The document discusses how social pressure can influence whether people choose to learn from their mistakes or give up easily. While social pressure encourages people to keep trying at skills that most people have like walking, it also encourages giving up quickly at skills where most people struggle, like public speaking. However, learning from failures through repeated tries is a natural learning strategy. The document suggests ignoring social pressures to give up easily, and choosing instead to persist in trying until success is achieved. Learning how to learn and overcome failures through practice is a meta-skill that enables learning many other skills.

1. Trapped By Social Pressure?

2. When I was in Junior High School I
played a lot of golf.

3. No, I wasn't rich, but next to my school
was a public course, and it only cost $5
to play nine holes.

4. I had a set of hand-me-down clubs, as
did many of my friends.

5. One thing I always did was slice.

6. That's when the ball starts to fade to
the right after you hit it.

7. For a while, I tried to correct my
changing my grip.

8. Because it caused more problems, and
I wasn't patient being a JHS goof, I just
compensated.

9. Meaning I would just aim left.

10. My friends thought I was nuts, until
they saw how consistent my error was.

11. I suppose that if I'd taken the time to
build in the muscle memory of the
new grip, I wouldn't have fixed it.

12. But since I was never really concerned
with my score, only that had I had fun,
it didn't seem to be worth it.

13. They say that learning from your
mistakes is one of the most important
skills you can have.

14. Sure, we all do it naturally when we're
really young.

15. Things like walking and eating and
riding a bicycle.

16. It's kind of hard to just "compensate."

17. If you just decided to wear a lot of
padding instead of trying to ride a bike
without falling over, that would be
pretty silly.

18. But a lot of us do that without really
knowing.

19. We try something once, we can't do it,
or we do it with difficulty and
frustration, and just decide that "I
guess I can't do that."

20. Instead of just getting and trying again,
and again and again until we get it
right.

21. This is easy when everybody around us
is walking or riding bikes or playing
catch. We feel left out if we don't suck
it up and learn how.

22. But other things, where most people
suck, it's EASY to try ONCE and give up.

23. Public speaking, starting a business,
walking up and talking to attractive
strangers.

24. But the SAME strategy works.

25. Try, fail, try again, fail, keep trying,
WIN!

26. It's the learning strategy that is built in
your brain.

27. Only sometimes we're "forced" by
social pressure to keep trying (we want
to walk since everybody else is
walking).

28. But other times we're "forced" by
social pressure to try ONCE and give
up.

29. But you don't HAVE to ALWAYS obey
social pressure.

30. You can actually CHOOSE to ignore it.

31. Sure, it's not easy. It takes consistent
mental effort.

32. You may say this is one of the META
SKILLS that support a lot of other skills.

33. Like learning how to talk to strangers,
learn to be covertly persuasive, get rid
of emotional issues, etc.

34. The good news is there are a lot
mental exercises that make it easy.

35. So you can pretty much learn to learn
anything.

36. mindpersuasion.com/kindle/