Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: How do insight and learning — or not-learning — actually depend on each other? That’s the question we explore in Room #828 of the Deep Talk Club, under our overarching theme of “Insight (and gaining it).” Listen in on the examples that came up and the perspectives that emerged in dialogue…
Note: This session was recorded live in German as part of the Deep Talk Club, so the video above is German-language audio only. What follows is an English translation of the conversation, lightly edited for readability — the back-and-forth between the moderator and participants is preserved, but the original timestamps and speaker names have been left out.
Yes, once again, very officially, a very warm good morning. Today we’re talking about insight and learning, or not-learning. How do insight and gaining insight actually depend on learning, or not-learning? That’s the question we want to look at today. We’d already talked once about the different forms of learning, and we noted that there isn’t just learning — there’s also not-learning as a form of learning. And so I find it really fascinating to look at this from that angle. So insight that has to do with learning processes seems relatively clear at first. We can happily talk a bit more about that, or bring in examples, if you’d like. And then to look quite specifically at the other side too — how does it work with not-learning? Can you generate an insight, for example, if you don’t learn, if there’s no learning process behind it, or does there always have to be learning for insight to become possible at all? I find that a fascinating question, and I’d love to look at it together with you today. So you’re all very, very warmly invited to join in, to open up this space for reflection together, and to look at it with me, and share your thoughts and experiences, so that we can capture different perspectives, even if they’re not fully thought-through yet, because this isn’t exactly a classic question you deal with every day. So no solution is needed yet, from the outset — just different impulses and thoughts that come to mind for you on this question, which we can pick up and then see together what direction the room develops in today. And for anyone joining for the first time today, just a quick reminder that the room is being recorded in the background and will be published later too. So anyone who joins automatically agrees to that. And then we have three small room rules too: a profile photo in which you’re clearly recognizable, your first and last name, and at least one sentence in your bio. Anyone who doesn’t want that for whatever reason, wants to stay anonymous, or can’t speak right now, can of course use the chat as always — then I’ll pick up one thing or another from there. And since we started a bit later this morning, I’d like to explicitly invite everyone to jump right in and not let any more time pass. I’m glad Layla is joining right away. A very warm good morning, dear Layla. What do you have to say on this topic?
A very warm good morning. Well, I’m a teacher, so I have to say you’ve hit on a core topic of mine, in the best case even a core competency. I actually just gained an insight this morning, very briefly — so thank you for starting the room a bit later, because I thought, Yasemin, she’s so super reliable, she really does this all year round, whether it rains, whether it snows, whether the sun shines, whether it’s a holiday, whether it’s Sunday. And then I gained an insight, in the sense that I — “surprised” is the wrong word, but I briefly considered it, and then I thought, no, I’m sure she’ll open this room. And then I thought, you know what, don’t stress yourself out over this now. You might fall into stress yourself. And that’s an insight I gained too. And it has to do with learning too. I’ve learned in my life that when someone asks me to jump, or tells me to jump, in most cases I ask, how high? Or, have you been doing this for a long time? And then I thought, no, and that’s why I too often fall into stress. And then I calmly made myself a coffee, relaxed, and actually found it really lovely and meditative. That means I learned something about myself, I learned something about you. It came with an insight, and I think that’s what should ideally happen when you learn — that it comes with an insight. But the insight can also be, I don’t like things. I don’t like — I’m, for example, hopeless at maths. That means I don’t like mathematics. Greetings out to all the maths teachers — you all do a wonderful job, and it’s a great subject. Not everyone likes philosophy either. And not everyone likes German either. But here I did gain insights. And the insight I gained here is, what do I actually need it for? And when I once bought a wardrobe, Yasemin, I realised what I need it for. I’d only measured it by eye beforehand, and, well, then I had to saw off the legs. So it would have been good to measure it properly — maths would have helped me there. Adding up two amounts in your head is also a skill you definitely learn in school, maybe elsewhere too. And still, it also helped me a lot when I was waitressing, and that’s where I noticed how I actually learn, for example. Because my colleague once said to me, “Layla,” and I said, “yeah,” and she said, “surely you’re capable of adding up two amounts in your head,” and I got angry. In the end I could add up 13 amounts in my head. That means mathematics still isn’t as close to me as philosophy, and still I gained insights, and I learned something. And, yes, I don’t know — maths still isn’t my favourite competency. And still, I’m capable of adding up 13 amounts in my head. I can still do that. And next time I’d measure a wardrobe properly.
Yes, thank you, thank you so much. And this raises the question for me, even if I now find, for example, that something doesn’t particularly suit me — that ultimately still builds on learning experiences too, so that I gain the insight from it, for example, to pick up the maths example again, that maths doesn’t suit me, it’s not my core competency. Then I’ve gained an insight, and I do something with it. That means there’s a learning process behind this too, again. And what interests me in this context is, is this learning process always behind it, or can you also gain or generate an insight from a not-learning process? And I’d like to look at that more closely. I’d like to bring Marc in this morning too, and then we can make cross-connections and really let our thoughts juggle together here. Marc, a very warm good morning. What do you have to say on the topic?
Good morning. I’d like to respond to the example Layla gave. Same situation for me this morning — I turned my phone on and couldn’t get into the room. I consider you one of the most reliable people I’ve met here, dear Yasemin. I know how important this room is to you. And I know this room happens. So I immediately went into problem-solving mode. Since this room happens, it can’t be because of you. It can’t be your fault. It must be mine. And I grabbed an old phone. I restarted my phone at least three times, in parallel got an old phone out of the drawer, tried to give it power, and tried to log into Clubhouse with the other phone, because it’s happened to me a few times before that I couldn’t get into this room. And I didn’t spend a single second thinking it might be coming from your end, because the room is there, that’s a given for me, fixed. So it must be me, my technical setup, and I went straight into implementation, into problem-solving. Also a really fascinating insight — that there are other answers too, ones I didn’t even see. There are always several reasons why something doesn’t work. This time I looked for the reason in myself, so that I could jump straight into action, because it mattered to me to be in this room with you today. So I went straight into the solution, and didn’t waste my thoughts on why the room wasn’t happening, but on how I could get into the room.
Oh, lovely, thank you so much for sharing. I find that really fascinating. And that means this morning we’ve already clearly kicked off processes that led to insights too. Really, really fascinating, and I think it’s great that you reflect on this too. For anyone who might have joined the room later, because they found us later too, maybe a quick explanation — I already did this earlier, but for those who joined later, the room officially started 10 minutes late today, decided very last-minute, because I realised my phone wasn’t charged, and I only realised that too late, and once I noticed, it obviously had to happen quickly. And to make sure the technology and everything else worked, I couldn’t just charge the phone in parallel if the tech didn’t allow it, so I first had to quickly sort out the cabling and everything else so it would work. And I realised this quickly enough that I really did manage to switch the room to ten past, but of course not everyone saw that. And so it happened that this morning one or two people actually looked for the room, since it otherwise always starts punctually at 8. And now hearing this reflection, so to speak, what happened behind the scenes, what thoughts went through your heads and so on, I find that really fascinating too, especially under this room topic of insight and learning, or not-learning. So, thank you, thank you so much for sharing too. Jürgen, good morning. What would you like to say on the topic?
Yes, good morning, good morning to everyone in the room. Dear Yasemin, I’ll stick to the topic — to the subtitle, as so often, the subtitle you set: is there insight even if I don’t learn? And I’ll limit myself to one thesis that I’ll throw out now, and say, that doesn’t work. And I’ll justify this thesis, on the one hand, looking again at the terminology of today’s room — it’s actually a divergence, because insight is the resulting quantity, a resulting quantity, and learning is a process. The fitting pairing of terms should actually be “recognising” and “learning.” And I justify my thesis that a resulting quantity like insight can’t happen without a learning process by saying, I’d basically have to go through life without recognising anything at all. I don’t remember anymore who said it — I don’t know if it goes back to Peters — who said, whoever stops learning is dead. Basically, in reverse, that means our life is learning. Whether that’s wanted or consciously, cognitively steered. So these different learning theories that exist, in quotation marks, please look them up — from the most primitive forms of the stimulus-response scheme, or conditioning, to, let’s say, in the broadest sense, the cognitively conscious “I’m going to sit down now” and learn vocabulary, decoupled from that. But precisely these positions are essential for life, for me. Essential for life to arrive at a learning success, which then becomes a foundation for a subsequent insight. And I’m deliberately making this distinction again, specifically regarding the terminology. Learning has its own resulting quantity, namely learning success. Recognising has its own resulting quantity, namely insight. And the two differ. I already touched on this yesterday. In what? I’d like to deliberately leave it at that for now, given the limited time, and just put this thesis out there. All in all, it doesn’t work.
Yes, thank you, thank you so much, and I like this distinction on different levels too. I’m curious now what the others have to say about it. We could also open this up again with, if we now put learning and recognising on one level, so to speak, then you could also say recognising and learning, or not-learning, or not-recognising, and look at it again on that level. And I’m curious what thoughts go through your minds on that. There was a hand raised just now, I had the impression — yes, go ahead, Layla.
I was just thinking, I have to be a bit careful this doesn’t get too broad. What was just said — that insight is generated from recognising — that’s the best case for me, personally. But for me, recognising doesn’t always generate an insight, but maybe just a piece of knowledge, an acquisition of knowledge. And for me it’s actually the case that I think the categories we’re thinking in are historically and sociologically shaped, so that we have different categories there. If we go back to earlier times, we also learned through observation. And we still do this, by the way — that’s this “lead by example” thing too. And that’s the example I once gave, where I said it’s nice when a mother tells her child not to lie. But it gets difficult when the neighbour rings the doorbell and she then says, tell her I’m not home. That won’t work, because children learn from things like this. And that might be a white lie, but it’s still a lie. And I can expect other people to do what’s morally agreed upon in our world, we might say, though you could criticise that too, even though I don’t want to criticise the constitution — the constitution is always a boundary for me. And I have to say, for myself personally, it gets difficult when I do that. I’d actually like to move away a bit from this Prussian model, because it’s not just school education I mean — and I really do mean school education, where you say, okay, this gets evaluated, this gets graded — but rather, how does insight actually arise? How does an acquisition of knowledge happen? And if I look at my example again, and I keep hanging on this “not-learning,” Yasemin, in your title, because whether I want to or not, I generate experiences and insights. And everything around me — and I’d like to agree with Jürgen here, and underline this again — everything I experience in life actually generates insights, whether these are positive or negative. But because we’re shaped by school, and also by what we’re told — for example, I said earlier that I’m hopeless at maths, I could also say my dad said, or my mum said, she’s not good at maths. Those are sentences I keep hearing at school. And then I think, yes, and now a self-image forms in you, because you’re looking — we all look for community and connection. Because of that we then say, that’s how it is in this family, I come from this family, or we’re looking for this community, then it’s like that for me too. I then transfer that, so to speak. But that’s not insight, that’s a transference, and you have to distinguish between the two. And I know, for example, an example of a student who always used to tell me, no, none of us are good at art. No, I can’t do that. And then I said, well, try it. And then we drew monsters together. They were very funny monsters, by the way. That was fifth grade, and kids really like that kind of thing. And it was lovely. And at some point, I no longer taught that class — greetings out to my fifth-grade class, I still love you all, and I have a picture of you in my apartment. And what I have to say is, someone wrote in it, from your little artists. And I found that so lovely, because I noticed then, yes, this self-image. And I’d like to briefly address that, because I see this with adults all the time. I see with adults, all the time, I’m a teacher, Yasemin, and then I have to hear, well, you’re never really out of school, are you, you’re right in the morning and off in the afternoon. No, it’s thirty against one, it’s not like that. And the word “objection” is out — that’s meant literally in this case. I don’t want to talk too long, so briefly — there’s this feeling that once you turn 18, you no longer want to be lectured. And what I’ve noticed for myself is that this might lead you into not-learning, through these transferences that happen, through this “I won’t be told anything by you,” because we simply feel we want to determine things ourselves. But we don’t notice that we might be artificially limiting ourselves that way, and preventing insights and learning processes through it, or generating other insights. Thanks for listening.
Yes, thank you. And I think it’s important to pick this up again here, something we already discussed in other rooms too. We’d already broken down the terms “knowledge,” “recognising,” and then also “insight.” That means “knowledge” is also something different from “recognising” — just as a reminder, “knowledge” is, for example, a piece of information I receive, that I take note of. That doesn’t necessarily have to connect to anything I’d already learned in some other context, or any learning experiences I have stored. Recognising, we said, has to do with there already being, for example, information somewhere that’s already been processed in some form and stored too. That means I recognise it because I can connect it to something that was already there before, that’s already stored in me. Whereas knowledge is something that represents something new, at that point. And what I recognise can then lead to an insight — doesn’t necessarily always have to lead to insight — and insight is, so to speak, also something that represents a kind of snapshot. So that could be, for example, an aha moment. That’s why we talk about aha moments in many contexts, and generally those are then the insights that get generated. And if we look at this now on the level of learning, of the learning process, then we have recognising, which is what Jürgen said, on this process track, so to speak. If I recognise something, it connects to something — which itself required a learning process, in turn, so it can connect here now. But recognising itself doesn’t necessarily always have to lead to a new insight either, and so on. And the question is, how does it actually work with this not-learning? Can I, how would it work, could I also recognise? That would be on the same level, we said, but recognising actually presupposes at least a prior learning process. So how does it work with not-learning at that point? And I’d like to look at that together now. I don’t know if that was easy to follow just now. Layla, Marc, do you have initial thoughts you’d like to share? Marc first, then Layla.
Thanks again for your explanation, dear Yasemin. I tried to sort this out for myself too. I distinguish, for myself, based on what’s heard. You said we have knowledge of something, and for me that’s the same as heard, and that can also be the same as knowing. And I’d like to give you an example, because otherwise the thoughts just spin, at least in my head. If you, dear Yasemin, say to me, “Marc, it’s raining today, I wouldn’t go out right now if I were you, because it’s raining” — then I’ve heard that. I take note of it too. And I know that you believe it’s raining today. But whether that turns out to be correct, to be true, for me I’ll only find out later. Maybe I’ll act on it, not go outside. But maybe I won’t either. I’ll only recognise it later too, when I compare things. And I think all these processes make things so complicated, because just because I’ve heard something, just because I’ve taken note of something, and just because I know something — and by know I mean, I wouldn’t equate that in that sense with acknowledging it, meaning calling it true — instead I know that Yasemin said it’s about to rain. But I don’t derive any action from that yet, because I look outside and think, no, not here, the sky looks blue, that won’t happen. And that’s what makes the whole thing so difficult. And then there’s another word Jürgen just brought up, learning success. If we have a learning success, then for me a third word, one that hasn’t come up yet, would be really, really important — application. If we’ve learned something, and if there is a learning success, why don’t people apply this knowledge? Emotions and feelings and interpretations get in our way there too, because otherwise it would be so simple. Otherwise we’d talk, then I’d have learned something, then I’d have a new insight, and then I’d apply it immediately, and so many things would be so much more pragmatic — we could convince customers more easily, we’d sell much more easily, and so on. But that’s just not how humans work, because our entire system, with each other, among ourselves, and with ourselves, is so complex that learning and learning success don’t automatically lead to application, and immediately and constantly change our life as a result.
Yes, thank you, thank you so much. And here too, regarding the term knowledge, we’ve differentiated further before too. I’d like to tie back in with rooms where we’d gathered certain things. We often equate information with knowledge, so to speak. Here you might also need to differentiate between different levels. On the one hand, there’s information I take in or perceive from outside. That doesn’t necessarily mean it gets converted into knowledge yet. Only the processing — a certain experience I make with it, or experiences I gather with it — leads to me being able to store it as knowledge for myself, on the one hand. And on the other hand, on another level, there’s knowledge that’s collectively valid, or something like that — like knowledge from research, or insights from research, which get released as knowledge, so to speak, and this knowledge, if I first perceive it as information, so to speak, also needs a certain processing, a certain processing step, so that I can store it, for example, as an experience or similar, for myself again. Layla, you wanted to add something too — I’ll give you the chance for that first.
Yes, I wanted to go back to this point about not-learning, because I think it ties in with what I explained before, and if we take another expression, “what Johnny doesn’t learn, John never will” — then we might be shaped to feel that we’re not learning. But I’d like to agree with Jürgen here, or agree in general, because I believe we’re always learning, whether we want to or not. And here we’re back, I think, at the black box. We’d all like to think outside the box, and then have the feeling that we’re being forced from outside to think inside the box. School often gets used as the example here, and it’s said, well, and there we always learn inside the box, and then we lose our creativity. But here you also have to say, it depends on how the lessons are structured, and I’d like to point out that what you yourself learned in school is not proof of how school works today. And even though I have children, which is a wonderful, great thing, I’m not necessarily up to date with the latest state of education either, which I don’t want to rule out at all, but what I do want to say is, you have to look closely at things to actually understand them. That sounds super arrogant, but it’s not meant that way at all. There’s a reason degree programmes exist, and people do actually study this. I was at school 30 years ago, I changed school types three times. A lot, a lot, a lot has changed. Not everything used to be better, but not everything used to be worse either, and not everything is bad today either, and not everything used to be bad either. To come back to the point, I believe we’re always learning. And I think brain research — you can surely say more about that too, Yasemin, and probably the others too — we have neuroplasticity. That means a brain always keeps developing further, even if later on it maybe — I wouldn’t say I learn differently or with more difficulty than before, but there’s this principle of “use it or lose it.” And that ties back to the conscious control we had yesterday, and I’d like to bring that up. Maybe we feel like we’re not learning. But we have to look closer. We always generate insights through every experience we have. We always fall back on things we learned earlier. I always have to engage with that when someone tells me, well, school is like this and that, where I think, no, it isn’t. So much, so much has changed, and for the positive too, not just the negative. And, well, but it is like that. And then I think, yes, that was the case once, and that was true from your personal point of view. But you’re also very often — and you have to step back a bit from this too — I think in every profession you’re always a kind of projection surface for these experiences. And what I want to do, with adults too, is, well, I don’t know, I don’t want to say I’m the Joan of Arc of education, absolutely not. But still I’d like to look at it gently, and simply say, hey, look, this is how it is now, hey, look, this is how it is now, and hey, look, teachers exist too. And so, to come back to the topic, we’re always learning, whether we want to or not. We can certainly consciously steer that we say, no, I don’t want that right now, and select. And still, I think, a learning success happens, unless I’m a hermit in the desert. And you could think about that too, as philosophy has done for a long, long, long time — whether no knowledge acquisition takes place there, and whether we’re a zoon politikon that needs the other in order to generate insights. Thanks for listening.
Thank you, thank you so much. And, yes, further fascinating aspects come up here too. So, understanding not-learning as a kind of standstill, so to speak, would mean that on this level of the learning process I don’t generate any new insights from it, for example. So again, differentiating what’s actually meant by not-learning is fascinating too, to really look more closely at this terminology. Because you just said, basically, that the statement was that we’re always learning, whenever we get certain impulses from outside and so on. And if we look at this from the brain’s perspective, from brain functionality, it’s actually the case that whether we learn consciously or unconsciously, all kinds of information gets transmitted via the senses, and we store certain things unconsciously, so to speak, without even realising it. That means, from the brain’s perspective, there’s basically no absolute standstill at all. But if we talk about not-learning, well, on the one hand, we can play with words again here too, in quotation marks — if not-learning is itself a form of learning, and we’d already established that, then of course we could also say, if not-learning is a form of learning, then basically we’re always learning too, because if we understand it as a form of learning, this not-learning, then in reverse it’s already learning again too, so to speak. The question on the one hand is whether we, for example, consciously perceive this process that’s taking place. And on the other hand, the question is, does an insight actually result from this or not? But that’s a different matter again. And not every form of learning — for instance, if we pick up this unconscious learning here — we process all sorts of information, it gets stored in some form, but that doesn’t necessarily have to result in an insight for us, a conscious insight. That would be the result if I actually did something consciously with this information, in quotation marks. Then it might be that it doesn’t necessarily result in insight, but the learning ultimately still takes place regardless. Layla, Marc, I wanted to add on here — Layla, go ahead, and then Marc?
I was just thinking to myself, if we distinguish this way, we probably have conscious and unconscious insights. I’m with Vera F. Birkenbihl here, and this iceberg model, which I also always use in ethics class, and which gets used in other lessons too — that’s how school has changed for the better in some ways, for instance, even if it’s not the most current state, just to give that as an example. I think we have unconscious insights, and I’d prefer conscious insights, because I can make something of them, want to, in the long run. We said, if I remember correctly, that recognising and an insight don’t yet lead to an insight, because an insight, for me, is always something conscious, which also has to do with repetition. And just because I’ve generated unconscious insights, in that direction — for me, as an example, I once heard, I talk a lot. And I always used to get annoyed about that. And then I saw Vera F. Birkenbihl, who said, in her talk, not directly to me, but in her talk, she said, in the past people said, I talk a lot, and now I get paid for talking. The unconscious insight I gained from that was that I’d actually connected negative feelings with it, because, yes, it had always led me to think, okay, I have to twist myself out of shape for you now. But then I looked into storytelling a lot, then I looked into how you change things a lot. I also learned this in my teacher training, how to convey tasks, for example to fifth- and sixth-graders. You have to visualise them. It’s also important there not to give too much at once, because that has to do with brain research too — looking at how a child can process something or not. And then I consciously slowed myself down, moved into storytelling. My ADHD diagnosis helped me a lot last year too, which I diagnosed myself, by the way — I’m an expert in that — and I looked at my school report and saw I finished primary school with a 4.0 average grade. And I say that now with full pride, because I actually built on top of that. And it would also be fine if I hadn’t built on top of it, because you don’t need top grades to be a wonderful, great, intelligent person. My father is a very wise man, and he doesn’t have a high-school diploma. Neither does my mother. And my brother is an entrepreneur, and he doesn’t have one either. But back to the topic — I’ve simply noticed for myself that this conscious element is what leads to insight. And I think that’s a point — Marc put it so nicely earlier — the brain is a very complex system, and we’re always looking for solutions. That’s very human, looking for solutions and for how we can generate things. And so I’ve learned for myself that a conscious decision is a good decision, and it’s often the case that I know people who tell me, I went to the school of life, and that’s the better school. Then I meet academics. I’m honestly close to founding the club of anonymous academics, even though I’m not actually an academic myself as a secondary-school teacher — I’m one semester short. And I’ve noticed, yes, we always compare, and we always try to find a solution. That’s why I’m a friend of conscious insight, because we generate insights whether we want to or not. I hope I’ve answered the question roughly and haven’t strayed too far.
Let’s sort this out a bit, because otherwise I think it’ll get a bit difficult to really follow along here. You’ve now made the distinction between conscious and unconscious insight. The question that comes up for me from that is, what actually is an unconscious insight? Does that even exist? I haven’t quite been able to follow that. Maybe you can say a bit more about that, Layla.
Yes, what I meant was that I believe we always generate insights. For example, look, let me take my example again — I’m hopeless at maths. I never had particularly great experiences in mathematics. That has to do with my school years too. And if I think back to my teacher there, who used what’s called black pedagogy, which I’m really not a fan of — I once got thrown out of class in sixth grade, and he looked at me and said, well, Layla, thrown out again? I wasn’t thrown out often, almost never, and it was also completely unfair that I got thrown out, I’ll just say that now. And then he looked at me and said, and you’ve got a five in maths too, in the next few years it’ll be a six. Then I was so angry at him, and the black pedagogy worked — I got a three. I only generated this insight later, and it was an unconscious insight, that I had a negative connection to mathematics. I only found that out decades later, because I’d always connoted it so negatively. Anything to do with maths, my motivation would drop. Whenever someone explained something to me that had anything to do with a subject I wasn’t good at, or where I’d had negative experiences, which has to do with my ADHD too, but also has to do with socialisation — then I wanted to avoid it. And so I avoided mathematics. And that was an unconscious insight. I had an issue with it, and I always looked for reasons for it, and now, in the meantime, it’s a conscious insight — I studied education for it, gathered a lot of experiences in my life, and now I’ve realised I don’t like black pedagogy, I think it’s devastating for children, because a sentence might not be meant that way, but it can trigger so much in a child, which is why I want to encourage all teachers to apologise to children sometimes too. And the other thing is simply the conscious insight I gained from it — when I was waitressing and could add up 13 amounts in my head, Yasemin, I realised, I actually can do this. And that’s the conscious insight. But in my view of things, we also generate unconscious insights. And I think we can maybe do less with those, and can’t dribble through this system, if we want to see the brain as a system now.
Yes, I think this is where we need to differentiate the terms again. I wouldn’t classify that as an unconscious insight, but rather as a negative learning experience you had. We have positive and negative learning experiences, so to speak. And as a result, from the negative learning experience you had, you established, so to speak, somehow it seems maths doesn’t quite work for me, or at least what was brought to you from outside, by teachers, prompted a certain way of dealing with it. And this way of dealing with it is, for example, either, okay, I withdraw and don’t do maths anymore, in quotation marks, or it triggers me, like in this case, and I place value on it and look at it more closely and show the other person, in quotation marks, well, here we have certain motives that got triggered, which led to you doing certain things, and then you established for yourself, okay, I’ve gained the insight that it apparently does work after all, and that what was brought to you, this other thing, doesn’t necessarily have to be confirmed, even if a negative learning experience was made in that context at first. And looking back on that, so to speak, and deriving an insight from it, is then again a conscious insight. So I’m not yet sure whether this unconscious insight is really — if I don’t perceive what’s happening there, can we actually speak of an insight in that context? Because if it’s unconscious, I’d put out there for now, then it’s not yet an insight, because I haven’t actually gained the insight yet. So how can an insight be unconscious? Let’s let that keep working on us. We don’t have to answer it today either — we have more rooms anyway, where we can maybe look at this again. But maybe just to leave that thought hanging in the room for now. And I’d like to bring Marc in too, before we move into today’s closing round. Marc, you wanted to add something too.
Yes, I’d like to bring in another example from business. You used the word pattern-breaking several times last week, and I find that fascinating, because what we’re currently experiencing politically and economically has, for me, a lot to do with pattern-breaking. What the Chinese have done — the Chinese were often belittled. And one big car manufacturer from Wolfsburg has now had to painfully learn that the Chinese no longer stick to the pattern of only doing the things we prescribed for them. The Chinese have learned. They’ve applied what they learned, and it’s brought our counterpart — the Wolfsburg company now — to the point where they’re really scrambling not to lose more market share, and they, and many other economic sectors here in Germany, will have to realign their actions, because this pattern, and what’s been learned, and the system as we’ve known it up to now, no longer exists like that. And I find that really fascinating to think through right now, and if we haven’t learned this yet — which is also our room’s title — what we haven’t learned yet forces us, through the pattern-breaking of our competitors, into new action, and to learn from that again, and to break our own patterns again, in order to even be able to still participate in the market in the future. So this is a really, really fascinating topic, and sometimes we perceive information unconsciously too, as you said, and that’s certainly what the car industry people did too, and you also experienced in the room last week that even big car manufacturers are surprised at what their competitors have already developed, because they thought, that can’t be, we’ve only just developed this, and then it turns out these things have long been on the market. And that’s why this insight, gaining insight, learning, awareness, is a really, really fascinating topic for us, and for everyone running a company, if they want to still see their company in the market in a few years.
Yes, a really fascinating example you’ve brought in there too, because now we have a really classic case of not-learning right there too, so to speak. That means the brain does keep functioning, in terms of its functionality, on the one hand. I perceive that something’s happening out there, that a competitor might be doing something specific, but I don’t take it seriously, for example. So how do I deal with it, in quotation marks? That means this not-learning, in the sense of, nothing changes for me. I perceive that something’s happening. I might even belittle it, in quotation marks. And it doesn’t lead to me deriving anything from it for myself, in the sense of a change. So learning and learning processes also have to do with processes of change, or every change presupposes learning processes, maybe better phrased that way round. And if I’m now, in quotation marks, in this not-learning, that means, I do perceive that something’s happening, and depending on how I deal with it, I’m then in this not-learning, so to speak, because I don’t derive anything from it, or generate an insight from it, in the sense of, oh, this could become dangerous for me, in quotation marks. So now, after a certain amount of time of just letting it run, I might find myself, at some point, realising, oh, now this is getting dangerous for me, and now I actually have to do something with it. Then I come back into this learning process, to look at how I now deal with this situation, what that actually means for me specifically, how I handle it, and then this learning process gets actively set in motion, so to speak, in quotation marks, because I want to initiate a change process at that point, saying, I’m allowed to move into action now. So the insight that can set the change process in motion at that point, so that I start thinking about which strategies I’m now going to pursue, how I’m actually going to handle the situation, what that means for my processes, what that means for my product development, and so on and so forth, and then translate that into action, for example. So, really, really fascinating. Thank you, thank you so much. So it’s become clear again today too that it’s important to pick up these terms again, from the other rooms too, to make connections again and get back into sorting things out. Even if we couldn’t conclusively answer all the questions today, in quotation marks, one thing or another can keep working on us, to use the opportunity to sort things out a bit in your own head too, so to speak, to be able to continue with these aspects accordingly over the next few days. And, yes, I’d like to move into today’s closing round now, to announce tomorrow’s Authors’ Breakfast too. Layla, and then Marc. What were your highlights, or what would you like to underline again to close?
I just wanted to say briefly, René Descartes once said, I think, therefore I am. I’m in love with my own head, and with the German language, and with your room, Yasemin. So, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for that. I’ll think today about whether you can generate unconscious insights, or whether you’re just reinforcing your conscious insights with them, like, I’m good at German and bad at maths, because that’s actually what I was just thinking inwardly — storytelling, I should have used a different example, I should have said, this reinforces me. But, yes, thanks for the invitation to think, and thanks for the invitation to learn, because I love learning, and anyone can blame me for that, but great. Thank you.
Yes, wonderful. Thank you, thank you so much, Layla. Marc.
I’d like to thank you for your summary, dear Yasemin — you can put things so beautifully. And what I’m taking away for myself today is to stay curious and stay open. Otherwise I have no chance, and I see no chance for myself, to generate new insights and new learning either. Thank you, dear Yasemin.
Yes, wonderful. Thank you, thank you so much. Yes, dear all, I think a huge amount came together here. And, yes, that’s exactly what we do here — brain juggling, so to speak, brain training, to take certain terms apart, look at them from one side, and then also give ourselves the opportunity to sort out our own thoughts too, against the background of the insights we might gather here and so on, and especially where we haven’t ticked a box yet, to give ourselves the opportunity here to keep thinking, and through that thinking, to trigger new insights again too. New insights doesn’t necessarily mean I have to revise something. It can also mean I already had a feeling or a thought that later gets confirmed, or that needs correcting, and so on. And everyone is responsible for checking that for themselves here, and generating and deriving insights for themselves in whatever form that takes. And above all, to consider for yourself what you’re actually going to do with it now. And with that, I’d like to move into tomorrow’s preview, so to speak. Tomorrow we have our Authors’ Breakfast with Steffi Zerl, with her book “How My Birthday Party Accidentally Turned Me Into a Brand, and Why My Success Started With Nail Polish.” And that’s a really, really fascinating book in this context. There’s a subtitle too, which I don’t want to withhold from you — hold on a second, let me look that up quickly, because I think that’ll make it a bit clearer too. The subtitle is something like “tough but warm-hearted staff…” hold on, let me check. No — “Tough But Warm-Hearted Staff, More Visibility, Favourite Customers, and Revenue.” I’ll just look this up now, hold on a moment, because I want to have this title in full for you, really, at this point. I’m typing it in on Amazon right now under Steffi Zerl. You can hear I’m typing, but that’s fine, because I really want to have this title in full for you here. Okay, got it. So the title is exactly, “How My Birthday Party Accidentally Turned Me Into a Brand, and Why My Success Started With Nail Polish. Tough But Warm-Hearted Staff, More Visibility, Favourite Customers, and Revenue.” So this is clearly also, to some degree, about personal branding basics — that got cut off in the title, which is why I couldn’t read it earlier. So, personal branding basics for more visibility, favourite customers, and revenue is the subtitle that got cut off here, because it’s too long altogether. And here we actually have two aspects. On the one hand, this first aspect, how her birthday party accidentally turned her into a brand. And that means certain experiences, personal experiences, that contributed to generating insights and deriving something from them. And against this background of these own personal insights, or this personal story, this book came about, so to speak. So I’m really looking forward to having the author with us tomorrow at the Authors’ Breakfast, and being able to talk about exactly this together. And at the same time, the bridge gets built to the personal branding basics, for more visibility, favourite customers, and revenue — so the connectivity to business, so to speak. But we won’t just be talking about marketing on the surface, but also about the personal experiences that actually led to starting something from this insight, and bringing it into implementation. And so I think it’s wonderful that we have this tomorrow at the Authors’ Breakfast, as a bridge, so to speak, on the one hand to our overarching theme of insight and gaining insight, and on the other hand toward how the whole thing can be translated into business too — we’ll look at that more closely tomorrow too. And I’ve already had the chance to get to know the author in an introductory conversation — a really lively person, I find, really refreshing too. So I’m really looking forward to it, tomorrow at 8, under the — I’m probably not allowed to say club anymore — under the roof of Bestselling Authors. It starts at 8, and I’m really curious what impulses we’ll get here, and I’m already really looking forward to the shared exchange too, as soon as we open up the hand-raising and you can join in the interaction too. So it’s definitely worth being here for this. With that, I wish you a lovely, wonderful Saturday, whatever you have planned, and I’m looking forward to a shared Authors’ Breakfast with Steffi Zerl and you all tomorrow morning at 8, here at Bestselling Authors. Until then. Ciao.
