Bob Parsons of GoDaddy says simply “get and stay out of your comfort zone”. I agree and would add that adults don’t learn unless we are disoriented.

When we believe we “know”, that is when we stop learning. We must be disoriented from the comfortable zone we live in.

Learning is helpful, but teaching is usually a waste of time. Teaching is someone filling my head with information when I’m not disoriented enough to learn. Learning is me filling my life with a new way of living.

We do not think our way to a new way of acting. We act our way to a new way of thinking. (Our education system has it backwards). Therefore, give people new ideas when they are in a place that they want to learn them and they will stick. “Teach” them the same ideas when they are not disoriented from what they already know in their heads about the subject, and you’ve both wasted your time. The old adage “more is caught than taught”.

Business owners best learn and adapt when they are disoriented enough to gain new Clarity (vision for the future – they see it), that brings Hope (they believe they can do it), that allows them to take measured Risk (they will take action). If they have Clarity about where they are going, they will have Hope, and will take the Risk to learn and adapt. Clarity, Hope and Risk.

Healthy disorientation happens best in community. Business owners rarely live in community, but are taught to go it alone, which gives them even less feedback to disorient them, making them all the more sure that there myopic view of the world is just fine.

John Wayne is dead and we should have buried the rugged individualist with him. Get into community, get disoriented from your reality, and keep learning. The more I learn the less I know.

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