How to make learning photography and creativity more effective with the help of principles

As a teacher, I am always looking for ways to make the learning process more effective. And I want to say that "principledness" plays an important role in learning (growth).

On the one hand, principledness is a strong limitation. It is a frame that does not let you broaden your horizons and the range of possible opinions and solutions. Principles really can do a lot of harm.

But on the other hand, principledness is what helps you really achieve results and, above all, make them last.

Persistence, purposefulness, will, perseverance and the other qualities needed to reach a goal rest on a principled, uncompromising decision.

For example, to give up smoking you do not need any special knowledge – you need a principled position. To learn to use chopsticks, you need to find out how to hold them and, on principle, not pick up the familiar fork. To learn a language better, on principle you should not read in your native language what you can read in the language you are learning. Otherwise productivity falls apart before your eyes and turns into "later, when there is a better moment".

When a person has reached a certain level in some skill, there must be a principled position – not to lower the bar and not to go back. This often happens when students slowly lose their steadiness and resolve after the course. Then the results start sliding back to the level they were before the course.

So what do we do with the narrowness that principledness brings with it?

Change the principles! If a person feels that their principles limit their growth, it means they have outgrown those principles. Principles can only be changed at the moment when the existing ones have exhausted themselves.

In other words, if a person has no principles, there is no driving force either. If a person has principles, they will grow, but they will hit the dead end of their principles. And that is a wonderful time to create new, better principles that will move the person further, to the next dead end, and so on...

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