The Empowered Writer Path: Learning
In the introduction to this series, I gave you a brief overview of the Learning stage but since I’m someone who appreciates examples and stories to drive home a point, I’ll be going more in-depth in this article.
What is the Learning stage?
The learning stage of the empowered writer's path is all about gathering and gaining knowledge. It’s approaching something with the wide-eyed curiosity that a child often possesses. It’s allowing ourselves to go down rabbit holes, and make connections that help us see the constellation of the thing we’re learning about. What’s beautiful about this stage is that we enter it with that beginner’s mindset. We are uninhibited and unaware of that which we don’t know which actually allows us more freedom to explore in this stage. It’s also what I call the “sparking” stage. It’s where so many of those creative sparks take root and propel us forward.
You may think that the learning stage is pretty straightforward and involves exactly what it describes — learning something. While that’s true — it’s actually so much more than that. Because you’re not just learning something new… you’re learning something that matters to you. You’re learning something that you’ll build on down the road. And the way it looks? That’s anything but straightforward.
Example: Have you ever had a really intense conversation with someone where you’re both expressing your respective views on a matter and something the other person says sets off a lightbulb in your brain. It’s a moment of thinking, “hmm… is that what I think? Is this what I believe? How do I feel about this?” That, my friends, is an example of learning. And it doesn’t look like opening a book and reading a paragraph to get there.
You can learn from just about anything, anywhere, anytime. Isn’t that amazing?
The most impactful and empowering type of learning I’ve ever experienced is when I can feel it at a bone-deep level. This is my indication that whatever I’m learning is important. It matters. And it matters that I take the time to dedicate to learning more about it and growing from it. That’s what this stage is really about — growing from the learning.
💡 TAROT INSPIRATION:
“The Fool’s journey is the fundamental, indelible experience of being human. The things the Fool encounters on their journey—things like love, strength, ruin, and fate—are all core to the human experience, and they are things that we must all face, sooner or later, as we try to navigate our lives. The Fool’s journey is a prototype of human life, a blueprint that shows us the trials and lessons that are universal to human experience.”
— Jack Chanek, Tarot for Real Life
Storytime
I’ve been “learning” how to write since I was a child through traditional and non-traditional methods. This is a topic that I am convinced I will never learn enough about. There’s simply too much to know and perhaps that’s the mystery of it — that one cannot ever know it all. So yes, learning how to write has been a cornerstone of my life. But there’s a distinct moment in my life where I can remember being in a stage of learning that I hadn’t experienced in writing before. It was when I discovered expressive writing.
Up to that point, all the learning I had done around writing had felt… expected. Normal. Routine. I wanted to write a novel — I learned how to write a novel. I wanted to learn how to write better college essays — I learned how to write better essays. But when I discovered expressive writing, it was at a time in my life when I needed to learn less about writing and more about myself. I think because I was so hungry for introspection and desired to work through some of my emotional upheavals, expressive writing presented itself at exactly the right moment. And I entered a new phase of my “writing life.” One that centered around learning from my writing rather than learning how to write something.
What expressive writing opened up for me was a path to empowerment. I didn’t know it at the time (we rarely do), but it was the first step on my “fool’s journey” to getting to know myself at a deeper level through writing — something I already knew was a deep calling for me. As I immersed myself into the world of expressive writing, I learned more about myself than I had in years of therapy. I learned more from my writing than I ever had. But most importantly — the learning — it was the spark that lit the fuse for the fires I would build off of it.
I approached my learning of expressive writing as a curious child might — open to everything, wanting to soak in every bit of knowledge. I sought out the experiences of others. Read books. Listened to podcasts. Interviewed others. And I wrote… a lot. I wrote and wrote and wrote until I found myself smack dab in the healing stage.
You may or may not have a distinct memory of entering this stage and that’s okay. But I think if you look back over the course of your life and you examine the times when you felt most alive and full of possibilities — you’ll see that you were either on or about to embark on a learning journey. Try to remember those moments when you felt like the world was your oyster and there was nothing but open space in front of you. Chances are, you learned something pretty important.
What are some ways to enter the Learning stage?
Even though I’ve said that this learning stage is individualized and varied, over the years, I’ve found that certain activities and directive experiences can help someone jump into a learning stage. It’s not the actual “thing” itself that does the teaching, it’s the work the person puts into the thing that brings out the lessons. So here’s a list of ways you can spark some learning:
General
Create a “hot list” of topics
The simplest and easiest way to get started! Make a list of topics that interest you right now. Add whatever comes to mind and no idea is too “silly.” Simply list it all out. And then look at your list for a few minutes. Read each one and see what comes up — do any give you that initial “spark?”
Pay attention to the world around you
Did that article, news clip, advertisement, or commercial stir up anything in you?
Is there an issue in the world that you want to learn more about?
What’s something that scares you to explore or learn more about?
My resources
My Resource Library is a great place to experiment and test out what kinds of topics spark something inside of you. The best part — it’s FREE! You can get access to the resource library here.
My Journaling Workbook Bundles are compilations of 100+ prompts in each set. They are guided by themes and include a wide range of topics from self-introspection to creative projects and writing exercises. Volume One is free for my newsletter subscribers (and clocks in as the largest of the bundles — 200 pages!) so sign up to test it out. You can find all the other workbooks here.
The Write Minded Community was built entirely around the four stages of being an Empowered Writer — we take the principles and turn them into activities, discussion, and support. You can sign up for a free month trial to see if it fits what you’re looking for.
Have a specific topic in mind but not sure how you want to learn or grow with it? Consider having me build you a customized journaling workbook. These are tailored to fit your needs and goals and are a great way to get something built just for you.
