“Personally I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.” –Sir Winston Churchill

I took Friday off from my “regular” job and went to a local blogging conference here in Savannah. I was surprised by the folks who attended.

What surprised me were the large number of folks who were there because they didn’t know much of anything about blogging and wanted to learn. In fact there were so many that the organizer of the conference adjusted the schedule and added an impromptu session to cover some of the basics of terminology so that those folks could get more out of the rest of the sessions.

That was very cool.

However there were also one or two folks there who didn’t share the enthusiasm to learn. One lady in particular seemed to have her understanding of blogging all worked out before she got there (although I don’t think she’s blogging herself) and spent a large portion of the conference time attempting to convince the rest of us to accept her views.

Apparently she was too smart for the rest of us and certainly wasn’t interested in learning from us.

She apparently didn’t like being taught.

Of course I’m not one who enjoys life’s forced lessons either. I was being taught how not to completely bite someone’s head off.

Fortunately for me while I was talking my wife happened to be sitting behind the challenging person and was able to help me out by signaling me to keep my cool. I hadn’t realized before that public speaking can be a team sport.

I sure appreciated my teammate helping me keep from doing something foolish!

But I didn’t much enjoy the learning process for that one Friday.

Sometimes my attitude toward learning is similar to my attitude toward exercise. I like having learned, not learning in just about the same way I like having exercised, not the act of exercising itself.

The best part about working out for me is finishing!

Oftentimes life’s lessons are painful to learn. However the benefit of having learned them makes that pain oh-so worthwhile.

How about you? Do you always enjoy the learning process?

What are some things we can do to make that process a little less challenging for us?

–Chris Cree, SuccessCREEations.