“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I’ll remember. Involve me, and I’ll learn.” – Benjamin Franklin

The musician doesn’t learn by listening. The musician learns by playing. It’s how the mind, in its ever plastic state, adapts. It responds to application.

In Edgar Dale’s “Cone of Learning”, we learn:

10% of what we read.

20% of what we hear.

30% of what we see.

50% of what we hear and see.

70% of what we say and write.

90% of what we actually participate in.

Information without application, is knowledge.

Information with application, is wisdom.

“Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.”

Although “knowledge” and “wisdom” are words often lumped into the same category, they are miles apart. The difference between the two: application. 

Gaining knowledge is relatively simple. But purely gaining knowledge doesn’t change who we are. We can place a turbocharged engine under the hood, but if it’s not connected to the drivetrain, we won’t drive faster. We might even drive slower, clouding our efforts with “unusable weight”.

Wisdom on the other hand, takes effort. It takes trial, error, pain, blood, sweat, and tears. And it’s a lifelong practice.

Knowing is not half the battle. It’s not even a quarter. It’s the first 10%, if that. What we are after… knowledge in action.

When a coach gives you feedback, do you immediately try to apply what they are asking you to do? Or, do you just hear what they are saying and file it in the back of your mind with ‘things to remember later?’

As an athlete, being able to let down your ego and make a correction on command is crucial. It can immediately impact your performance or pay off greatly in the long run. Next time you get a coaching cue, see if you can make a change on the fly. If you have questions about it, have a conversation with them after.

“Your obsessions become your possessions.” – Ed Mylett

The word “obsessed” gets a bad rap.

And there’s indeed some merit to that.

But let’s try to define “to be obsessed” a little further. What it’s not defined by is “hours put in”. That may be correlation, but not causality. One is truly obsessed with something when their passion and fire for “that thing” is so great, that their willpower will see them through even the harshest of storms. Where every other person quits… they push on. To one who is obsessed, failure is simply not an option.

Be obsessed with reaching our dreams.

Be obsessed with becoming a better husband. A better wife. 

A better son, a better daughter. A better friend, a better neighbor.

Be obsessed with what we care about the most. Our fiercest willpower, pointed in the right direction, is the most powerful thing in the world.

“I want to see it, before I believe it.”

We are visually oriented people.

We seem to trust our eyes more than our other senses.

It’s why we call our ultimate direction our “vision”. It’s why in the middle of the night, if we think we hear something, we want to take a look before we feel safe enough to fall back asleep. We can hear news through the grapevine, but we doubt it until we see it.

Recognizing this, we can leverage it to our advantage. Many of us will agree that there is power in writing down our goals, and this is why. We begin to believe it that much more. It feels that much more real.

Write down our vision. Write down our goals. Write down anything that is important, not because it’s a mundane task… but because we need to see it, before we believe it.

“There will never be a better you, than you.”

There is a lot to be said about authenticity.

The first definition inside Merriam-Webster reads, “worthy of acceptance or belief.”

If there’s one sure way to find failure in something, it’s through not being ourselves. It just doesn’t pan out in the long run. While we always remain a student, the harm lies when we blur the lines between emulating the traits of our mentors… with trying to actually be them.

Our mentors do not wish for us to follow in their footsteps.

Our mentors wish for us to go further. To blaze the path further than before.

We have incredible leaders to guide us. But it is now on us to push even further. And there’s no one suited better for that, than you.

“Vision is the bottleneck of effort.”

We talk a lot about effort.

It’s the gasoline that will drive us to our destination. And there is no substitute.

It’s often however not that effort is lacking when we aren’t reaching our goals… and instead, it’s a lack of direction.

There are many highly capable people in this world. They have the gasoline and the horsepower behind it. But where they direct that energy is the misstep. When they wanted to travel from the East Coast to the West Coast, they found themselves in the South. The largest pity is that all along, they had the right address in the GPS… but they failed to check back on it often enough to ensure they were on the correct route.

We pride ourselves in our horsepower. Your raw effort. We just need to get ourselves pointed in the right direction, and the rest will fall into place.

“You can easily judge the character of a person by how they treat those who can do nothing for them.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Cue, craving, response, reward. 

In “Atomic Habits”, by James Clear, this is the loop process that determines many of our actions.

A large part of the above is the final piece – the reward. We can be reward oriented beings. It’s not a bad thing by itself, but we do find ourselves in trouble when it is the only thing.

The quote above gives us something to think about. Some time today, we’ll come across the individual who can offer us the least in return. As in, there won’t be a reward for whatever action we have the option of taking. We’ll know who it is when we see them.

How we act inside that moment is the reality of our character.

“Do not fear failure. But be terrified of regret.” – Ashley Soughtley Spaulding

The reality of life is that we will hear more “no’s” than “yes’s”.

And we will fail.

A lot.

But despite the hundreds of doors closed on our phase, the hundreds of times we are told “no way”, they will never haunt us. What we will regret will be the instances where we gave up. Where we told *ourselves” no.

We don’t fear failure… we welcome it. It’s where the learning occurs. Where the real magic happens.

DAILY MINDSET

“Your mind is not your shoe size.” – Jim Kwik

Have you ever taken an “IQ Test”?

Chances are you have of some sort. A test that claimed to tell us our capacity in life. Where the resulting score is the equivalent of looking into a crystal ball on how successful we’ll be.

As ridiculous as that sounds, it’s a nightmare that comes to life for many. A self-fulfilling prophecy that can cut potential at the knees.

The truth of it all however, is that we know so very little about how the mind actually works. It’s still such a mystery to us. Yet, we can find ourselves building an imaginary ceiling over our heads.

In regards to one of life’s greatest mysteries, there’s one thing we can bank on… that our mind is not our shoe size.

DAILY MINDSET

“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I’ll remember. Involve me, and I’ll learn.” – Benjamin Franklin

The musician doesn’t learn by listening. The musician learns, by playing. It’s how the mind, in its ever plastic state, adapts. It responds to application.

In the “Cone of Learning” (Edgar Dale), we learn:

10% of what we read.

20% of what we hear.

30% of what we see.

50% of what we hear and see.

70% of what we say and write.

90% of what we actually participate in.

Information without application, is knowledge.

Information with application, is wisdom.