What to do when you’ve tried everything and nothing worked
Before you start, if you want to read this article in Spanish (🇦🇷) you can go here.
How many times have you heard the phrase “I’ve tried everything and nothing worked for me”? And how many other times have you said it?
If you feel identified, I invite you to discover one last thing you may not have tried… Will you join us? 👇
The last resource
Let’s suppose you want to achieve some goal, or in other words, to get a result, e.g. “I want to pass X exam”.
You’ve already tried doing all the activity guides, reading the notes, and re-watching the class recordings, but there is no result. The exam came, you failed and you have to retake it. Maybe the first thing you think is “But how can it be, if I studied everything?
You have a second chance to pass, and you can do 1 of 3 things:
- Option number 1, you can try doing everything the same way (although Einstein would call you crazy for trying to get a different result by doing the same things 🤪).
- Option number 2, you can try doing something you haven’t tried before, like consulting in class the things you have doubts about.
- Option number 3, this is the last resource and we have to go through one more concept to get there…
First and second order learning
Following the example, let’s say you chose option 2, the one about consulting in class, and you passed the exam: congratulations! 🥳. You got your result by just trying to do 1 more thing.
We call this first-order learning, when with a new action you achieve your objective.
The bad news is that sometimes this may not be enough 😕, and we have to go through the not-so-happy path where you may have failed even though you tried with consulting in class. And there you find yourself thinking again: “Now I definitely tried everything and nothing worked”.
The good news is that you still have the last resource left (option number 3) and that is to transform your learning into a second-order one.
We call second-order learning when by making a change in our way of observing the situation we get the result we expected.
Following the example of the exam, option 3 could be initiated by asking yourself some questions such as:
How am I studying? Do I only memorize the content? How long before the exam do I study? Do I understand the concepts or did I just learn to solve the same exercises I saw in class? Would it help me to study with someone else?
This reflection on the way of observing the situation opens up a world of possible new actions, and it may be that with these actions (which you had not even considered before) you will achieve your result.
Like any coaching tool, if at this point in your life you are no longer taking exams 😅, you can apply it to any other goal in your life: Are you a manager and your team is not motivated? Do you want to pass an interview to get a job? Do you want to save money, but you always end up wasting it? Can’t get organized? Do you want to make a trip? Apply it! 🙌.
To summarize
- We all observe the world in different ways, and that way of observing determines and affects what we do, and generates certain results. In theory this is the “observer model”.
- If a new action helps me to achieve a result, I have experienced first-order learning.
- If no action helped me and I make the change from my way of observing the situation, and thanks to that I achieve the result, then I have experienced second-order learning.
As always, I hope this new tool has helped you and if not, I invite you to change the way you are observing the article 😜 (just kidding). If you tried it and it didn’t work for you, we still have a lot to see, so don’t worry 😊.
Also, I’d like you to share in the comments any situation where you have this feeling that you already tried everything and still didn’t manage to solve, and what questions you can think of to change your perspective.
Finally, for the next article I leave you a question as homework: are you being coherent between what you feel and what you express?
