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LIE NO. 5: LEARNING NEW THINGS IS VERY DIFFICULT

When we hear the word learning, we usually think of school. Few of us have fond memories of school. Even if we did well academically, school is typically a place associated with the growing pains of youth, where we felt romantic love for the first time (and probably rejection), and where we
experienced crushing boredom. For those of us who struggled in school, the added emotions of shame, doubt, and the ever-present feeling that we’re too dumb to learn anything colors the word. It’s no wonder that when we think of learning, we think of difficulty and strife.
Carol Greider is an American molecular biologist who won the Nobel Prize in 2009 for her part in discovering how telomeres change with age, which has an enormous potential for how we understand and treat cancer.²² Greider has the distinction of being a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor and a Daniel Nathans Professor, and she is the director of molecular biology and genetics at John Hopkins University. With such an illustrious career, one would assume that Greider whizzed through school, but such was not the case.
“When I was in elementary school, I was considered a poor speller and somebody who couldn’t sound out words, so I was taken into remedial classes,” recalls Greider. “I remember having a tutor come down and take me out of class and bring me to a different room. It certainly felt like I wasn’t as good as the other kids.”²³
It turned out she had dyslexia, a learning disability that affects parts of the brain that process language. Those who struggle with dyslexia have problems identifying speech sounds and relating them to letters and words, which results in difficulty reading and sometimes speaking.²⁴ Greider felt stupid and describes the situation as hard to overcome, but she didn’t give up.

I kept thinking of ways to compensate. I learned to memorize things very well because I just couldn’t spell words. So later when I got to take classes like chemistry and anatomy where I had to memorize things, it turned out I was very good at that. I never planned a career. I had these blinders on that got me through a lot of things that might have been obstacles. I just went forward. It’s a skill that I had early on that must have been adaptive.²⁵

Even though school was hard at first, she found other ways to make up for her disability, and because of her ability to adapt, she became the kind of problem-solver who could not only learn but could contribute to research that changed the way we view cancer. Learning was hard for her, but she

figured out how to work around her disability. After all, it’s not how smart you are, but how you are smart. Because Greider had to problem-solve her way through learning, she now has a career that is having an impact on the world.
The truth is that learning won’t always be easy, but the effort pays dividends. In fact, learning should be at least a little uncomfortable; otherwise you’re mostly reinforcing what you already know. If you’ve ever tried to cut wood with a dull blade, you know that it takes far more time and energy to accomplish the task than it should. In much the same way, lacking motivation or having inadequate methods will slow you down and make you feel as if learning is too hard (and we’ll show you how to address those issues later in this book).
The key is taking small, simple steps. Think about a stonecutter. The stonecutter may sit there and hammer away at his block of stone for what feels like an eternity, making only small chips and dents here and there. But in one moment, the stone will crack open. Was it the one time that did it? No—it was all the sustained effort that prepared the stone to split.
Approach your learning like a stonecutter. It will require you to cultivate patience, to have a positive attitude, and to be adaptive to your own needs. If you are the kind of learner who does best with a book in your hands, that’s fantastic. But if you already know that doesn’t work for you, why keep trying the same thing? Look for other ways to learn that do work for you.
Know that it won’t be hard, but it will require effort—though perhaps not as much as you think. The key is consistency. You must have the patience to consistently come back at it again and again. When you do, you will not only reap the rewards of your hard-earned knowledge, but you’ll be a better person for having cultivated the tenacity to keep trying.