Puzzling Through

Wednesday, November 03, 2021 (November’s fullest moon [“Beaver”] rises on the 19th.)

I’ve been spending weeks at learning my new job of cashier in a busy retail store. My co-workers are young people, all quick, smart, and kind. They’re teaching me how to operate electronic cash registers. The register keys are identified with common symbols, but have no other recognizable relation to the known world.

The young folks helping me at the registers are a team, effective, productive, and willing to help a learner. To me, the youngest one stands out. She’s twenty years old, smart as a whip, and best is a natural teacher

Like my other mentors, she explains, while demonstrating hands-on, a process, say one that calls-up details of a customer’s past purchase. She does more than others who show me. She jots on a sticky note some key step for me to recall, attaches each sticky note onto a page-size piece of cardboard and creates an easy reference tool. It’s a “learning board”.

I wonder aloud that she seems to “know everything!”. She disagrees, explains “It’s a trick that I use. I tell myself, that for sure, I can accomplish something difficult. I repeat this continuously and with confidence to myself. Soon, I start to believe it, and meanwhile, become better and more capable of doing.”

Casually, she adds, “My mom taught me to think like that.”

She’s a wunderkind, young and fun, confident and planning. She’s enrolled online to study real estate, hoping eventually to team with her mom who has an agent’s license. Whatever course her journey lets her complete, whatever she sets her mind to, I’ll wager on her future success.

Ha, my young mentor’s wisdom has crawled into my brain. I’ve begun to practice telling myself, firmly and repeatedly, that “I can do!”

Dear Friends: Chore it is, but learning is fun, can be helped by “borrowing” from creative thinkers. Diana