29/09/2025
How the Welcoming Process Makes You Smarter
Expanding our capacity to hold complexity and transform tension into clarity
I remember during the years of Svetoskola how often it seemed from the outside that the children were “just playing”. They built bunkers, jumped on the trampoline, and invented endless new games. But as I watched more closely, I could see that every moment was full of learning.
Because I was responsible for the methods in our group, supporting educators, mentoring teenagers, guiding processes, it became my duty to understand the science of learning.
What I discovered is that there are two kinds of learning. One is the kind that simply gives us information we can use. The other is the kind that touches us deeply, changes how we see the world, ourselves, life, and influences our choices. And both kinds of learning can happen anywhere. A classroom lesson can touch your system and reorganize your sense of life, just as much as play outside in the garden can.
For example, as a child at school I was told that the Soviet army “liberated” Hungary in 1956. Much later, when I came to understand that it was in fact an occupation, everything shifted. The fact itself was simple and historical, but for me it became an experience that changed my past and present, reshaping how I understood myself, my family, my nation, and the world I lived in.
This was my great recognition: learning is everywhere, and both kinds of learning can happen anywhere. Some knowledge helps us navigate the world at a practical level. Other knowledge reorganizes our system from within. However, as we grow older we tend to be less open to the knowledge that shapes us. Then crises appear, because some of our experiences no longer support the current level of our understanding of life, the world, and ourselves.
This is why even after leaving education I stayed deeply interested in the science of learning. Because my intention is to support others in unleashing their potential, it became central for me to understand the process of deep learning. I wanted to support life-enriching learning, so I designed The Welcoming Process: to help people rebuild their capacity to learn, and to choose not the safety of knowing, but the certainty of never knowing it all, and welcoming the growth and the unknown that come with greater complexity and more understanding.
Both NVC and the science of learning became essential foundations of my method. Neuroplasticity showed me that our brains are not fixed but constantly reorganizing, creating new pathways throughout life. This discovery changes everything about how we see human potential.
We are not born with a set capacity that runs out. We are capable of growing our potential again and again. Every time we turn tension or confusion into understanding, the brain rewires itself. We become more capable of holding complexity. In other words, we become smarter.
Going back to my example from my previous post on The Welcoming Process: when I wanted to start building my brand after years of giving my full attention to my kids and family, I was paralyzed. It took me a while to figure out what held me back. One of my main issues was perfectionism. I found myself terrified of making mistakes, of becoming ridiculous, of failing.
So in this story, to see what my learning was, what I had previously taken as knowledge (not even very consciously) and what I was finally willing to give up and say “I do not know… probably”, it was this idea: “behind every successful and ‘blessed’ idea, venture, initiative, there are confident and competent people who know it all. And even if they don’t, they cannot allow themselves to show weakness, because in this world you cannot be successful like that.”
Once I recognized that I carried this idea, I could look at it more clearly. And I saw: it is not true. Maybe in the “business world”, on social media, we are surrounded by insightful, inspiring, smart, skillful leaders, and we get the impression that we must be just like them, otherwise we have no place, and we will become ridiculous.
In this process of exploring my edge, this contradiction, I also realized something else: learning new skills, starting something new, is always a journey of learning. Just think of a baby who falls after their first steps. We never say the baby made a mistake. We see that falling belongs to the process of learning to walk. It is not failure, it is the nature of the process.
So then I realized the word “mistake” was misleading for me. It carried the meaning of failure, of guilt, of not being good enough. And that was not how I wanted to see myself.
This helped me see my own situation differently. Writing a post, struggling with video, finding my voice, building a brand, selling a product -- all of this is new for me. Trying things that could work, while being a perfectionist, is a rough trip. Not knowing what will work is not a mistake. These are steps in the process, part of the journey of learning.
Mistakes, for me, used to mean something shameful, something wrong. But how would a baby ever learn to walk if she could not fall, or if she was afraid to fall? What I learned was that so-called mistakes are simply the nature of starting anything new, of walking a new path.
The question is not whether I am good enough to do this, but whether I am ready for the journey. I will become good enough by walking the path, by showing up every day. This shift released me from shame and opened space for curiosity and inspiration.
The Welcoming Process builds exactly this capacity. It helps us unlearn the patterns that keep us closed and fearful, and instead welcome new perspectives, even when they unsettle us. It reminds us that we are all life-long learners, that life itself is the real school, and that what we once called “mistakes” are simply signs of growth in motion.
It is about reclaiming that natural capacity to learn and see the world in all its complexity, teaching us to become smarter.
In the coming months, I will launch my first workshop series of seven sessions on The Welcoming Process, one in Budapest and one in Trnava. Since this is the first run, it will be a small, limited group. If you already know you are interested, just DM me.
