Training yourself to think differently.
Eric Nelson’s article in the May 18th Communities Digital News, Training yourself to think differently, seems relevant and important to consider as we hear so much in Kansas about the realization that thought affects health. Nelson tells about a struggle to learn to ride a backwards bike – one altered to steer unconventionally – and the resulting lessons learned about unlearning the old to relearn the new. The first few paragraphs are below, as well as a link to read the entire article.
As it turns out, you really can forget how to ride a bike. All it takes is a little effort. About eight months, to be exact.
At least that’s how long it took Destin Sandlin. As a joke, some friends at work gave him a bike specially designed to veer left when the handlebars were turned right, and right when turned left. In order to ride it, he had to first unlearn all he’d been taught as a kid before he could successfully and (somewhat) gracefully navigate his way down the sidewalk.
What took him so long?
“My thinking was in a rut,” says the affable engineer on a recent episode of his popular “Smarter Every Day” series on YouTube. “I had the knowledge of how to operate the bike, but I did not have the understanding.”
Is matter just ‘a big fat lie?’
Such is the case with all great advances in science.
Not that this was a particularly earth-shattering discovery. It did, however, present Sandlin with what he describes as “a really deep revelation” and the rest of us with a metaphor for what can be accomplished when we’re willing to change our own ingrained thinking about how things work.
It starts by adopting the same “out with the old, in with the new” attitude as Sandlin, the practicality of which has been preached for millennia. “Who would patch old clothing with new cloth?” asks Jesus. “For the new patch would shrink and rip away from the old cloth, leaving an even bigger tear than before.”