Learning By Dying

The St. Pete Times the other day had an interesting article about personal coaches who help with life or transition coaching, in this case in relation to retirement, who help people rediscover what their goals are. It made me realize what I am currently trying to do with my life and how I’m living it. In many ways I am going through a process of life transition and I am working through the process of reevaluating my goals and workingthrough the changes in my life.

In the first months after the accident I found DeepFun and Bernie Dekoven. I wonder looking back how my life might be different if I hadn’t found Bernie. He spent time with me vitrually as a “Fun Coach” of sorts, although I don’t think he had a name for it back then.

Bernie was my personal fun coach back then as he worked with me on a strange concept Fun and Grief. He taught me techniques and gave me tools that helped start on the process of going through a major transition and helped me to focus on the fun aspects of life during a time when my life was focused on things that were anything but fun. I don’t think I can ever thank or repay Bernie for being there at a time when I really needed someone.

Recently Bernie posted an item that mentions “learning by dying“ on his Funlog. This has been talked about by others recently in different contexts. I have to admit that my initial thoughts were understandably different than most of the others.

Ming looks at how the concept is “maybe closer to how nature works than any other educational system we’ve cooked up” and how “We’re too stuck in things we really ought to drop and move on from. Go to the next level.”

Doc looks at some successful people and how they learn in his post titled “Survival of the funnest“. He mentions Steve Case, and how his continuing success can be looked at in how he reacts to the seeming failure of the Time-Warner AOL deal. Will he grow and learn from that experience and become more successful? Doc also mentions Lance Armstrong and how his competitors have to learn and grow from the experience of losing to Lance. I wonder how Ulrich and others would respond to that.

Julie though gets to a similar place to my thoughts with her comments “Death forces one to face what has been lost” and “I may be healed but I still have the history.”