The Appeal of a Learning Curve

I have to admit, I am a person who loves a good learning curve.  There is something appealing about starting from scratch and needing to work on figuring out something new.  The trial and error and small victories that come along the way.  The ability to immerse yourself in learning and the sense of growth that comes with it.  It all feeds my curiosity and growth mindset and desire to feel like I am really experiencing all that life has to offer.  On the flip side, I find that once I feel I am good enough at something, my interest wanes and I want to move on.  

I am hooked on learning curves and the adrenaline that comes with them.  This has been helpful over the years as it has allowed me to try on a whole bunch of new hats and to dive into new hobbies and meet lots of new people.  It also means that I often don't give myself enough time to really hone my craft.  I consider my work to be done when I am competent and then start to look for a new challenge to take on.  Perhaps some of this is just baked into our societal drive to always be accomplishing things, to always be reaching for more.  And perhaps some of it comes from a sense of not being enough and feeling like the next thing will be what is needed to fill a gap.

I found myself falling into this thinking trap not long ago, fueled by some changes taking place at work.  My initial reaction to the changes were that they are positive for all involved and also could lead to more changes for me.  How exciting!  And then I caught myself.  I saw how I was ready to launch into something that may or may not make sense, meanwhile I had no real reason to do so.  I am really happy where I am and with what I am doing, so why would I immediately want to make a change that could upset that?  Is there anything wrong with sitting in and continuing to slowly improve?  When I asked myself these questions I found that I had been holding onto a belief that change signals growth and that by not reaching out to make changes it meant that I was stagnating and maybe even settling.  The idea of sitting still felt a bit scary and also like I was failing myself. 

The more I thought about it, the more I came to realize that learning curves are all around us; some are simply steeper than others.  We are always learning and growing, even when it feels like we are sitting still.  As long as we keep our minds open to growth and change, it will find us.  Just because you are feeling comfortable does not mean that you have stopped developing.  It means that the work you are doing is more specific and the learning will come in sips instead of gulps.  Our work is in learning how to truly savour those sips.