I think I have met my match when it comes to a carnivorous learning – my nine-month old granddaughter. Pound for pound, I’m pretty sure her hunger for learning outpaces mine.

Carnivorous and nine-month-old don’t usually go in the same sentence, much less the same page. A little background…

“Carnivorous learning” is one of the values of Auxano, the first “clarity first” consulting group for ministry leaders. I’m a part of the team of navigators who journey with churches to help them discover their “Church Unique.” I’m proud of the label, and do all I can to earn it! In a recent post, Auxano founder Will Mancini wrote about “The Greatest Secret for Continuous Learning.”

“Learning is a free, daily opportunity to those who seize it.”

Enter my granddaughter.

At nine months old, she seizes everything – literally – and explores it with all her senses to see what she can learn. John Medina, writing in “Brain Rules,” states that:

Hypothesis testing is the way all babies gather information. They use a series of increasingly self-corrected ideas to figure out how the world works. They actively test their environment, much as a scientist would: Make a sensory observation, form a hypothesis about what is going on, design an experiment capable of testing the hypothesis, and then draw conclusions from the findings.

Babies may not have a whole lot of understanding about their world, but they know a whole lot about how to get it.

It’s a pity adults don’t.

What are you learning today – right now?

Are you learning as much as a nine-month-old?