Learn 🤓

Hello Courageous Pals,

Spring always feels like a buzzing active time for me, when the quiet, slow, deep underground work of winter is done and we start to see shoots emerging from the ground and taking shape. It’s also a time when I shake off the introspection of those darker months and get excited about getting out into the world more – often a time when I seek out new experiences and learn new things. If a little frisson of excitement runs through you when you think about learning something – or if the thought fills you with a heavy sense of dread! – this month’s Courage Pie is for you.

For those of you who like to join the monthly Courage Pie: to go walk, please note change of venue! Join us at 1 PM tomorrow, 8 April, by the picnic benches outside Leith Community Croft Populus Cafe for a gentle walk (or wheel) around Leith Links. We’ll be meeting in Leith Links for future events – really taking advantage of the Leith ‘Persevere’ spirit, and the wonderful community atmosphere of the Croft. Sign up via Eventbrite to be notified of any last-minute changes! Can’t make it in person? Reach out to a courageous pal and use the Questions to Go below for a joint-learning walk of your own.

Courage Pie (to go): Learn 🤓

This month’s edition of the Five Ways to Wellbeing is learning, which fits well with January’s theme of curiosity. Curiosity is the awakening of new interest; it’s the spark that opens up new possibilities in our minds. Learning is the follow-up, when we decide to pull on the thread to see where it takes us. This doesn’t mean we have to commit to a gruelling programme of study, though of course if that kind of structured rigour feels motivating, then go for it!

Learning can be as simple as trying something new for the first time and being open to seeing how it goes. Ideally, we see how it goes and try it again another time, with improvements. That’s what learning is all about: small, continual steps moving us in a direction we want to go – and teaching us something about ourselves in the process. Research by Tim Murphey tells us that teaching others, or assisting them in their own learning, can improve our engagement with topics we’re trying to learn – partly because we get out of our heads and focus on the material itself rather than our assessment of how we’re performing. It’s also often more fun – one of the reason that we do these walks in community!

Questions to Go:

• What’s a topic you’d like to learn more about? Perhaps something which has piqued your curiosity in the past which you’ve never followed up on. What’s keeping you from exploring this?
• What’s one new activity you could try this week? It could be a new recipe, writing a poem, drawing, knitting, a taster session of a new sport…something that you don’t normally do which which gently invites you beyond the boundaries of your comfort zone.
• What’s something you could help others learn? Who might be interested in learning from you?
• What’s the last skill you were self-motivated to learn (not something that was assigned to you)? How did you feel when you were in the process of learning it?
• When you were a young child, what’s something you wanted to do or be when you grew up? What excited you so much about that? What are some skills or areas of knowledge you could explore to reconnect with this childhood dream?

Science Behind the Slice:

Reminder of Julia Whitaker’s very useful Playful Approach to the Five Ways to Wellbeing.

Mind’s 5 Ways to Wellbeing Guide, Step 4: Learn.

Murphey, Tim. “Teaching to learn and well-become: Many mini-renaissances.” Positive Psychology in SLA, edited by Peter D. MacIntyre, Tammy Gregersen and Sarah Mercer, Bristol, Blue Ridge Summit: Multilingual Matters, 2016, pp. 324-343 https://doi.org/10.21832/9781783095360-015.

Coming up…

I’m continuing my series of wellbeing workshops at Corvidaeum Creative, where we take all the principles we’ve been exploring in this newsletter and apply them to creative practice. Come along on Thursday 9 April for a workshop on taming the inner critic!

Jane Macdonald of Solas Yoga and I are teaming up again for a 2-hour yoga/coaching workshop for tapping into your spring energy and helping things bloom – join us for Buds of May on Sunday 24 May! Early bird discount for bookings before 1 May.

If anything in this newsletter series has brought up a topic you’d like to work on one-on-one, here’s where you can find all the info about my coaching approach and current offers.

Very best,

Caitlin