How To Be A Good Learner

How To Be A Good Learner…

How to be a good learner. After watching a great video from Jesse Elder about Lighthouses and Tug Boats we realised this is exactly how we coach our clients. We’ve also discovered we can be much better coaches when we have good students who are keen to develop themselves.

We have been discussing a few things today, mainly when it comes to doing our videos, we often draw inspiration from our everyday lives. Whether it be in the personal training world, or indeed via our online coaching. Ideas for workouts come from programmes we have designed for clients.

The mindset lessons often come from problems that we help the clients through and it inspires a thought process. So we are discussing what we can do with todays mindset.

The Mindset…

Today we are bringing you an extra special message, a bit of philosophy. Not just about coaching itself but maybe about people in your life too. A guy called ‘Jessie Elder’, we will tag his video in the description, he has an amazing analogy which we absolutely loved. Its all about the lighthouse and the tugboat. The way it goes is ‘are you looking for a lighthouse or a tugboat?’

There are boats coming in and out of the harbour all the time and they have to negotiate the banks, the rocky ground and shallow parts. They need to know the way. In some cases just shining a light will reveal enough of a path for the ship to make it in. The captain of the ship will be happy enough with that as he can see the way. This then ultimately comes back to somebody making their own decisions. You just need to know the way and you can make your own decisions as to where you go.

Unfortunately a lot of people look for a tugboat. What the tugboat does is, it goes out to sea and attaches itself to the ship and guides it to the shore. The tugboat knows the way and basically says to the captain of the ship, ‘you don’t have to worry about a thing, I am going to take you all the way into shore.’ It might sound like a good idea but what its doing is stopping you from learning life skills. Its stopping you from learning your way to the shore. The shore in This analogy is your goal, in our world thats weight loss. We dont want to drag you into shore or take your hand and take you every step of the way. We want you to make your own decisions, we want you to learn the way yourself. For us that means being a lighthouse.

Our Role As Lighthouse and Tugboat…

There are situations where we have to be a lighthouse and a tugboat. Lets just say this person had gone slightly off course. We can then use a bit of the tugboat to start with to get them back on course and within the light. Then the person knows where they are going and continues their journey.

So this then comes down to a little bit of a personal touch now and again. Generally speaking, we make youtube videos, we try and coach as many people across the world as we possibly can. However, every now and again, we do see people who come into trouble and start heading towards rocky ground. For us, that means jumping on a quick call, sending a bit more of a personal message just to make sure they are not going to go too much off course. As soon as they are back on course, we let them go into the light.

The great thing about learning through lighthouse, if you always rely on the tugboat you would never learn. If you came into that harbour on your own, the tugboat wasn’t there, you would then think I can’t do this on my own! This is why you need to learn that its ok to use the tugboat to make a couple of corrections but then continue to follow the lighthouse. Then the next time you come into harbour you will know that you can do this on your own!

Once you have made your own decisions and you have learnt the way, you can be the lighthouse for someone else!