DailyJim: I learn in public

Hello everyone, welcome to another Daily Gym. Today is Tuesday, July 8th, 2025, and today I want to talk about I Learn in Public.

So yesterday I finished Project 40K in 40 Day, and the idea of the project was to try to raise $40,000 for the work that I've been doing in 40 days. And I have yet to do a reflection, a full kind of reflection on that. I want to let it sink in a little bit, but I'll reflect a little bit today in an episode for that. Probably Project 40K and 40 Day Reflection. I'll post it on Instagram and maybe upload to the podcast eventually. But what I've realized is that it has helped me try to figure out what's, what do i actually do and people have asked me so much what do you do what do you do like okay what's emotional combat what's this what's that what do you do and over the course i had stumbled on this phrase called build in public and i thought okay well if i'm going to do emotional combat i could be building this in public and i can be like the other people who are building companies in public i can show how many people have donated i could show um the stats for how many people are listening, I can show my progress in building the website, I could show this, I could show that. And then I came across this idea of learning in public. And for some reason it hit me today. Learning in public. I have been learning in public for a long time.

Sometimes I've been learning in private and it's been semi-public, sometimes it's been very public.

I like this concept of learning in public and almost the identity of being a public learner. Aha, maybe I'm not a public researcher. It feels too formal. Maybe I'm not a public academic. No, I don't have the title. Public philosopher. It's a bit lofty. Public learner.

Different than public trainer. Different than public teacher. Maybe learning in public is about showing other people how to learn it's about me learning but also showing other people how i'm learning so that they may learn to learn or they may learn similar things as well and when i talk about that i actually feel somewhat excited not somewhat actually really excited and relaxed because i think about what i've been doing for the last 12 years specifically, but even going back to when I gave a graduation speech at high school. It was an honors convocation, but it was talking about what I learned, what I reflected on when I spoke at my graduation at university for the department. It was again about what I've learned and what I've noticed. And it was another, it was an experiment to test my bounds and to learn more. So it wasn't just learning. It wasn't just sharing my learnings in public. It was actively learning in public, in the public eye.

With iFeelio, it wasn't just using the app. It was creating some videos talking about feeling different emotions. Even one that is iFeelio alone, really intense. I think iFeelio rejected as well. Different videos that were really intense. I had a friend tell me he watched it. No, he listened to it because he couldn't bear to see me in so much pain.

So i have been posting on facebook on whatsapp on the podcast um i have been running workshops in europe in in africa in different parts like this and so much of it yes has been to quote teach others but really it's to show other people how to learn because even when i would run workshops and trainings, I would often highlight the reflection part. And I would often demonstrate, I would lead by example. There was one workshop I ran in Germany at this train the trainers project. It's up to me, we called it. And I remember I had people sit down and reflect on how they were feeling. And when I, you know, like, how do you feel when you think about this? How do you feel when you think about that. And then when people finished the exercise, I asked for reflection and one person shot their hand up and says, I feel like you manipulated us. And then many other people shot their hand up too. I was like, oh, uh-oh, not good. And I learned or realized in the process, I had not shared what I learned because I had actually journaled and done some of the exercises as well. And so then I got up and I opened up very vulnerably about what I was feeling in the process that I went through. Even talking, I think at some point, one girl, one of the shadow trainers said to me, she said something about like, do I like myself or do I love myself?

And it hit me really hard. And I reflected, I think I was like, something about I love myself, but I don't like myself. But then I realized, what are you talking about you don't like yourself? You spend all the time, you spend so much time by yourself. You travel a lot by yourself. You do so many things by yourself. You work a lot by yourself. What are you talking about you don't like yourself? You like yourself a lot. And so I exposed that learning to other people, and I think it really helped them. because it didn't put me in a position of someone who knows. It's someone who is learning. And learning seems to be the process of knowing. It's the process of acquiring knowledge, not the acquisition of knowledge, if that makes sense. It's the verb, not the noun. It's the process, not the outcome. And I think even when I launched Project 40K and 40 Day, people had said to me, you know, I don't know if it'll work, but I might learn something from you trying it. And so this, this public experimentation, this public reflection, this public learning, I think can help a lot of people. And when I think about it specifically in the context of emotions, I think...

There are so many things that we haven't learned. There are so many more things that we could learn. Because you could say maybe, you know, as humanity, there are many things we've learned about emotions. But the environment has changed now. And so there's more things that we need to learn or we could learn about how to send voice notes. How to interact with exes over text message. How to deal with an onslaught on Twitter. or how to, you know, read a news article or see a video of somebody getting shot in the streets. There's just so many more emotional challenges that we haven't learned how to deal with. And maybe some of the old tools aren't that helpful. And then maybe we can, you know, come across new tools or develop new tools to help us learn. And then I start thinking, well, you know, I think a lot of times it's easy to blame somebody. Well you know I didn't learn this because nobody taught me this so for example you know maybe me going well I didn't learn how to be angry in relationships because my parents uh intentionally, chose not to fight in front of the kids well I can blame them or because they didn't teach it to me or I can realize maybe they didn't learn it and if they didn't learn it how was I supposed to learn it from them?

Is it their fault that they didn't learn it? Because maybe their parents had not learned it either. Or maybe they had learned some things, but the things that they learned weren't appropriate for the new environment. And so what they learned wasn't as applicable anymore.

And so I'm really liking this focus. And I think there are so many things that we can learn about emotions and conflict. So many things we can learn about communication that are applicable to the changing environments. That are applicable to life in 2025 and maybe going forward.

And if I can be one of the first ones to learn it or one of the first ones to learn it publicly, how can that help other people? If I can have the courage not only to learn it, but to have the courage to learn it publicly, how many people could that help? Because then maybe other people could learn it and they could also be more public in their learning. I mean, what is a better relationship than someone who is publicly learning? Maybe it's not even public, but like in their private relationship, a one-on-one relationship, the person says, you know what I learned? I learned that when I get angry, I shout at you and you cower and run away and then I get more angry? What if I didn't shout at you? What if I just paused? What if I told you I was angry? That reflection, that learning, that sharing of the learning, whether it's with the whole world or whether it's just with the person in front of you or whether it's just with yourself in a journal or recording voice notes or whatnot, or even just reflecting in your head. How can that focus on learning how we feel, learning how to communicate, learning how to resolve conflicts, learning how to apologize, learning how can that change our society?

How can it change our lives? How could it change our financial status? How could it change our romantic lives? How could it change our physical health? How could it change so much if we just were more public with our learning.

Maybe that's it, being more public with our learning.

So I'm really excited. This episode is probably ending now, but I'm really excited to learn more and to share that learning with myself and with the people in my life and with strangers and to see what I learn in the process of sharing the learning.

So yeah so i don't 40k in 40 day didn't work out so well from the financial side, but it's a learning process what am i learning from it and what i'm taking forward so that i can learn more and share that more with you hope you all enjoyed this episode and if you like this new framing please reach out to me and share what you like about it if you don't like it please reach out to me and share what you don't like about it. You can go on to the forum. It's probably the easiest place, hq.jimklyber.com

and share there. Sign up, share with me, share with other people. Let's start sharing this learning more publicly so that we can all learn some of the things that the people in our lives, they have not learned and it's not their fault. All right, take care of y'all. Talk tomorrow.