Become a learning guru and conquer learning anxiety
Every time we face a novel task we might face a learning anxiety. This anxiety makes us feel that perhaps this time we won’t be able to handle the challenge. While this can happen to the best of us, there are techniques that can help get through the block and enjoy the experience.
I have faced this situation many times over in my career and learned to appreciate the feeling. It is similar to conquering fear of public speaking. First, I was deadly afraid to go on stage. Then, after enough practice and mind-shifting I began yearning for the butterflies and seeking every opportunity to get them back. Hopefully, with enough fortitude you will too experience this turnaround moment!
In the course of my job I have had to learn how to operate different kinds of operating systems, databases and many other kinds of technology tools. Every time I have jumped into the deep end, a gnawing feeling always surfaced — what if this time it will not work, what if this time I would not learn it. With many years of practice the feeling has been conquered and I have come to enjoy every new bit of information.
Here are some of the ways that you can speak to your mind and body when you are faced with learning anxiety:
- Acknowledge that you are experiencing learning anxiety. It is one of the most important moments as from there on things will flow naturally.
- Recognize that your mind is giving you a signal — “Hey, I have not seen this before, this is difficult to understand”
- Accept that feeling stupid before injecting and comprehending the material is just part of the experience
- Break the material into smaller chunks
- Consider consuming the material in different kinds of media audio, video, diagrams, games
- It is absolutely normal to re-ingest the same information over and over again until it is relevant. Your mind is trying to find analogies to the new material, and sometimes those analogies are buried deep inside!
It is true that we can only retain so much information in our heads, however given enough time and material it will be much much easier to comprehend novel information.