The Simple Way to Spot Your Own Learning Origin Story

🗝️ A key heads-up: we’re kicking off a month-long celebration of learning, and there’s a prize in it for you, including the chance to win a 1:1 call with me. Why? It’s the one-year anniversary of the Transformative Trainers Academy (my membership for experts who’ve been asked to teach but never trained to teach). Details below. Now on to a learning origin story.

I was the only teenager in the room full of sombre adults.  No one looked like they wanted to be there, but everyone needed to be there.

I was sitting on a stiff-backed chair, the kind that isn’t comfortable but gets the job done, surrounded by adults I’d never met.

Somehow I’d gotten hold of a mimeographed flyer advertising a workshop, and one dark fall evening, curiosity won me over.  

It would turn out to be a major learning origin story for me.

I don’t remember a single thing the facilitator said that night. 

What I do remember, though, changed how I’ve valued learning ever since, and by the end of this post you’ll see why learning might be doing more heavy lifting in your life than you’ve ever given it credit for.

I call it my “learning origin story.” 

Your learning origin story is something/someone who shaped how you view learning and what role it plays in your life.

For me, the workshop was that.  It completely shaped my belief in how powerful learning can be, how change is possible, and how we’re not stuck without any options.  

It was incredibly liberating.

I bet you have at least one learning origin story, even if you’ve never consciously thought about it before.  An event or events that moulded how you view learning.

Note: unfortunately, learning origin stories can also be negative, as in someone telling you you aren’t capable of learning, you’re stupid, etc., and it’s made you shy away from learning ever since.  Take heart. Know that origin stories can be changed and adapted if need be.

So what happened that night that powerfully influenced my view of learning forevermore?

The workshop was called “Adult Children of Alcoholics.” ACOA, for short. I’d never heard the term. And even though I wasn’t an adult at the time, I recognized myself.  

I grew up in a chaotic family where reality rarely matched how anyone described it out loud. As a feisty kid, that gap between what I saw and what I was told never sat right with me.

As I said, I don’t remember the content of that workshop. 

I do remember the explosion.

Half my brain was setting off fireworks, yelling, “Oh no, oh no, this is a big deal.  This is actually real! There is a word for this. This can’t be overlooked. I can’t ignore this. No way, no how, I’m screwed. This is awful, terrible, horrible, no good, very bad.” 

The other half of my head was hollering something completely different: “Wait. There’s a word for this. There’s a name for it. There are books and workshops about it. Other people go through this too. I’m not making it up. I’m not alone. I’m not going crazy. This is a thing. It’s real, and  it’s so very possible to learn more and deal with it.”

That night taught me that learning was possible in a way I hadn’t understood before. That there were other ways to look at things. That workshops, courses, books, conferences, night classes, all of it, were ways to expand not just my outlook but my skills, my experiences, even my values.

Ever since, I’ve spent most of my life fascinated by learning, how it’s a chance to grow, to change, to expand.

I think it’s one of the most important things we can do, as individuals, as families, as communities, as whole countries. And yet it’s also one of the things we take most for granted, right up until the moment something cracks it open for us the way that workshop did for me.

Here’s where that overlooked power of learning tends to show up quietly, in people and where it can be amplified.

Someone who knows their subject cold, who’s never taught a formal session in their life, but who keeps bumping into little moments that don’t quite add up. Nothing dramatic. Just a nagging feeling, the same way I felt something was off long before I had a word for it.

Let me hand you some language, the way that flyer handed it to me. 

If any of these sound familiar, there may be a name for what you’re feeling, even if teaching has never been part of your job title.

1. People keep asking you to explain your subject matter to them.  They’re interested in what you have to say.
2. You’ve thought “I should really write this down” more times than you can count. And you never do, because you’re not sure what “this” even is yet, or how to shape it.
3. Someone says, “Can you just walk us through it?” and something in you tightens. Not because you don’t know the material. Because some quiet part of you knows explaining it well is a different skill than knowing it.
4. You’ve been told you’re good at making things click for people. More than once. And you brushed it off as no big deal, because it comes naturally, so surely it doesn’t count as a skill.
5. You’ve watched someone else teach the exact thing you know, and thought, quietly, “I could do that.” And then you didn’t, because you weren’t sure where you’d even start.

Perhaps a small door has cracked open, the same kind that opened for me in that classroom, long before I knew what to call it.

That learning origin story helped lead me to a career in learning and development where I continue to be fascinated by ways to make learning sticky, engaging, accessible, inclusive, powerful, and effective for the changemakers I work with.

And that led me to create the Transformative Trainers Academy, which I’m slightly deliriously happy to report is one year old.

Enter to win a 1:1 call with me

We’re kicking off weekly celebrations all month long where you’ll have a chance to enter to win a 1:1 call with me, where we can chat about the topic(s) of your choice. Need some help with a workshop/training issue? Having an issue with a colleague you want to talk through? The sky is the limit for the person who wins the 1:1 one-hour online call with me. How do you enter? Great question. Simply by completing each week’s gentle challenge. Each challenge you complete gives you one entry into the contest. This week’s challenge? Simply email me (laragan at rpsinc.ca) with an example of your own learning origin story (don’t worry, no PhD thesis required, keep it short). Remember, we’ll be celebrating all things learning this month, so stay tuned for next week, when you’ll get the invitation to this month’s Learning and Development Roundtable. It’ll be fun and fabulous. Just like you. I promise.

Take Action Now – go on and learn, laugh, and lead

Learn

• Think about what has shaped your view of learning.  What’s your learning origin story?  And what effect has it had on you?
• And don’t forget to enter the contest to win a 1:1 session with me (details above).

Laugh 

• Perhaps the ultimate learning origin story!

Lead

• Curious to learn more about the Transformative Trainers Academy) (TTA)?  By all means, it’s waiting for you here.  We just had our TTA Master Class today, which was all about tips and tools for community learning and celebration, and the Learning Lab was on fun, creative ways to divide up your group (please no more counting off by 1, 2, 3s!).

P.S.

• Want more tools like this one, delivered directly to your inbox weekly? Sign up here.  Welcome!
• We’re getting close to starting up the monthly Learning and Development Roundtables again after our summer break.  Want to get in on those goodies too?  Sign up here for free to access 13+ years of Roundtable resources and to receive the monthly invites. 

Since 2009, I’ve been writing weekly posts across five topics. Click into whichever one makes you lean forward just now … you’ll find everything I’ve written on that topic waiting for you there.

• Working Better Together – communication, conflict, creativity, collaboration, change. The so-called soft skills that turn out to be the hardest ones.
• Learning and Development – practical tools and fresh thinking for your own growth … because you deserve the same attention you give everyone else.
• Training of Trainers – if you’ve ever been asked to teach, train, or share your expertise with a group, this one’s for you.
• Tech Tools – not the scary kind, I promise. The kind that saves time, cuts overwhelm, and makes you look and feel like a rockstar.
• Life Lenses® – because the lens you look through changes everything. Posts on perspective, perception, and the Life Lenses® framework for understanding why we all see things so differently.