The Learning Pit & Leveling Up
A couple weeks ago, I promised to recap our Client Appreciation Event for you. We’ve graciously heard from clients that it was a game-changing day. I think this was due to a few things: 1. We were utterly prepared, organized, and practiced. 2. We monitored the room’s energy closely and served what was in front of us. 3. We used images, activities, and metaphors to get our teachings across. Like the I-hate-it-but-love-it Learning Pit.
Back in May, when I asked (read: pleaded) Ivy Kusinga of Career Vines to join us, I knew that I wanted her to present James Nottingham’s Learning Pit. She first taught me this concept 12 or 13 years ago, in a leadership offsite. It’s one of those key learning moments that’s stayed with me for over a decade. It’s so cemented in me, it’s an invisible cornerstone of my growth mindset and career growth. I can still flash back and see the doodle on the flip chart that looked something like this:
Over the past year+ I’ve been attempting to teach and role model the Learning Pit with our team and clients. But you know how it goes: no one wants to listen to “mom.” I needed to call in the fun aunt (Ivy) to really get the message across 😉
Paraphrased, the idea is: as fallible, optimistic humans we assume that growth is linear. We accept that yes, one must begin at the base of the “mountain” and work hard to climb their way to the top. But we neglect one important, life-altering detail: on the way up, there will be many dips and pits along the way. We’ll go up and drop down again. Gain a little more altitude and then fall. Over and over again.
And here’s the kicker: I’ve learned (the hard way, through many pits!) that especially when working with high achievers, the Learning Pit is harder for them. And it halts their growth.
We (all of us!) try to skip over the Learning Pit. And why wouldn’t we? It hurts. Badly. It requires trusting the process. Having your eye on the long game. I’d even go so far as to say: it requires taking a Buddhist approach to business.
In our day’s closing, we round-robined our highs, lows, and (a)has. I was pleased that the Learning Pit was so many clients’ ahas and (to my surprise): their high of the day. They loved that there was finally an explanation – an image even! – to describe one’s perpetual state and feelings of both elation and frustration as an entrepreneur. We’re nearly always (myself included) in the f****** learning pit!
Here were some of the more elegant sentiments:
We choose to be in the learning pits… There’s an illusion that the summit is the journey… As an entrepreneur, you must accept the perpetuity of Learning Pits… The pit is the learning… We take on multiple learning pits at one time…
And my favorite (selfishly, it’s so validating for me personally):
The people who learn to work through the pits (over and over again) are the ones who achieve true mastery. If you’re a quick learner and are always on to the next thing, you’re not deeply a master. Learning how to learn and how to trust the process of learning is one of the greatest life skills one can have.
Clients and students come to Ellevated Outcomes because they want to level up their business. Heck: colleagues join our team because they want to level up their career.
But the thing they don’t tell you in school (or life) is: to level up – to reach new heights – requires going through, falling back, into the Learning Pit. Over and over and over again. Or as Ivy concluded:
High performance in business demands an ability to go in the pit.
Exist in the pit.
Sit in the pit.
Then, deal with the pit and get out of it.
