Emotional goals

There’s an interesting series of articles this week in one of my city’s newspapers about the science of the brain and learning. As one interested in education and how we learn - and how that ties to parenting as well as learning through my graying years – I’m eating it up.

An interesting question was posed in the article written on Thursday, Nov. 5. If your intellectual goal and your emotional goal aren’t matched, then you won’t learn/change. “Emotional thought is the platform for learning, memory, decision-making and creativity…This means emotion can be a barrier, or a conduit, to learning….That means making the student feel the goal is emotionally relevant.”

Which made me think about our discomfort with meeting strangers in any setting, attending large events or simply building community around ourselves.

I’ve compared the discomfort to liking/disliking brussel sprouts, which is still true. However, perhaps the difference is:
o if you approach it as a task or transaction which must be done (focused on the event or meeting instead of the goal)
OR
o as philosophy to which you resonate/have emotional ties.

You’ll figure out, through developing habits and tactics, how to deal with those more stressful pieces if building community is part of your philosophy and therefore part of your emotional response to the world.

In other words, wanting to participate is the most important piece even if you’re working through how to participate.