Keeping Your Goal Posts Out of the Mist

Discovery needs celebration.

Without it, the physiology required to imprint insight fails to energize. Celebration is physiology - it facilitates oligodendroglial* cells to myelinate the axon pathways ignited by your discovery. The result is the ability to act faster.

Yesterday, I nearly yelled at one of my students.

Metaphorically, I certainly did. These days I have stopped being middle-class nice – what a wasted life! - instead telling it how I see it. My trainee was a robust, heavy-set man with a problem. He could handle it.

As we worked, improvements ensued. Incremental, delicate and clear. The sound of his music deepened and resonated clearly. I asked his opinion of what had happened…

***SIDE BAR***

I don't ask for praise - obviously - I ask to understand what he understands.

How can I help him if I don't know how cognitive his recognition has become?

What a student learns from you is what they understood, NOT what you intended. I learned long ago that students almost never receive the information I intended. It doesn't matter how elegant or simply I said it, the truth is this:

No two people ever hear the same thing.

*** FINISH SIDE BAR ***

And so I asked his opinion of what had happened…

And that's when the goal posts became a blur of movement.

We started our exploration with a clear objective: figure out how to repeatedly riff without a slow buildup of tension jeopardising his expression.

After locating the origins of his sensory feeback, and sorting out a contextual relationship with his head-spinal complex - his music progressed, his tension subsided, and so I asked him:

"What does that do for you?"

But he was already on to the next thing. A "yes, but…" answer that gave him no time for celebration. This kept happening and I paused, looked around the room and decided:

Time for a teaching point on goals.

When you gather a discovery related to the intention you started with, make sure you both jump in the air and give your Self five. Hug, kiss, carry on a bit - like those hairy heterosexuals love to do in soccer - so that the physiology of what has just been experienced can consolidate.

Moving the goal posts means brushing past your acheivment by immediately setting a further goal into the future.

Self-hate usually drives this behaviour.

It can appear as perfectionism, negativity, drive - and it deeply dissatisfying as a learning modality. FM put it well:

"Under the ordinary teaching methods, the pupil gets 19 wrong to 1 right experience. It ought to be the other way round."

"Moving the goal posts" is just one of the many teaching tips and practises I explore in ThinkingBody Online. It will be going live soon, but before then you can read about it's origins by registering here…

ThinkingBody Online

*Also known as Oligodendrocytes, these cells help wrap a sheath around the exiting pathway of a neuron. As the sheaths extend in length, the effect is speed up the passage of messages around your brain. It's as if your brain is building a high speed train network, that allows you to decide and act faster. This is the core physiology occuring as you learn mastery of any kind of skill. Read more in Daniel Coyle's The Talent Code.

Picture credit: Pixabay.com