By Simphiwe Makapela
Our minds are literally hardwired by
our past experiences. It becomes possible, but quite a militant task for us to
learn new tricks and unteach ourselves ones that aren't yielding results that
hold much water. At this point in time, no matter your age, you're the oldest
you've ever been. Some so-called hard prophets of doom have for long upheld
that "you can't teach an old dog new tricks." But who is the
"old dog?" What are the "new tricks?" And who is the
"teacher?" In the proverbial "dog-eat-dog" world we live
in, you can't solve today's problems with yesterday's skill-set and expect to
be in business tomorrow. Its humanly, economically, and unbelievably impossible.
With all things being equal, let's,
for now, avoid complicating things by bringing in outside forces. Let's
compress these three forces (the dog, the tricks and the teacher) into one
workable solution. To cut all things as short as they can be, the "Old
Dog" will, of course, be you. Is that okay? Great! The "New
Tricks" will be the envisioned level of behavior or performance. The
"Teacher," well, this should refer to the methods used to teach the
old dog the new tricks. Go through that again so we don't fumble along the way.
My premise is clear: its to move away
from blaming the old dog and its percieved inability to learn new tricks but to
blame the teacher for the methods he/she employs in converting the old dog. Why
do dogs (you) become bad? Of course, a dog's personality and behavior is a
direct result of its owner's inability to understand it. There are no bad dogs.
Just ill-informed, unskilled and impatient teachers. Here's an interesting
twist to it: You, as an individual who's preoccupied about trying to make a
better living for yourself, are the teacher simultaneosly. Your role is to
understand who you are, your capabilities and the workings of the human mind.
So you may have well guessed what is it that has to change in order for the
"Old Dog" to change ... Correct! Your methods and your approach may
need some restructuring. What that means is, in effect, is teaching yourself
how to make growth-directed transitions. Its never, and has never been too late
to turn a dog around. If the approach changes, the dog certainly can change
too.
My mother's chronological age is 60,
that is, she's been under the milky way for 6 decades. Her biological age is
nothing more than 45. She is slender in frame and quite vertical as far as
height is concerned. She is not, like me, your so-called
"yellow-bone" complexion neither is she your dark-skinned supermodel
- your Alek Wek kind. She, like myself, has the gift of the gab. Always
talking, except that I, due to my line of work as an entrepreneur, considering
also the advent of the EQ, had to teach myself WHEN ... TO TALK. She has a
witty personality. One thing we both have in common is that we can go anywhere
in the world and start a conversation about nothing, with anyone. She is not
from the strictest section of the parenting crowd. Her parenting style isn't as
militant as I predict mine would be, but she has never, in my formative years,
allowed me to get away with anything. When she wants her tea now - she wants it
now.
So, at some point in my life, I became
smarter and I tried to figure out something about the workings of the human
mind in the most basic of ways possible, using readily available resources. All
I needed was my mother, teabags, sugar, mug, and hot water. And yes, a request
from her to make her a cup of tea. Her tea always has to come with two
teaspoons of sugar. Nothing less, nothing more.
Day 1: She asked for a cup of tea. Me
being me, I did as was commanded except that this time I threw in 1 teaspoon of
sugar but told her that I threw in 2.
Day 2: Threw in 2, as requested. But
told her that I only threw in 1.
Day 3: Threw in 3, but said I threw in
2.
In Day 2, I managed to be just as
convincing as I was in Day 1. Met her requirements but made her believe my
story. As a result, her specifications were violated because she threw in 1
more teaspoon, thinking it was now a 2-teaspoon cup of tea where in actual
fact, she was now having 3 teaspoons of sugar. But what was in her mind was
more tastier than what was in the cup.
In Day 3, I made her believe she was
having her normal cup of tea whereas it wasn't. Forget the cup of tea, think
about what was being done to her mind.
During the 1800s, Russian
Physiologist, Ivan Pavlov, was looking at salivation in dogs in response to
being fed. He then went on to build a device for measuring the amount of saliva
produced by dogs when food is presented. Pavlov then suggested that the dogs
had now LEARNED to associate the lab assistants with being fed - and he set out
to test this idea. He gave dogs food and rang a bell at the same time. After
repeating this several times, the dogs LEARNED to associate the bell with the
food so that afterwards, they would salivate when they heard the bell even when
there was no food.
Here is an astounding discovery: Pavlov
noticed, however, that his dogs later LEARNED to stop salivating in response to
the bell because the bell rang yet no food was presented. This, after a while,
caused them to UNLEARN the association between the bell and the food.
Henry Ford, a gentleman we're all
familiar with, famously stated that one can't possibly learn in school what the
world will do in the subsequent years. In the muddy playing field of today's
work environment, a learner's leverage is the ultimate master key to sustained
greatness. Skills and knowledge are things that grow obsolete far faster than
in the past. A 2009 survey revealed that more than 75% of workers across
generations believe in the necessity of upgrading skills within the next 5
years to keep up with the changes in the world of work. To stay up-to-date,
therefore, one ought to treat what one knows as a work in progress that
requires continuous improvement. If one is not spending at least 70% of one's
time educating, observing, unlearning and developing oneself for now and for
the future, one, dare I say with the greatest of respect and candor, is
probably in the wrong world.
You know what happened to my mom. You
do know what happened to Pavlov's dog. The bottom-line, perhaps, of all
bottom-lines, is that a dog's predisposition isn't fixed. Your mind is trained
to do whatever it takes within its cognitive prowess to protect your personal
status quo. Be that as it may, you and I ought to deliberately learn how to
trick our own minds when it comes to learning the skills that enable men and
women to be competitive in this dog-eat-dog world.
