<story><title>The fertility of the older mind</title><url>http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170828-the-amazing-fertility-of-the-older-mind</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>hathawsh</author><text>As a child I was obsessively aware of other people&amp;#x27;s opinions of me, so I was afraid to make mistakes. Today, I am much better at putting myself in the learning mindset because I have learned a basic truth: &lt;i&gt;learning is essentially the same as temporarily making a fool of myself, but in a safe place&lt;/i&gt;. That&amp;#x27;s how we all learned to walk, talk, and read, after all. If we can learn such complex skills as those then we can surely pick up a lot more skills, with effort.&lt;p&gt;I wish I had understood that as a child. I tried to learn to dance and act, but I mostly failed because I didn&amp;#x27;t really put myself out there. I did learn to sing thanks to choirs. I got into computers partly because all my mistakes were completely private.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s no reason I can&amp;#x27;t continue to learn new skills. I just need to shed my ego and try things without reservation.</text></comment>
<story><title>The fertility of the older mind</title><url>http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170828-the-amazing-fertility-of-the-older-mind</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>gopalv</author><text>&amp;gt; Or perhaps children are simply less inhibited and aren’t so scared about making mistakes.&lt;p&gt;Struck a chord there - because I had come to the same conclusion of sorts, about my ability to practice activities in public.&lt;p&gt;Riding a bicycle is a fairly hard thing to learn and very easy to practice (from my experience), but learning to do that when everyone around is falling off them was much less of a struggle than trying to learn ice skating in my mid thirties, when everyone at the &amp;quot;cheap skate night&amp;quot; is just gliding by with no effort.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a certain embarrassment which distracts from the task at hand. And being good at several other things, which are more immediately satisfying to do also factors into the decision to spend time learning something new which you&amp;#x27;ll never be as good as the ones who started when they were 5.&lt;p&gt;Right now, I&amp;#x27;m struggling to learn enough spanish to converse with my kid &amp;amp; observing language learning first-hand, in third person. The words just come out without any particular boundaries in production - grammar, conjugations, gender, whether it is the right word.&lt;p&gt;Everything is optional and the only discouraging response is skipping the conversation and trying to ignore it.</text></comment>