There are many ways to learn—and they are all good. But what makes learning hard is not the difficulty of the content, but our rigid mindset. Sometimes we can learn more—and more naturally—if we don't force it, but follow our curiosity where it leads. We can trick ourselves off the straight path of rote learning and into the forests and streams of imagination and discovery.

Lecturing has been THE method for teaching for centuries. It works, no question about that. But it may not work for everybody and it might not work as well as other methods for anybody.

Experience can't be beat for learning well. There's nothing like plunging in and getting our feet wet to really grasp what is essential. But we can't experience everything and we miss or misunderstand a lot when that is all we rely on for our learning.

In addition to the top-down method and the bottom-up approach we can come at it indirectly—from the side. A surprise move that opens our eyes. A different way to learn! Another way to see this is pointed out by Richard Nisbett in his book, The Geography of Thought. Westerners think in linear, sequential forms that emphasize the parts. Easterners (Asians) tend to think of the world as a circle, looping back to a former state and moving forward. They see the whole as well as the parts and look for relationships instead of objects. We're better thinkers learning both ways.

Mindfulness, says Ellen Langer, consists of three characteristics: "the continuous creation of new categories; openness to new information; and an implicit awareness of more than one perspective."

Ellen Langer, The Power of Mindful Learning, 4.

These are some other aspects of mindful learning.

Getting out of our learning ruts helps us see and think in different ways.

"Noticing new things about any body of information is involving. When students draw distinctions, the distinctions are necessarily relevant to them. Distinctions reveal that the material is situated in a context and imply that other contexts may be considered."

— Langer, Power of Mindful Learning, 75

"It may help to understand why such problems are widespread if we recognize that when we are distracted, we are attracted to something else. From this perspective very different questions come to mind: What is so attractive about the alternative stimulus? What can we learn from that attraction? Can we add the attractive elements to the stimuli to which we want to attend?"

— Langer, Power of Mindful Learning, 36

"If we assume an activity is play, we approach it nonevaluatively and proceed to get involved in it. What makes the activity enjoyable is the process of going from not knowing to knowing . . . Virtually any task can be made pleasurable if we approach it with a different attitude."

— Langer, Power of Mindful Learning, 59, 61

Instead of locking ourselves into the usual binary either/or, why not take the risk of thinking with a both/and attitude? Changing our mindset frees up more possibilities for us to consider and can turn obstacles into opportunities.

A lot of effort goes into unlearning mindlessly memorized information, says Langer. "It is easier to learn something the first time than it is to unlearn it and then learn it differently." Langer's research found that priming learners with examples inhibited fresh thinking. Being fully here in the moment fires our imagination if we're willing to put our memories and previous associations to one side.

Emily Dickinson's advice to 'Tell the truth/But tell it slant,' can mean many things to different people. But perhaps it can mean that we can honestly come up with another way to tell the story. We don't always have to plow the same furrow or look through the lens from the same position. There are a myriad of ways to look at the truth and to tell it 'slant.'