“I could never do that.”
“I’m not that smart.”
“Oh, that’s beyond my pay grade.”
“I’m just not good with new technology.”
One way coaches like me help our clients is by encouraging them to reconsider some of their long-held beliefs. We ask them to evaluate whether those beliefs are, in fact, true.
One challenge with that question, though, is that some beliefs become true simply because the person believes them.
Many times, these limiting beliefs are expressed by people with years of maturity, wisdom, and experience behind them. They look at new systems, procedures, or technologies, and they claim that they’re not as smart as the young people who are eagerly adopting those new ideas.
But those same young people are the ones who remain dumbfounded by things like cursive writing and rotary phones, which most people around my age had thoroughly mastered while we were children.
What is it that makes the difference? Is today’s technology really that much harder to learn than what we grew up with? Does it really demand a level of intelligence that we can’t achieve?
I’d argue that new systems have always been somewhat hard to learn. At the same time, they’re also within reach for those who find them important. Why did some people learn how to dial a rotary phone and others didn’t? Necessity. For many years, the cost of not learning how to dial a rotary phone was almost unthinkable. Not learning wasn’t really an option.
Next time you’re tempted to say you’re not smart enough to learn something, let me encourage you to consider an alternative that, while harder to admit, is probably more true. Recognize that the new skill simply isn’t that important to you. And maybe that’s OK. But when you can see the truth behind the friction to learn something new, you retain the power to learn other new things that are important to you.
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