#179 Intellectual understanding vs Internalized knowledge

ByLukas
| |

Intellectually understanding that the perfect speech includes a strong opening, humor, a dramatic demonstration, rhetorical elements, and emotional appeal doesn’t mean your next speech will contain those elements right away – and that’s okay.

You don’t have to master this today.

Intellectually understanding the nuances and body positioning of a yoga pose doesn’t mean the next time you stand in that pose, you’ll perform it perfectly right away – and that’s okay.

You don’t have to master this today.

Intellectually understanding verbs, tenses, or case systems in a foreign language doesn’t mean you’ll be able to use them correctly in conversations right away – and that’s okay.

You don’t have to master this today.

Turning intellectual understanding into internalized knowledge and skill is a slow, layered process:

  1. Intellectually understand which things to do differently from before.
  2. Mindfully become aware of the moment when you need to do things differently.
  3. Do things differently from before.
  4. Repeat every day.

Similar Posts

  • #9 Admiring early work

    ByLukas

    Admiring (flawed) early work is easy when we already know the late work is going to be great.

    Everyone forgives Picasso or Da Vinci for a lousy early sketch. In fact, people pay good money to hang one in their living room.

    Maybe the early work, showing that even the greats are mere mortals on a journey towards excellence, is the most valuable?

    And yet, it’s much harder to be gentle on a beginning artist for shipping mediocre creative work – not in the least for the beginning artist themselves – when their path to excellence hasn’t unfolded yet.

    After all, something that one day will be “my early work” is still “my current best work” today.

    The road to excellence is invisible from the trenches.

    But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

    Which makes me wonder…

    When I know that through persistence and daily practice, one day, I’ll look back on today’s creation, smiling, thinking: “Oh how far I’ve come… How much I’ve learned… And some of this was actually pretty good…”

    Can I admire my creative work less for what it looks, feels, or sounds like, and more for who I’m becoming through making it?

    Can I do the same for the creative projects of others?

    With that mindset… How much easier and forgiving would the daily creative journey be?

  • #484 Comfortable in uncomfortable misconceptions

    ByLukas

    Even when the cure is available, we never let our body heal, because what would we do if we couldn’t complain about our ailments anymore?

    Even when true love presents itself, we push it away, because what would we do if we can’t complain about partners leaving us anymore?

    Even when friends and family show support, we don’t allow it, because what would we do if we can’t say anymore that everyone is out to screw us over?

    Would we rather stay stubborn? Would we rather stay comfortable in our uncomfortable misconceptions?

  • | |

    #45 The tragedy of the spoken word

    ByLukas

    Language helps us describe the world we perceive. Yet in doing so, it closes our eyes, our ears, our touch, and our heart to the parts of the world we don’t have words for.

    Every language is a lens on a felt reality within and around us – both clarifying and categorizing the world, and limiting it by the words it has available.

    Learning more languages gives you new lenses – and a richer sense of reality.

    But just like the structure of our ears limit the sounds we can hear, and the structure of our eyes limit colors we can see, the structure of any language somehow limits our felt experience of the world.

    How do we re-access memories, emotions, hidden away in a long-forgotten language?

    How do we re-learn to listen to the voices of the wordless world speaking to our animal self… the voices that once upon a time, before verbal language emerged, were all we had?

    there’s an eternal song
    drowned out by the confines of my mother tongue
    a wordless melody that once made sense
    until our brain started blurring it with a lens
    narrowing it down
    neglecting its nuances through verbs and nouns

    with all its might language wants us to abide
    but the wordless world it tries to hide
    will forever be inside

    Lukas Van Vyve

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *