Ready to Learn
by Keith Tokash
Attitude is everything. I've found that when I want to become something, it helps if, as I begin the long walk to whatever destination I choose, I start to tell myself that I am what I am striving to become. It was this way for the CCIE journey, and it was this way for many other things I have taken the time to accomplish.
One of the things I am is a perpetual student. Learning, to me, is the foundation upon which all growth is constructed, and I cannot imagine growing as a person without first developing a deep love of the process.
That said, learning is not something everyone is good at. To be ready to learn, I feel one must not simply resign him or herself to the process, but become so enthralled by the very prospect that a book, class or person is almost put on a pedestal. For most topics this is not a natural reaction, which leads us back to my opening point regarding attitude. My father would cut through the semantics and put it simply as, "fake it 'till you make it."
For some goals the journey is a discrete one, with a definite end in sight. The CCIE was a strange hybrid between a marathon and a sprint, but it provided the distinct courtesy of having a clear end. Once you log into Cisco's web site and see, "PASSED," your journey is complete and you may now begin rounds of apologies to those whom you have spent the previous year ignoring.
Other journeys are about the love of the game, with the game being an amalgamation of whatever the subject you are studying may be, and the process of learning itself. For me this embodies martial arts. Traditional arts, grappling, wrestling, kickboxing, even the more esoteric arts like Capoeira ... they have so much to offer that it would take lifetimes to master them all. I see this as a boon, since to the pure student the idea of omniscience ranks somewhere between hateful and nightmarish.
Part of learning anything is knowing when to simply shut up and listen patiently and carefully, sublimating the geekly need to impress others with our mental prowess. My wife's uncle is an ex wrestling champion in the Netherlands, and he will not teach because today's youth impresses him as unwilling to learn. I have gotten the impression that this is the reason, and it ties into humility required to learn.
This leads to my final point, which is that part of the attitude required to truly learn is to start with the awareness of your own ignorance. This is acknowledged to the point of being cliché, but half the people I see talking about knowing nothing will transition smoothly from faux humility to unrequested lectures. This lesson needs to be realized, as opposed to simply known. The difference between the two is that it is easy to know something; we all "know" we're going die one day by the time we're in middle school. To realize something you must internalize it, undergoing something of a transformation. The first time we deal with the death of someone we know personally, for example, really drills the reality of mortality into us. Now we realize instead of just knowing.
Most people have the potential to learn most things. It's a matter of attitude. If you want it enough you will sacrifice, but to start down that path with any success you have to have to correct attitude
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