#399 – How else do your Ego & Ghosts block your learning?

Say you're trying to learn Arabic. When do you think you learn most: reciting declensions in a classroom? Or trying to find your way out of Cairo's Khan el-Khalili?

When I bought my son his first pair of roller skates, the salesperson at the sports goods store warned me, "don't hold his hand while he's learning!" My eyebrows went up, but, she must know, I thought, and removed my hand from my 4-year-old's.

I signed him up for the free two-hour class they were holding outside and, following the instructor's orders ("no parents, please!"), I went to the next-door mall. When I returned, my jaw dropped seeing my son rolling across the rink, chasing a puck, a hockey stick in his hands.

Now, that's fast learning! Of course, he had skin in the game––his knees' skin. He took a risk (roller-skating without my hand as a safety device), and the risk paid off.

But what doesn't your Ego want, for the life of it? Risk.

It'll do whatever it takes to prevent your skin from going anywhere near the game. It'll recruit the ghosts to make you:

• Feel sick when you think of pitching your book to a literary agent (Physical Ailments)
• Do laundry, go grocery shopping, empty the dishwasher before you allow yourself to dive into what brings you alive (Time Indifference)
• Want to be swallowed by the earth because your post, which you were convinced would go viral, got zero hearts on Substack (Misplaced Shame)
• [Fill in the blank] (any of the 12 Ghosts and their boss, your Ego)

And when you follow your Ego and Ghosts' orders? You avoid risk. And to do that? You don't do.

And then what happens? You don't develop the skills, widen your view, strengthen your muscles.

What risks are you willing to take so you never stop growing?

Love,

Carolina