The Learning Hack That Changed My Life

In this Carmen Talk, I share the learning strategy that has shaped my entire life — one I used as a kid, hid for years, and now fully embrace. It started with a children’s chess book and grew into a method that helps me understand anything from kitchen basics to global politics.

I talk about:
• how a picture book taught me chess when adult books couldn’t
• the serrated‑knife moment that changed how I think about “you don’t know what you don’t know”
• why I always keep a map on my desktop
• how I use children’s atlases and simple tools to understand places like Iran and the Strait of Hormuz
• the importance of context, using 2016 as an example — George Michael, Bowie, Prince, the Chile earthquake, and more
• how AI can act like a modern “children’s book” to help you learn anything at a beginner level
• why understanding how you learn is one of the greatest gifts you can share

This episode is about learning without shame, finding the method that works for you, and recognizing the gifts you already have — even the ones you once hid. At the end of the day, it really is all about the joy.

Thank you for stopping by.  Please visit our website: All About The Joy and add, like and share.  

You can now watch the livestream version of the show on YouTube at @CarmenLezeth 

You can also support us by shopping at our STORE - We'd appreciate that greatly.  Also, if you want to find us anywhere on social media, please check out the link in bio page.

Music By Geovane Bruno, Moments, 3481
Editing by Team A-J
Host, Carmen Lezeth


DISCLAIMER:  As always, please do your own research and understand that the opinions in this podcast and livestream are meant for entertainment purposes only. States and other areas may have different rules and regulations governing certain aspects discussed in this podcast.  Nothing in our podcast or livestream is meant to be medical or legal advice. Please use common sense, and when in doubt, ask a professional for advice, assistance, help and guidance. 

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hi everyone. Welcome to all about the joy. I am Carmen Lezeth your host, and this is Carmen Talk. So back when I was a little kid, I used to hang out with a bunch of different kinds of people and I had these friends who were chess players. And I don't know anything about chess. I didn't know anything about chess back then.

[00:00:33] And people would come around and would be talking about chess as they were playing, and I always felt like out of sorts, I always felt like out of my realm because I didn't understand what was going on. And so I found my way to the library and I asked the librarian for a book on chess, and uh, they gave it to me.

[00:00:54] And I remember being like, yeah, this is not helping me. Reading this thing on chess was so difficult, and so I kind of gave up and then I went to the children's section. And as I was in the children's section, I went to the game area and there was a book, it was the Batsford book on chess or something for children ages, like six to eight or six to nine or something like that.

[00:01:19] And it was basically a picture book. And. I learned how to play chess. and I look at, I'm gonna be honest, I don't play chess at all, but I understand chess now. I understand the strategy behind and I get it now. And that moment for me was so important because it changed the way in which.

[00:01:41] I learned things the way in which I chose to learn things. As I grew up, it became even more of part of my process. And so the reason why I am sharing this with everyone today is because I'm hoping not that you will take on, what I do as a way in which to learn or, Learn a new strategy of how to learn things.

[00:02:06] That's not my point. My point is there might be things that you do. That you might assume everyone else does too. Or maybe it's something like me you're embarrassed about that you would never admit to anyone. Right? Because I used to think I was so stupid, like, why couldn't I understand that adult book on how to play chess?

[00:02:28] Like I, I, why am I so slow? Like I would, I would say these things to myself all the time. So I would hide the way in which I process things and I'm just sharing this with you first of all, because I want to. But secondly, because I hope there might be things that you know or that you do that you might wanna share with somebody else in the hopes of maybe helping them too, right?

[00:02:52] Because at the end of the day, it really is all about that, right? It's all about the joy and how we can share with each other. About eight or 10 years ago, I forget, but it was like about eight or 10 years ago, one of my best friends, Andrea, which all of you know from Culture and Consequence, had come to my house and was cooking.

[00:03:09] And I, I don't know if we were having like a dinner party or what it was, but she is a cook. She is a chef. She is incredible. we had gone shopping and bought all this food and we had bought, uh. Bread, loaves of bread or whatever. And so I went, you know, 'cause me being the great chef that I am, I'm like, I'll cut the bread, you know?

[00:03:31] So I grab the loaf and I grab a knife and I go to cut the bread and she goes, Hey, make sure you use a serrated knife with that bread for cutting the bread. And I was like, A what? And she's like a serrated knife. You always use a serrated knife to cut bread.

[00:03:50] When I tell you, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Like, now I know a lot of you who are probably watching this, are listening to this are like, yeah, duh, Carmen, you know? But if you don't know, you don't know. And I don't have any excuses except that that wasn't how I was brought up. I wasn't brought up being taught about, you know, knives and the different kinds of knives and what they do.

[00:04:12] You know what I mean? It just wasn't part of how I grew up. And so. You don't know what you don't know, and then someone teaches it to you and you're like, oh my god. Game changer. And so in that spirit, I am going to share with you how I learned things even to this day. And even though at one point I thought I was just stupid and dumb and an idiot, um, now I realize it's probably one of the smartest things I've ever done in my entire life.

[00:04:40] So. Going back to the chess thing I have incorporated in my, my life even today, using children's books or children's information in order to understand things that I don't understand fully and completely as the basis for learning. So. Let me give you another example, something that's in the news today.

[00:05:05] We're hearing a lot about Iran and I don't know a lot about Iran. I don't know a lot about the straight of herm, and one of the things that I made sure that I did was first I need to know and understand geographically where it is. So if you were to come to my home and you were to turn on my computer, or you were to turn on, uh, the laptop that I have or whatever, you would see that I have a map.

[00:05:30] I always have a map on my desktop. And the reason why is because I'm not great at geography. I have never been great at geography and, um, I know Professor Dolan, when I was in college did everything he could to try to help me understand geography. And so a shout out to him, he was such a good and kind person to me, and I'll never forget him trying to explain, north, south, east, and west to me, and I finally got it.

[00:05:58] But, um, but wasn't when I was in college. suffice it to say I am not great at geography. So whenever I hear about a place that somebody's talking about, or especially if it's in the news, the first thing I do is open up my map on my desktop and I look for that place to make sure I understand where it is.

[00:06:20] In the same way I still have, and I'm gonna share this I haven't updated in a long time, but this is the children's Atlas of the world, and I have it right here is, uh, it's telling me everything about Iran and the. The straight of Horus. Um, I can see it on the map here, um, and I can pinpoint it. And it's basically a, it's a picture book with little information about, uh, parts of the population.

[00:06:50] And, and this hasn't been upgraded in a long time, but I'm saying it gives me the basis and I can see where the straight of her muse is. I can understand now the, the countries that border it. And now things make much more sense to me because now I can understand it from that beginning point. I have the geographical map.

[00:07:12] I can understand the countries involved. I can visually grasp what's happening and why it's happening. And now I can listen to people and kind of understand the. The beginning, the basics of what's going on, and then I can go on and do more research on the history and everything else that might be happening regarding the politics of the time.

[00:07:35] Right. So that's one of the things I wanted to share with you. Now, I'm not saying everyone has to go and start going to the library, although you should support your local libraries 'cause libraries are an amazing place. But. I'm saying that that might be helpful to some people. Is to realize that you don't actually have to understand everything that's coming at you in the way in which it's coming at you all the time.

[00:08:01] So if you are in a room full of academics and they're talking way above your, you know, head, they're talking in words that don't make sense or whatever, don't be embarrassed by that. It happens to me every day, you know? But. What you don't wanna do is speak on things you don't know anything about. And I think that's, you know, if there's anything that bothers me, it's kind of that thing like people don't do their homework.

[00:08:24] people don't do the work they need to do in order to really understand things. And here's what's really fascinating is when you start understanding how you learn and you do what you need to do to learn things, you start to see really easily when people don't know what they're talking about at all, you can.

[00:08:42] Absolutely understand it easily. And that's the most fascinating part is, and this kind of would make sense to anyone who's listening, when you know something more than other people, I mean, and you really know it, just the basics of it. And you hear somebody else spewing information, whether it's on a YouTube channel, whether it's somebody you know that you know talking about it, you can tell they have no idea what they're talking about.

[00:09:11] And again, I'm not even sitting here saying that I know everything about Iran. I do not. But I certainly can tell easily when there are some people talking about it who don't know anything about it at all and are just doing the whole political bullshittery that we've all gotten into in this country, in the United States.

[00:09:32] So that's another reason to kind of take it more seriously. This isn't just about politics, this is about anything. It's about chess. Here's, here's the interesting part. I do know a lot about chess. Now I understand chess. You know what, you're never gonna see me doing? I'm never gonna be in the park challenging someone to play chess because even though I know the basics of chess, I'm not a chess player.

[00:09:55] It's not a game I play, you know? So I also understand where I fit, in the world of chess. And I think that's kind of what I want people to get out of this. It's like find the way that works for you to learn the information you need to learn, and then understand the level at with where you're at regarding it.

[00:10:17] And then tread lightly, right? Or go boldly if, if you know it. So well go boldly. You know, another important part of this whole process is also understanding what is happening around the subject that you're talking about. So this is more about. History when you are talking about a moment in time and you don't understand what is happening around that, it changes 

[00:10:49] the context of that moment. I'm gonna give you such a simple example, and then I'm gonna tell you how I usually do this, okay? Um, this also involves a little bit of research, but when I talk about researching things and when I talk about knowing your stuff, this is what I mean. So let me give you a really simple and unfortunate example in December.

[00:11:16] 25th of 2016, George Michael passed away. All of you know how much I love George Michael. So that's a really important day. Uh, and every year on December 25th, it's a little heartbreaking. But what else is happening on December 25th? Right? A lot of people, we already know what I'm gonna say. It's also Christmas time.

[00:11:38] That was a big deal. Do you remember what else happened in 2016? I'm gonna tell you, 2016, we also lost David Bowie. We lost him in January of 2016. We also lost Prince. Prince died in April of 2016. That changes the whole dynamic of what was happening by December, by the end of the year, right? It was a horrible year for great musicians who and artists who had passed away.

[00:12:12] But what about what else was happening? What else did we miss during that time period in 2016? How would you find out and why is it relevant and important? Well, I will tell you that there was an earthquake and a tsunami that was like 7.6 on the meter scale or whatever, and that was happening in Chile in the coast of Chile.

[00:12:35] Pope Francis' message of peace and reconciliation was completely. Like, nobody even really heard it because of the shocking death of George Michael. You know, I'm not saying no one cared. I'm just saying it was, you know, it was so, such a horrible story, but there was so much else going on that it kind of changes.

[00:12:57] the idea of the feeling of that moment. Right? And so when you're talking about it, if you don't realize that it was Christmas, it was Christmas day, like. That would be hard. I mean, most people would know that, but some people may not. Not everyone celebrates Christmas, but what I'm saying is that makes it even more profound, right?

[00:13:18] It's a much bigger sadness, and then you put on top of it the other artists who died during that year. It's like, oh my God. So I. How do I always make sure I understand the context of what's happening? So this, I actually learned from, one of the best acting coaches I've ever met and had the privilege of working under, and that was Howard Fine.

[00:13:41] Uh, who is here in Los Angeles and also in Australia doing amazing work with actors. Um, I don't need to say anything more about who he is, but he's a brilliant person. He introduced me to the timetables of history and what this, and this, again, this hasn't been updated in, in a bit, I should probably get a new one 'cause I think it's been like a a few years.

[00:14:01] But basically what you do is you open this up to the year that you're looking for and it gives you the context based on. Everything that you wanna know what was going on during that time period, right? So you wanna know what's happening in religion, in literature, in the history of politics and visual arts.

[00:14:20] What what's happening in music and science. And it gives you that little kind of notations of detail so that you can put things in context, right? So that things can be in context. And there it kind of then. Makes more profound sense of what it meant for George Michael to die on Christmas day when there was a tsunami and an earthquake happening in Chile that was 7.6.

[00:14:49] It kind of, and the whole year must have been horrible because we lost other musicians and artists. Right. It, it changes. How you feel about that year. It makes it harder in a way. Now let's change this up to today, because I don't expect everyone to go buy children's book or go to the library all the time, although again, let me stress, you should definitely go to the library as much as possible because it's free.

[00:15:15] It's great. It's a wonderful place to learn and, uh, support your local libraries. So, um. Here's one of the things I wanna talk about. When it comes to AI or using a Google search you can also use these types of sentences in order to prompt the right information. So. You can turn around and say, please explain to me the difference between the House of Representatives and the Senate and explain it to me like I'm a 10-year-old and depending on the AI you use, I tend to use Microsoft's co-pilot a lot, but depending on what you use, it will spit out that information.

[00:15:57] In a way that you can understand it is if you were a 10-year-old. Now, the difference is sometimes some ais, if they're not some of the more popular common ones, they might be more condescending to you than necessary, so that might throw you off, but. You know, I use, uh, certain ais and they're not, they just do explain it to you in a way that explains it to you like you're a 10-year-old.

[00:16:20] So in a lot of ways, it's like getting that picture book. It's like getting that simplified version so that you can understand easily what the differences are between the Senate. And the House of Representatives and how that makes Congress and you can turn around and then when you have that basic of information, you start to understand things a little bit easier.

[00:16:41] Another prompt that I use when I'm trying to research information is I'll say, I. Can you give me an analogy as if I were a teenager or as if I were a 10-year-old kid so that I can understand this better? Maybe use baseball, maybe use, and the more information you give AI in that sense, the easier it'll be for it to explain it to you.

[00:17:04] And you gotta do it a couple times, you get more comfortable with it, but. It really does help so you can ask the questions in the same way that I have always used kind of children's books. In order to understand things, you can ask AI the same questions and it can spit out information so that you can start learning things on an easier level and look at.

[00:17:28] There are probably a lot more people out there that listen to the show that don't need the simplified version of understanding things. So please understand I'm not trying to make everyone out to be as kind of simple minded or whatever it is as I am. I kind of revel in the idea that people, um. I, I don't want, I don't know what the right word is.

[00:17:50] I love the idea that I use this as a way in which to learn things and then, you know, people will turn around and say that I'm a know-it-all or whatever, and it's like, he, he, he, no, I just. I just learned the information and I know you're talking about bullshit, you know, so I hope that that little hack helps.

[00:18:13] Um, I hope that that is something that you might take on and kind of do a little analysis of things that maybe, you know, that other people don't know. Like using a serrated knife to cut bread. I never knew. You know, I think we all come here. Onto the planet and however you believe. We've come here with so many gifts, and I think what's really weird is that sometimes we don't even realize the gifts that we have and that they are to be shared.

[00:18:46] They are not to be hidden away. They're not to be kept to yourself. Right? You have so many gifts, and I think this is one of my gifts, it's, it was based on survival. It was based on being, um, I don't know. Not wanting to be embarrassed in front of people, and so I kept it hidden for so long, but to this day.

[00:19:06] This is how I learn things in the beginning. I learn it from a kid's point of view. I learn the basics, and then I go from there and then it makes sense to me. And so I hope if that helps anyone else, great. I'm so glad. But more importantly. Please figure out what your gifts are and make sure you share them with the world.

[00:19:26] I am telling you it is why we are here on the planet at the end of the day. It really is all about the joy and I can't express how important that is. So thank you again for hanging out and we'll see you next time. Bye. Thanks for stopping by all about the joy. Be better and stay beautiful folks. Have a sweet day.