Ready for a Breakthrough? Learn Something Weird.

One of my current goals is to get on stage again after a 20-year hiatus. Yes...20 years. So I'm highly-motivated to tune up my instrument, including a return to vocal lessons. My teacher is excellent and has been singing professionally for 40+ years. She makes me do things that are super uncomfortable like panting between notes, making siren noises, and bobbling my head while I sing. This is on top of the pre-existing discomfort I feel from singing in front of another human when I feel so rusty. But I trust her expertise, and so I willingly leap into whatever she tells me to do.

This week, she offhandedly mentioned something called "The Alexander Technique" as though it were something I would already be aware of. When I told her I'd never heard of it, she explained that it's a method that encourages proper posture in any given setting. It sounded kooky and I was pretty skeptical when she tilted my head and neck in a such a manner that I was almost looking downward. How is that, in any way, a good posture for singing? But I'll be damned if it didn't feel and, more importantly, sound better after that small adjustment.

When I got home, I did all manner of Googling of this new-fangled trick. Well, it turns out this technique dates all the way back to the 1890s and people from all different careers and walks of life have tales of how it has helped them heal their back problems, calm their emotions, and become a better singer or public speaker. As in, this technique is everywhere. Hell, even William Hurt did a slightly off-putting video about it! The more you know, right?

So let me get this straight...there was this totally well-known thing out there in the world that took the right person in the right situation literally 2 minutes to (partially) show me how to do that improved my voice and has potential benefits (we'll see) for my health and well-being? And I could have gone for the rest of my life without ever having heard of this? GAH!

This is why I have such an insatiable hunger for learning: I'm always just an Alexander Technique away from a world of new possibilities. But since it's impossible to know where or when or how I'll find it, I have to be constantly searching. And that can make me feel a bit like this guy.

Of course, as you dig deeper and deeper into a particular subject or interest, there's always more to learn. At some point, though, the breakthroughs slow down and the big explosions become less frequent. So how do you speed them back up again? You can find more breakthroughs when you take detours off your beaten learning path. Yes, you can keep following your current curiosities and you'll inevitably find new truths, but there's something about that complete mental switch to something new and unusual that can open up some pretty amazing possibilities.

Plus, there's a sort of sparkly glow around what's learned while diving into these "extracurriculars." As if their weirdness makes their discovery even more mind-blowingly awesome. And I really like my mind being blown. And sparkles.

So here is my question for you: What weird thing are you learning about right now? It doesn't have to actually be weird - just unusual as compared to what you usually learn about. Is there something you've always wanted to know more about but haven't made the time? It could be Greek mythology, pickle ball, volcanoes, stock trading, or tap dancing. What if, as Cheryl from Box Lunch Lifestyle suggests, you dedicated 15 minutes of your lunchtime every day to explore that new weird thing? What Alexander Technique of your own might you discover as a result of  that you would have never otherwise encountered? And what if it changed everything?