EPISODE DESCRIPTION: The perception of what we lack is only thought. Join me today as I confess something I've long judged about myself and how I'm finding my way to freedom.

Episode theme song ‘Continent’ by ANBR

SHOW NOTES

Bernadette Stankard’s book to which I refer in this episode. This book’s premise is about prayer. It helped me realize why some of my most powerful meditations occur while ambient music plays or while I walk or run.

TRANSCRIPT

Hey, welcome back! Happy Wednesday, the day before Turkey Day!

I like Thanksgiving. I have talked about it before. I talked about it in an episode with my dad on Daughter-Father Dance. I am very excited about tomorrow, though I will not be with my family, which makes me somewhat sad. 

My baby brother, Jason, has traveled down from Kansas City and is here with me and that will be great. We will spend it with Deb’s family.

Anyway. Onto today!

My friend Bernadette Stankard, talked in a book of hers a couple of decades ago about multiple intelligences and how we have different ways of learning, different ways of being able to retain information and taking up cues from the external world.

Those are my words, but what she was essentially pointing to that fact that not everyone learns the same way. 

So the way I simplify it in my mind is to break it down—there’s a visual learner, there's an auditory learner, and there's an experiential learner. 

The visual learner has to see something in order to fully grasp it, fully integrate it into their knowing.

An auditory-intelligence person has to hear it. They can be in a lecture and that can listen or hear a podcast and retain the information or assimilate it in a way that they get it, right? It lands for them.

Visual people, obviously, have to see it, be it with their eyes or in their imagination in order for it to fully land for them. 

Experiential is the someone who has to actually get in there and do the thing.

My best example of this is when my dad was teaching me how to play basketball as a little girl. I could watch him dribble, I could watch him shoot and see that his hand followed through by his wrist getting limp after he took that shot he just took. 

Because I'm a visual learner, watching him demonstrate things was helpful, but what was more helpful was when I actually got to do it. 

Now, most people could probably argue that most people are experiential, right? Once you can get in there and do something, that connection to that something you’re doing helps it to stick, it's a cellular, a bodily physical understanding of how to do something.

So I'm, I'm assuming, although I don't know the data, that most people have a pretty strong pull toward experiential learning, tactile success in learning. 

I know a lot of people in my own family; they can just hear something and they'll remember it forever. 

My dad's one of those people. My sister's one of these people on steroids. I think they're both very visual as well, but I think, again, I don’t know the percentage of people are like this, but Dad and Julie I think have multiple intelligences where they can take information in and grasp conceptually and theoretically, and it lands for them if they are reading (visual) OR listening (auditory). 

I think that I'm personally a little bit hamstrung by the fact that I don't do well just by listening and it hamstrings me in my business too. 

Like, I can listen to my client tell me a process that we're going to go through, let's say on a website I've helped design and this is the process we're going through.

If that's all she's doing is telling me and not showing me, I'm going to struggle to understand it. I have to literally see somebody go through that process. Or even better, go through it myself. Which is what I’ve had to adapt to all my life. 

And I’ve judged this about myself in the past. Like I have a deficit, right? I've judged that I can't just hear something and retain it. Even in college, I would take copious notes because I had to assimilate what I was hearing, to write it down on a piece of paper so that I could actually see what was being said in order to understand it. 

And then here and comes this other thing my brain does, where most things people are saying to me, especially If they’re droning on or if the information is in long-lecture format. My brain switches this entire discourse into a rhyming format like an anapestic tetrameter cadence used often by Dr. Seuss.

This added element of rim rhyme adds even more fluff to what is already difficult for me to retain.

Now, there are certain things, like, if I have a visceral response to something or if I'm in a conversation that I'm actively involved in, I can oftentimes repeat back verbatim what the other person has said. And I think that's because it becomes experiential at that point. 

I'm in it, I'm in the conversation. I'm not being talked at or talked to.

So, the reason I’m bringing all this up is, I had a thought the other day and it, I let it land. I let it land in a way that really bothered me. And if you know me, not a lot of things bother me.

But this was one of those exceptions. And, again, I'm not saying I'm never bothered, believe me. But it's rare anymore. It’s rare that I cogitate or mull over things and worry about them anymore. I used to be that way, but not so much anymore. 

But every once in a while, like the other day, I will have something just land in a way that it’s discombobulating.

I'm working with a client who has another team that works alongside her, and I often feel challenged by the way information's given—it’s auditory because we’re on a Zoom call and everyone’s talking, and nobody’s showing their screen. I get confused in my mind because I'm not, the process. Right. 

So there have been a few incidences where just to pin point what I talked about earlier, that things happen, this triggers this, and then this triggers and it's like, we go back and forth and discuss these processes that I’m not seeing.

And, frankly, it feels like I’m in a deficit because I’m clueless. 

I'm seeing this as a debilitating thing about my character.

But then I think about thought, right? I see thought as a fleeting, non-reality, transient, non-concrete, unreal until we give out thought meaning. 

And if I believe that hearing something and allowing it to land so I can understand it is difficult for me. Then, it’s going to be difficult for me. 

And by the way, every moment of now is full of new possibilities. I believe that. The fact that I hold on to the idea that I’m a horrible auditory learner, or am hideous at taking in information just by hearing and that it’s debilitating me. Uh. That’s kind of not helpful. 

But we do that, don’t we? We hold onto “Well, I’m just this way.” And what if today, in this new moment of now, we aren’t that way? 

I truly believe any issue we have is in the past. It is.

In this moment, is it there? Maybe not. 

So today, I’m doing my best to deflect the thoughts that I’m unable or bad at taking in information by listening. 

In most cases, if we turn our attention to something besides the thought that we are ill-equipped or whatever it is, and not allow that thought to have a stronghold on us, it won’t. It can’t.

I'm starting to apply with the auditory learning issue because why can't I learn auditorially? Why can’t I retain information when I just hear it. do So for me, I'm experimenting with this. 

I’m challenging the thought, the belief, the reality (in air quotes) that I’m a bad auditory learner. 

And in the very least that this experiment will potentially result in that I have less judgment on the fact that auditory isn't my strong suit, just like spelling isn't some people's strong suit or recognizing good design isn't somebody's strong suit, right?

So today, I want to encourage us all to lighten on what we are not good at.

Because, I was once not good at audio editing. I left that to the “editors.” And, of course I haven’t mastered it, but I have podcast shows. I was once a poor (poorer than I am now anyway) audio editor. 

Let’s stop debilitating ourselves by stating things like, “Well, that’s just how I am.” 

You are so much more than how you currently see yourself. 

So, join me back here tomorrow before we all go into our Thanksgiving turkey dinner coma. 

See you tomorrow. 

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The podcast is hosted, produced, and edited by Jenée Arthur.
Cover art by Jenée Arthur
The songs used in the individual episodes have been licensed for use.