How do you feel about conflicting words of wisdom?

[TimelessMomentum]

Do you tend to gravitate towards one more than the other?

"'Tis a lesson you should heed:
Try, try, try again.
If at first you don't succeed,
Try, try, try again" - William Edward Hickson

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein

[Marilyn C]

Hi Timeless....

Sounds like `Groundhog day` to me. I think each saying needs more explanation.

1. eg. a child learning to tie his/her shoelace, though they have velcrose now. Or learning their times tables, (& I think that`s gone too). Well you know what I mean, try & try again and usually we can master that skill.

2. Einstein`s definition could apply to trying to solve a nation`s problems by war. War never can solve man` problems as it is a heart issue.

So obviously more detail is requited for those `sayings.`

Just my two cents worth. Marilyn.

[listener24]

12 hours ago, TimelessMomentum said:

Do you tend to gravitate towards one more than the other?

"'Tis a lesson you should heed:
Try, try, try again.
If at first you don't succeed,
Try, try, try again" - William Edward Hickson

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein

1

Hi TimelessMomentum, nice question!

Often some words of wisdom are an inspiration for certain situations, but are not generalizable to every situation. While others are valid in every situation (for instance, "love one another" is valid in every context).

So it's up to our heart and our mind to stay open and try to understand the situation we are in.

Our heart often knows, regarding your quotes, if we need more perseverance or a better strategy in a given situation.

And when our heart doesn't know, we'll should continue gather information until it becomes clear. And of course keep praying for the understanding too.

That's why it's important to always be good observers, even when some things we observe may hurt us and it'd be easier to "look" elsewhere.

Edited December 9, 2017 by listener24

[GandalfTheWise]

12 hours ago, TimelessMomentum said:

Do you tend to gravitate towards one more than the other?

"'Tis a lesson you should heed:
Try, try, try again.
If at first you don't succeed,
Try, try, try again" - William Edward Hickson

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein

Part of wisdom is thinking clearly about things and what they really mean.  We get into trouble when we blindly follow things without really understanding them.

1. Persistence, endurance, patience, and (to use the current fad term in motivational circles) grit are characteristics of people who accomplish things in life.  People who give up and stop trying at the first signs of failure, frustration, or problems rarely accomplish much.

2. Efficiency, effectiveness, growth,improvement, creativity, and innovation are characteristics often shown by people who accomplish things in life.  There are few things we do that we cannot improve on either by evolution or revolution.  We can always improve what we are doing incrementally.  We can often improve what we are doing by giant leaps with radical changes of some type.  I would relate this to the adage "work smarter, not harder."

3. Practice makes permanent (NOT perfect).  Practicing things makes them into habits.  Creating a bad habit is self-defeating.  Creating a good habit is self-empowering.   Those things we choose to do (and the manner we do them) and then repeat over and over again define our capabilities in life to a large extent.

The first two statements (which reflect those in the OP) are not mutually exclusive.  The first statement of "try, try, try again" reflects the idea of grit and not giving up.  The second statement reflects the idea of "work smarter, not harder".  I added the third because it is a key concept to understand as well in all of this.

It's when we blindly follow something "wise" and turn it into a recipe for all situations that we get into trouble.  We can take "try, try, try again" or the (incorrect) "practice makes perfect" and say that hard work alone will help us accomplish much.   We can take the Einstein statement and use it as an excuse to constantly change and give up on stuff at the first signs of failure.  To accomplish something in life, we need both "grit" and wise insight as to what and how to work on something.   When we are learning how to do something, we will experience failure that we need to work through and learn from.

Here's an example of this from my life: foreign language learning.  I started to learn Greek (to read the NT) about 35 years ago.  For the first year or so, I made quite a bit of progress.  For the next 30 or so years, I was at a plateau and made little progress.  About 4 or 5 years ago, I changed how I was approaching things and made a lot of progress.

When I started, I only knew one way of learning, the academic approach used in standard foreign language courses taught in schools.  I worked hard at it and made some progress at first.  I was diligent about memorizing vocabulary and grammar tables.  I was able to look at a sentence, dig into dictionaries, grammar books, other reference books, and with reference to an English translation, I could work out what each word was and what the sentence meant.  Then I kept working at it, and working at it, and working at it, and saw little progress.  I hung in there long after most people would have given up.  30 years of (on and off) hard work and I was still not past the stage of looking at a sentence, digging into dictionaries, grammar books, reference books, and comparing it to English to figure out what it meant.  Realistically speaking, in 30 years all I had done was learn how to look stuff up faster than I had before.  I was really no closer to reading Greek than I was at about 1 to 2 years into the project.   About 5 years ago when I had hit a point of giving up, I ran across an online forum of language learners (many of whom were successful).  I learned that I had been working very hard but not working very smart.  I adopted different learning techniques and my progress shot forward at an amazing rate.  The key to foreign language learning is this.  You need to have a range of learning methods to choose from; you need to learn which method works best for you at different stages of learning; and then you need to consistently apply yourself everyday to improving.  If you choose a poor method for where you are at,  no amount of hard work will give much improvement.  If you do not consistently (and daily!) work at it, the best possible method you could choose will not help you much.

Taking the lessons I learned from this, I decided to start learning Spanish from scratch in my early 50s.  Conventional wisdom would have been that I was too old to start, it takes many years (if not decades) to become good at a language, I'd have to spend time immersed in a Spanish speaking environment, I'd need to take years of classes from a good teacher, etc. etc.   The standard litany of "wisdom" from people and a system where the typical result is that most people make little progress and give up on language learning.  Instead, I chose to take a path less followed (but definitely trail blazed by people who had seen remarkable progress in language learning) that largely defied conventional "wisdom".  I started in August 2015.  I've now on my second time reading the NVI Bible (Spanish equivalent of the NIV).  I can watch shows on Netflix with Spanish dubbing and subtitling fairly comfortably.  I've been able to have short conversations with native Spanish speakers.  A friend from Panama (who unfortunately lives in another state) thought my pronunciation was surprisingly good for an American.  The key was picking appropriate methods for each stage of development and consistent daily practice.  The big thing is that this is enjoyable, I'm making progress, and Spanish has become a part of my daily life.  If I had followed accepted wisdom, I'd have either not started at all, or I'd have put several hundred dollars (or more) into taking some classes and have made little real progress.  Instead, I've put in perhaps a total of $150 to $200 into books and materials over 2 years and made a lot of progress compared to most people in the U.S. who try to learn Spanish.

The success I have seen is due to a few things.  1. Daily consistent practice.  2. choosing appropriate learning methods to use at a given stage of my development, 3. figuring out when lack of progress means I need to change to a different method or just work harder at the current method for awhile more, and 4. making language use an enjoyable daily part of my life.

 

[Marilyn C]

8 hours ago, GandalfTheWise said:

 

Hi GandalfTheWise,

I really enjoyed reading your comments bro. Very interesting. Now why do people in the US want to learn Spanish? And can you explain a bit more on the method that helped you with learning Greek?

regards, Marilyn.

 

[GandalfTheWise]

11 minutes ago, Marilyn C said:

Hi GandalfTheWise,

I really enjoyed reading your comments bro. Very interesting. Now why do people in the US want to learn Spanish? And can you explain a bit more on the method that helped you with learning Greek?

regards, Marilyn.

 

Spanish is becoming fairly common in the US over the past few decades due to the influx of immigrants from central and south America.

I've invited you to a private thread where I'm answering questions about my first post here as well as providing some information I don't want in public.

Rather than derail this thread completely into a language learning one, I'm going to start a new thread in a more appropriate location.  I'll try to do that later today or tomorrow.

... Back to the OP...