How to be teachable and be open minded itself?^^
Hi, Salmoncake,
How to be Teachable ?
Whether one is teachable (ie. Can be taught) can be due to many factors. Two significant ones might be attention capacity (how much one can stay attentive and focus while learning) and psychological state of mind (which includes one’s beliefs, attitudes, motivations, expectations, commitment, emotions, etc).
Being able to stay attentive and focus will likely to be able to listen and understand the whole process of teaching. This is the basic traits required for learning (for both knowledge and skills). Activities that can help to improve attentiveness / attention span are meditation, slow-movements exercises like tai chi, yoga, etc.
Psychological state of mind of a person has a great impact on one’s motivation/resistance to learn. For instance, if one holds a negative attitude/belief, feeling needs/expectations unmet, he/she may be resistant/hesitant to learn. Thus, you may find them hardheaded, noncompliant, and display low interest to learn, ie. hard to be taught. On the contrary, a teachable person is likely to be attentive, positive, happy, and probably hold a growth mindset.
How to be Open-minded ?
One who is open-minded means they are able to consider new/others’ ideas, suggestions, etc. In other words, this person is not biased against novel ideas, but is able to listen, consider and analyse new ideas before deciding if they can be used.
One way to be open-minded is to practice being “humble”. If one understands that “my idea may not be the best, someone may have a different idea that suits the situation better”, he/she may even look forward to receive more suggestions (after all "more brains-work is better than one” ).
In any case, being open-minded doesn’t mean that we have to adopt the new suggestions/ideas that came to us. New/different ideas may not be the best or most appropriate choice after careful considerations of the options.
Hope my sharing helps. Have a good weekend.
Is there a way to deal with this?
thanks for helping me. Appreciate it much!
Hi, salmoncake,
I apologise that I have overlooked the above question you raised after my sharing. The following is my reply and hope it’s not too late for you.
Hi Salmoncake,
To improve your motivation to learn, you must first see the importance of learning. Then set goals and make plans to learn.
You may want to try these steps :
- understand the advantage / purpose for you to learn , let say, a new skill.
- Set a goal about learning this new skill. For example, what extent do you want to achieve this goal. If this skill has basic, intermediate and advanced levels, then set your goal at basic level first. Write specifically what do you hope to see yourself learnt to show that you have achieved your goal.
- Explore (either through reading up or talk with other people who know this skill) all possible ways to reach this basic level.
- Write it down in a “a step-by-step” plan
- Refer to the plan and visualise a situation at work , and practice it at home.
- Bring the plan out to your work place and try it out.
Possible Obstacles:
Sometimes, even though you have plans or know how to do it at work, you may still have difficulty to apply it, there could be other reasons such as :
- Unhelpful thoughts that lead to some resistance/hesitation to apply your plan. In this case, you may want to examine the unhelpful thoughts by listing them down, and look at how to change those thoughts.
- Low mental energy (unable to stay focus): can be due to tiredness, not enough sleep/no quality sleep - thus being able to have good sleep in the night is very important for learning. Besides, picking up a physical activity like brisk walking will be helpful to lift your mood, and this will also help to raise your mental energy. In addition, continue to practice any emotional regulation activity that you might be doing now.
Give yourself some time to explore 1) to 6) as it may be challenging at the beginning. If you require more help please share your difficulties and we can explore it in more details.
Take care !