Why Adults Are So Bad At Learning New Things

It’s not often that I meet a forty-year-old who is just beginning to learn to play the piano. Parents are always enthusiastic, proud, and assured that their children are talented and capable of success. I love talking with parents and hearing about all the extra-curricular activities their children are involved in. Children’s lives are so adventurous and diversified! It’s so impressive to hear how their child not only has soccer practice three times a week but how he’s also learning to play guitar and speak mandarin! Hearing about all the things kids learn makes me want to go out and learn how to tap dance, make pottery, and cook the best cheesecake all at once! I started asking myself, why don’t I sign up to learn something new? I hadn’t taken classes to learn a new skill for a while. Then I realized that I actually don’t know many adults who are learning new skills.

I don’t want to be average.

If you ask the average person what they do for fun in their free time, there’s a strong probability you will get that they like to watch Netflix as a response. Realizing I didn’t want to be among the many who have this mentality, I started to write a list of all the things I’d like to learn one day. The list was huge! I realized that instead of watching Netflix, with all the things that interest me, my life has the possibility of actually being twenty different Netflix shows. So, I had decided to stay curious and take action on my curiosity. But how? What knowledge is it that kids have that adults don’t?

Permission to Fail

The critical thing that kids have that adults don’t understand when learning new things is permission to fail. Most adults never even try to learn something new out of fear that they will be bad at it. When they start, they see their beliefs come true! Everyone is awful at the beginning of learning a new skill! It should seem like common sense to not expect yourself to be the next Van Gogh or Michael Jordan when you’re learning the core concepts of a new skill, and yet it is the reason why most people give up so quickly. They think that that thing must not be suitable for them because it’s hard for them at first! The only difference is that kids don’t put judgment on their failures. They instead can look at a drawing of theirs with awful proportions and be proud because they enjoy the process of creating.

Take judgment out of your learning process.

Take judgment out of your learning process, and you will succeed more quickly! Allow yourself to fail because, without it, you won’t get anywhere! We’re not used to seeing ourselves fail and be beginners at something as adults because we stop doing it! Instead of stretching ourselves and failing, we eliminate the process of learning completely! We are uncomfortable with failure and instead go to Netflix or Instagram for entertainment. (I’m guilty of this as well, but I want to change this!). It’s important to be proud of the tiniest of successes. Show your friends how you learned to play twinkle twinkle little star on the piano! I’ve learned that being frustrated with how far you are from where you want to be, slows down the process. Want a boost of motivation? Search your desired skill with “after one year of learning” on Youtube. These kinds of videos are so helpful in showing how much of a difference stopping judgment and instead learning a bit every day can make!

So many things to do and learn!

I wasn’t kidding when I said I want to learn to tap dance. I want to learn to salsa dance one day too! I also have a goal of trying to perfect making a baguette from home. The bread in France is so good, and I just am not comfortable with going without it when I’m in the U.S. There are many things I want to learn to do! I’ve realized that to get there and express myself fully and creatively; I’ll first have to fail more times than I’m comfortable with. I’m slowly but surely learning how to embrace my mistakes with open arms. They bring me to where I want to be. I want to live a life full of creativity. I want to be doing the most I can with my time on this earth. I don’t want to take things too seriously and would much rather laugh my way through making a fool out of myself than waste time being scared of trying something new! It’s a challenge, but it’s one I feel so ready to take on.