Understanding

Understanding. Yes, after a long busy day, on my way home, I decided to write about "Understanding".

It has been like 5 minutes since I have started and still I am struggling to come up with a constructive definition of understanding. Before relying on the dictionary, let me try to define Understanding. 

In my opinion, Understanding is the process of assimilating the information at hand, grasping the theme of the  information, and processing and storing its essence for usage in the future. 

What is the most common mistake that we with respect to understanding? Well, we think we have understood while we have actually not understood. It is this mistaken understanding which becomes a bane for us subsequently.  

Let me recollect an advise which my teacher gave to me, some 12 years back. She told me - When you are reading something, learning something, understand it and understand it completely, and only then move ahead.  

She was driving home the importance of understanding the context, and how crucial it was for the knowledge and information we could and would gain in the future. 

Every time I rushed through something, without understanding, her words rang through my mind. Sometimes the consequences of  mistaken understanding resulted in wastage of time, and effort.  So how do we avoid this pitfall?  

A few pointers in this regard may be helpful.

• To start with,  decide to minimize the occurrence of this false understanding. Ask a sub conscious question to your mind . Have I really understood this? 

• Take your time. Never hurry up. Trying to understanding quickly sometimes results in an incorrect or incomplete understanding. 

• Ask yourself a question - is my understanding correct, complete and crystal clear? If any of the answer is not in affirmative, it means that there is a need to understand again. 

• Do not draw conclusions when you understand. Doing this could create a bias, which could impact the understanding being developed. 

• Ask questions. When your mind asks questions on the theme at hand, it will elicit some really beautiful answers which would make your understanding more holistic and comprehensive. 

• Never take things at face value. 

In spite of sharing all this gyan, let me also tell you that I am learning to tune my mind with these ideas.  Hope some me these points are useful to you.  

Happy understanding!! 

Understanding is a Long Journey