Leading psychologist shares the trick to learning new skills when it feels so frustrating
What are the frustrating barriers holding you back?
A girl is frustrated learning piano and Dr. Becky Kennedy.
Everyone has a particular skill they’d like to learn, but many of us fall short of our goals due to frustration. After a few hours of playing guitar, your fingers hurt. It’s upsetting to shank the golf ball every time you try your pitching wedge. You want to finish a novel, but the writer’s block gets in the way.
Dr. Becky Kennedy, a clinical psychologist, mom of three, and author of Good Inside: A Practical Guide to Being the Parent You Want to Be, says that instead of seeing frustration as a hindrance, it’s time to recognize it for what it is: a sign that you’re acquiring a new skill. “The more we understand that the frustration and struggle is actually a sign we’re [learning], not a sign we’re doing something wrong, it becomes a lot easier to tolerate,” Kennedy told CNBC's Make It.
How to fight back against frustration when learning something new
Kennedy’s advice is eye-opening because we often label temporary feelings of frustration as signs of failure when, in reality, it’s a sign that we are building a new skill. There is no way to learn anything new that doesn’t feel frustrating or require resilience.
@aarondinin Hope you enjoy learning from @Dr. Becky | Psychologist as much as my class did! #learningtofail #dukestudents #resilience
In a video posted to TikTok, Kennedy notes that there are two stages of learning something new—“Learning” and “Not Learning”—and that the only thing in between those two stages, the "Learning Space," is nothing but frustration. “Being resilient doesn't feel resilient at all. It feels so messy,” she tells the students in the video. “No matter what, you're learning something on a job, something from puzzles, learning to read, you don't know how to do it, you want to know how to do it. And what I think is really empowering to know is the Learning Space has one feeling associated with it: Frustration. That's literally how learning feels.”
What is the Learning Space?
The key is to reframe the feeling of frustration from one of failure to progress. Once you see frustration in a new way, you’ll be more likely to power through it.
A great way to visualize frustration is to imagine that the uncomfortable feeling you have in your head is neurons in your brain realigning to help you get through the task and wire the new skill into your brain. It’s a brief moment of being under construction, and soon, a new you will emerge with a talent you never had before.
In another video, Kennedy explains how many of us were taught to avoid frustration as children, which means a lot of us stop short of reaching our full potential. But those of us who can stay in that Learning Space will be able to go to it again and again, drastically improving our potential.
@drbeckyatgoodinside You may have seen the video of me guest lecturing at my alma mater, Duke University, in a class called Learning to Fail, which is part of the resilience curriculum. I spoke about the concept of the Learning Space, and the video has now been shared 246,000 times. 🤯 I’m absolutely blown away by your reaction to this video. The Learning Space is something I feel deeply passionate about, and it’s a concept I’m always trying to instill in my own kids. At Good Inside, we focus on building capability, not fragility. We don’t prioritize short-term gratification; our goal is to build skills today that will help our kids thrive as adults in the future. So to everyone who’s sharing this idea, drawing your own versions of “The Learning Space,” and instilling this concept in your kids, thank you. Together, we’re raising a generation of strong, resilient children.
“When I think about my kids and learning to fail, or really, in my language, learning to struggle, I want them to become experts,” Kennedy said. “Not experts at knowing, experts at staying in the learning space. My goal with my kids is like, I want you to get comfortable in that space. Because the knowing and the success happens whenever it happens, but it always happens in more areas of life and more quickly for the people who can stay in the frustration.”
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