Life is all about learning. I've always been a big fan of education, formal and otherwise. Hell, I even started a teaching career once upon a time. Sure, I didn't actually STICK with it but let's just ignore that fact right now and leave it at: I like education.

Even so, I'm no longer convinced that everyone needs so-called 'higher' education to be successful in their lives (and thank goodness because it's getting ridiculously cost-prohibitive.) However, I do feel that learning should still be a priority.

When we stop growing, we congeal like that scummy film that forms on the top of hot chocolate when it cools down. I happen to love hot chocolate and this scum absolutely ruins it. Therefore, congealing = bad.

So I'm always kind of curious about how other people learn.

A very good friend of mine is the head of songwriting at a really kick ass music school in England. He let me tag along to watch one of his live sessions. They were working (work-shopping?) a couple of original songs that individual students had written. It was incredible to watch the creative process as they worked together to arrange the music for a full band.

There were session players there to back the students up (drums, guitar, bass, keyboard) and other students would volunteer to provide backing vocals. The songwriter/singer would hand them all some music and let them know what he/she wanted. And then.... they would just go for it. Just balls out, super loud, play some music, give it everything, go for it.

After playing it through a few times, the rest of the class would then get involved with suggestions for (and forgive me for my vagueness here but I'm NOT a musician) the tempo or style of each instrument, how many bars the chorus should be, where the other instruments should come in and out. Everything really.

It was the most truly collaborative thing I think I've ever seen. Instead of clinging on to his/her own vision for this song that they had painstakingly written, the songwriter opened it up to the ideas and input of a whole classroom full of peers. Some of the suggestions were hilarious (add a disco feeling to the track) but even the ones that didn't 'work' seemed to lead them in new and better directions.

I learned a lot from watching them. Two things mainly:

1) Let go of ownership. Sometimes we (okay, I) hang on to things so tightly and are so protective of our creative 'babies' that we miss out on collaboration with others. Things can almost always be better and loosening up our grip and letting others have input is a great way to find your work going down some really interesting routes.

2) Mistakes aren't bad. This is something that I've been thinking about a lot over the past few years. If I'm not making mistakes out there, then I truly wonder if I'm even stretching myself at all. Staying in a safe place is tempting but branching out, reaching, trying something new and maybe laughably wrong (like disco, because let's be honest, disco is nearly always wrong) can lead to new ideas, even when they themselves fail.

Failure is such a negative word and sure if we 'stop' as soon as something doesn't go well because we feel personally embarrassed or responsible or hurt by the failure, then I suppose it IS a negative thing. But it's the stopping that's bad, not the failing. This is something that I need to remember. If we are trying things beyond our actual abilities then some of the attempts aren't going to go so well. But, if we continue to push the boundaries and test new ideas, a few of them are going to be so much more 'right' than we could have done previously.

I thought a lot about this during the WSOP live coverage last summer. I definitely felt the pressure of doing something new and yeah, a little beyond what I felt comfortable with. But ultimately, I had really great people to collaborate with and I trusted their input. I think because of that, I learned a hell of a lot more than I would have by being safe.

It's hard though. I like easy. I like simple. I like safe. But these are not attributes that will push me to learn and grow. I'm going to try to be more open to collaboration. This is definitely an area where I need some growth, both in my work on-camera AND in my poker. Fear of failure (or fear of appearing to fail) definitely constrain me and make it hard for me to push forwards. But you know what, talking about it (or blogging about it) takes the sting out of it.

And after all, learning is really what life is all about, in my humble opinion.