'Success' has encouraged a bad learning process.

In my opinion that is and it's just my thinking at this moment in time.

I really don't think my education has helped me in my creativity, inquisitiveness, risk-taking or in general, boldness. From 4 - 18 years I was always 'good' at school, pretty consistent, reliable, well-behaved. I was achieving at the level I should have been, over-achieving in some areas and I didn't have to work too hard to get what I needed. (Ugh the whole notion of 'needed' makes my skin crawl now).

Essentially, the grades were the aim and once you got the grades you got the praise. It was all about what was right and what was wrong. Ticks (well done) and crosses (you failure). I remember coming home week after week with my '10/10 spellings' sticker and if, god forbid, I ever got 9/10 there were more often than not, tears. For so long I never thought there was a problem with that.

On reflection I completely lost the ability to try and, actually, the most valuable learning takes place during the process of learning rather than at the point of 'finishing' the learning. (I'm using the '' because I'm aware you can't call it finishing because you're never done). So much emphasis is put on success. The more and more I think about the notion of success I want to move myself further and further away from it. People using the term success or placing success on the top of the pedestal aren't being purposefully damaging but we end up modelling there being an end point to learning. We are geared up to feel this feeling of success but it's non-existent.

If spend the entirety of our lives and our learning focussing on the end point of where we are going we aren't able to pay attention to the fascination of the journey of what we are learning at the present moment. We stop paying attention to how our learning process might have changed the path we are meant to be on. If you're so focussed on your original goal, you won't even notice the shift taking place in your thinking.

Sure, not having a measure for success may be scary but the more I remove myself from it, I become so much more engaged in where I am right now. I'm not by any stretch of the imagination an expert but from my own experience, if there had been more emphasis on making effort, trial and error etc. then I'd be further along in my development than I am now.

I had a fascinating experience in my third year at university. I realised it was the point in which I had made the most exponential growth and because I was so present in the moment, I hadn't even realised it had been happening. I was working with a lecturer for a devised piece of theatre and the focus was on the process. I failed more than I had failed before and the feeling of not knowing what or why I was doing what I was doing was completely foreign. Every time I tried to think about the end result I was dragged back to the now. By the end of what was about 6 months of 7 hours day of pretty relentless practice I looked back and reflected on what I had learned. I was stunned. I had been fully embroiled in the process which was the most effective way to gain the greatest depth of understanding.

I guess the point I'm at now is that I am having to relearn how to learn. How to try. How to fail. And to not only fail but I want to look for the opportunities where I can fail. The outcome of learning is not to get it right. If you always get it right you're just demonstrating what you already know. And if you're just doing that, you're not learning anything, you're just regurgitating information. And if that's what you want to do, that's fine, but call it something other than learning. I'm really trying to reject the idea of success, I think it muddies the process of being present and actually absorbing what I'm learning. When I've been caught up with success in the past, I've taken the option that is going to get me there the fastest, rather than the option that is going to teach me the most.