Learn!

 I had a packed-full day yesterday, full of seeing clients and meeting with parents and kids.  There was some heavy content of the sessions.  I felt really good about them, I felt like my approach was really connecting and helping my clients, well...almost all of them.  I tried using the same approach that I had used with several clients earlier in the day to good success.  With this particular client, my approach fell flat.  It just wasn't quite connecting in the way that it had with other clients and I felt like I was grasping straws to be helpful with this client.  The session ended and there was no resolution, maybe it was helpful, maybe it wasn't.  But it drove home some really important concepts to me that I "know" cognitively but was now reminded of in a deep and jarring way.  These concepts include the potentially obvious seeming ideas as follows: there's no one right approach that is a one-size-fits-all with everybody, even something that seems to work really really well with some can fall completely flat with others.  I have much to learn still in the world of therapy, as skilled as I already am, there will always higher goals and skills to acquire, starting with the skill of shutting up and letting a client lead a session, and if it seems like they won't be able to do so, create the setting where they can, there are ways.
This is ringing true for me as I'm going through a process right now of trying to find out ways to continue learning in different areas of my life.  It's helping me realize that formal training is one way to learn things, but there are expert teachers all around us if we are looking for them.
I want to keep learning and here some things I have either started to learn and want to continue or would like to begin: pottery, I have started and want to continue, Bahasa, I just recently got an audiobook to learn, home improvement, I'll learn with my dad,  Jui-Jitsu, I want to take some classes at a local gym.  Speed reading, I'll practice the technique I read about in 4-hour-work-week, grant-writing, I'll seek out individuals that are involved in it and learn from them, private practice, I'll approach a mentor of mine starting with an email that I'll write right after I end this sentence.