and sprout that M is actually a very practical model you can sit down with that model you can come up with a lot of concrete havior changes that might result from that if you really learn Sproul dynamics at a deep level it's going to change how you talk how your record of people how you think it'll change your politics it'll change how you deal with people in agressive situations it'll change how you deal with your boss and your co-workers at work and all sorts of stuff like that how about you learn about epistemology from one of my videos the pistil knowledge ease the theory of knowledge maybe you hear me talking about webs of belief paradigms default positions you hear me talking about this source of stuff and it's all sounds great it might sound very interesting in deep and profound and philosophical maybe you like that kind of stuff but then again did it actually change your behavior what is it that you learned about paradigms or webs of belief that actually has made you behave differently and behaving differently can also mean thinking differently so it doesn't necessarily have to mean that you have to go and and do something in the physical world maybe it changed the way that you read books or it changed the way that you think about beliefs and that could be a that can be an important behavior change maybe before you were kind of ideological and you were really clinging to your sign beliefs and paradigms and now you're not so sure about that and now you're more skeptical and now you're more open-minded and that's an important behavior change and of course that's going to have actual consequences in the physical world too because how you think tends to affect how you interact with the physical world maybe you've watched some of my recent episodes about absolute infinity and you learned about that and you think oh wow I learned about absolute infinity very cool very profound very mind-blowing stuff except did you actually learn anything about absolute infinity it seems like it did because I presented you with a bunch of facts and interesting quotes and information and some metaphors and now you think you know something but how has your behavior changed for example if it's gotten you actually excited to discover some deeper truths about reality and now because of that you started a meditation practice which before you didn't start because you were uninspired too then that's a lesson you learned but did that actually happen how about when you have a Smith school experience what did you actually learn from your mystical experience because mystical experiences they come they're awesome and then they go and so what what did you learn how is the mystical experience changed your behavior you need to be very explicit about that because the mystical experience when it comes and then it goes it's not necessarily going to give you a bullet point list of how your behavior should change sometimes your behavior naturally changes after a mystical experience but really you need to apply some consciousness to that process and not just hope that something happens make it happen or just a general example for you is if you're learning about personal development or you're learning about self actualization maybe you're new to this channel maybe you're new to personal development as a field and you're kind of excited by all the possibilities here and you you'll watch some of this content that's all amazing or you read some books all amazing but then how has your behavior changed as a result of that you need to be very clear otherwise you're just going to be learning stuff and nothing's going to happen so let me give you also some areas of application for this technique we already alluded to a lot of these but let's make them explicit so when you're reading books that's an awesome place to apply these questions and this this notion of learning equals behavior change a lot of times you read books is just all theory you need to be asking yourself about every insight in the book how is it going to change my behavior same thing when you're watching videos or listening to lectures of any kind if you're in university and you have a professor that you really love great but then ask yourself everything he's saying at the end of that lecture how is that going to change my behavior also very importantly with workshops retreats and seminars if you're going to those and I hope that you are whether they're solo retreats or meditation retreats the pasta consciousness workshops whatever business seminars relationship seminars throughout that entire seminar if your seminars multiple days long every single day you should be asking yourself how is my behavior going to change from what I learned today another great place to apply this is after any kind of big success or big failure in your life some disaster happens or a major victory happens in your business or in your relationship or in your family life ask yourself what you really learned also when you're tripping if you're psycho not and you'd like to trip and you're using that for personal development then the the problem with stripping is that it's very easy to to lose sight of those lessons because when you're in the trip it sounds it seems very awesome it seems like you have all these experiences it basically is a mystical experience you have all these insights but then you come back down and what have you learned how is your behavior going to change most people don't take that extra step and that's why they can trip trip trip hundreds of signs and not really grow from it you can also apply this at the end of your day if you want to have a journal at the end of day you sit down answer self okay what are the lessons from today by which of course you mean how is your behavior can change you can also apply this at the end of your year do a yearly review and ask yourself okay what are the biggest lessons from the last year by which you mean how is my behavior can change next year same thing with the end of projects if you're doing some kind of post mortems post mortems are good but you also need to make sure that your post mortems include how your behavior is going to change you individually also if you're working in a company then your company can apply the same kind of process how is our behavior going to change as a company from something that we learned from our post mortem and of course the end of chapters in your life you know if you probably notice that your life has chapters there's like the education chapter you go to college then you get out of there then maybe you go to your professional chapter your career that my last four five years then after that the next chapter in your career a new chapter opens up by changing jobs and maybe other chapter opens up when you start to have kids or family and so forth so on so there's these different chapters in your life at the end of each chapter which might last anywhere from three to ten years it's very good to do this kind of review and ask yourself what you really learned and how you'll act differently in the next chapter so learning I mean using a journal I mean is a is a very good way to really force your mind to be concrete and specific and actually work to articulate how your behavior is going to change the biggest challenge with doing is in your own mind just asking these questions of yourself is that you'll notice that your mind is very slippery and it just it won't it won't articulate how it'll just come up with big generalizations like oh yeah you know this year I learned blah blah and next year I'll just try to be a little bit better about that you know that's not that's not learning that's bullshitting yourself is what that is so get a journal maybe you want to take this on as a 30 day challenge for the next 30 days use a journal and at the end of every single day write down all your lessons or if you're watching my content a lot then have a journal and write down how your behaviors can change for every single episode that you watch and so forth alright so that's that's essentially everything I have to say about this topic except there's one last very important point which is that we to make sure you actually learned what learning is and for that I have a little pop quiz for you alright ready got B's paper and answer the following question which is what did you learn from this episode what did you learn from this episode pause the video right now pause the recording and answer that make sure you're specific about what you learned and then come on back and we'll see if you actually learn anything all right go alright so I hope you did that now look at your answer if your answer was Leo I learned that learning equals behavior change then you failed that is not learning that is an idea do you see the difference when you actually that learning is behavior change then you actually need to change your behavior in order for something to be learned are you getting that also if your answer was something along the lines of well Leo in the future and you have some vague thing about how you should learn in the future I should probably take notes about what I'm learning that's what I learned again you failed you didn't actually learn anything because you fail to articulate how your behavior will actually change giving us should is not enough here's what the right answer might have sounded like the right answer would have been starting tomorrow my behavior is going to change from this episode in the following way I am going to keep a journal of all my lessons from all the episodes that I watch or from all the books that I read and I'm going to have this journal I'm going to go buy it tomorrow I'm going to put it by my by my desk I'm going to keep it there and at the end of the day I'm going to do a five minute review where I sit down and I evaluate and then I I think about how my behavior is going to change in the future based on the stuff that I learned through my reading or through my schoolwork or whatever something like that would have been the right answer that means that you actually learned what I was trying to teach you here today you see it's tricky it's simple it's very basic stuff but watch how easily you forget watch what happens over the next week you'll probably notice that you didn't actually learn this lesson because what and as you'll watch this you'll agree with it you'll think it's great it's cool but then a week goes by and actually nothing has changed your behavior hasn't changed the way you learn hasn't changed the only way that this episode has any effect on your life is actually if the way that you learned has changed and that's not going to happen just by you believing some idea or some theory see so that's pretty much it but let me reiterate one last point which is that this is just one perspective on learning it's not an exclusive perspective there are other perspectives about what learning is that are also important which I want to share with you in the future in new episodes so it might sound you're like well leo this this definition of learning equals behavior change is very strict and it seems like it excludes a lot of important stuff and maybe you have some points to make about how theory is actually important for you just theory and of itself or maybe you want to talk about consciousness as a as a mode of learning and there might be some good points there but like I said those are different perspectives what I'm getting here is a specific lens use this lens for a while maybe use it for the next month and just see how much you can get done with it this is sort of a pragmatic perspective and then after you've exhausted this lens and once you've got that in your repertoire then I'll present some other perspectives for you and then you can use those other lenses as well and then you're going to have the full repertoire and then you're going to be as flexible and as effective as you can be so that's it I'm done here please make sure to remember to click that like button and come try actualize that org I've got some resources there for you that you can't find anywhere else come check out the forum come check out my blog and posting a lot of stuff on my blog and other stuff that I will be posting in the future and others that just stick with me I know that in the past month or two it might seem like I released a lot of content that was sort of very very very lofty sort of stuff a metaphysical type topics like absolute infinity and like that you know but there's still a lot of pragmatic topics that I want to cover in the future I am still a pragmatic guide there's still a lot of foundational stuff just the stuff that you need to be successful the stuff that you need to to be able to take the theory and learn how to apply it in your life so that personal development is actually working for you and it's not just a philosophy so more of that is coming don't worry don't get disheartened by the super abstract stuff if if you have then over the last couple months alright stay tuned you