When I stop learning I get restless and look around for the next thing to stimulate and work different parts of my thinking. This often prompts me to come up with fanciful and often grandiose ideas about what I want to be doing, many of which are flirtations with a moment or notion when I’ve thought ‘I could do that’. Usually the outcome is that I get a new piece of work which satisfies my hunger and I put those ideas to rest.
But the most recent time I felt this restlessness I decided to actually do something immediately and real and enrolled in a psychlogy short course at Sydney University called ‘Changing Your Thinking’.
Turns out, the very fact I changed my usual behaviour and enroled was actually me practicing ‘changing my thinking’ and could be a sign I’ve already progressed to the end of the course but it’s something different and I get to see a good friend of mine weekly for the next eight weeks instead of our monthly catch ups, which is worth it in itself. She is also the reason I’m doing the course. After telling me she’s signed up, I decided to follow suit.
Tonight was the first session and in true student style I was slightly late and very apologetic. Not so bad considering literally half the class was also much later than I but still, not good. What I learned tonight in this Cognitive Behaviour Therapy intro is that my apologetic feeling is based on my belief in punctuality and respect for the teacher and progran that’s been set.
My mind is open to what will be discussed over the next two months although I confess I am bringing my own agenda to the course. As we talk about behaviours I’m applying my experience with communities – building them, nurtuing the different personalities, issues management, understanding motivations and reactions.
The rise of social media and digital connecting individuals and groups at a local, country and global level also seems to encourage us to be more interested in people generally. And I love that!
I really enjoyed my sociology subjects at uni and hope this short course adventure will add value to my understanding of the communities I work with and give the data some extra love.
Will let you know how it goes…