“ANYONE WHO STOPS LEARNING IS OLD, WHETHER AT TWENTY OR EIGHTY.”
—HENRY FORD
I still remember, almost 8 years back I was sitting and chatting with my 5 years old son. I was trying to explain the benefits of brushing our teeth at night and also, I was explaining ‘how to brush your teeth’. Suddenly, my son told, “You forgot to open the toothpaste cap in the steps you mentioned !!!”
I laughed out loud, but this statement helped me get deeper into the word learning. We sometimes overestimate ourselves and think we know everything about something and forget basic steps. Sometimes we come across resources that can give us immense learning, but we tend to neglect that just because we are not aware of its learning potential.
HERE ARE THE FIVE ACTIONS WHICH YOU CAN TAKE TO IMPROVE YOUR OPENNESS AND AWARENESS TO LEARN EVERY DAY:
5) REPETITION
Even if you know something, repeating the same will give you a more clear concept. The more you repeat, the more your brain will open up on that topic. Repetition is the mother of all skills.
Even if you know something, if you get an opportunity to learn it again, just go for it. Mastery can only be achieved through repetition.
The best way to understand this can be by taking the example of any sportsperson. They keep on practicing the same thing again and again and then achieve mastery.
Not convinced? Try reading a book again which you have read recently, you will understand the difference in your understanding of the book.
You may know something but repetitions of that bring the mastery out of it.
4) ACCEPTING YOU’RE NOT KNOWING
One of the most powerful statements that can help you become more open to learning is accepting that you don’t know everything about something.
You may not know something – that’s absolutely ok. Not Knowing something doesn’t mean you will be unable to know that thing. There is no harm in accepting you don’t know something and trying to know it further.
The more you become ready to accept that you don’t know, the more open to learning you become.
3) LEARNING FROM EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE:
While books help us learn some concepts, schools and colleges help us learn predefined topics, but our life gives us opportunities beyond all these.
You can learn from everyone and everything around you. You can learn from everyone including kids and nature as well. A perfect example of what I said can be – you can learn Assertiveness from a kid and Adaptability from Water.
You simply need to be aware of the fact that there’s something to learn from everything and everyone and your brain will be programmed to extract the learning and learn.
2) LEARNING FROM SITUATIONS:
What you call a situation is an incident that occurred. Maybe you have not liked it, or you have simply loved it – whatever it be, those are just incidents. Our life experience is nothing but the addition of those incidents.
With every situation, there lies learning. If you find out learning from each and every situation, two things will happen:
1)You will learn more and
2) You will control the situation rather than situations controlling you.
1)MAINTAINING DAILY LEARNING JOURNAL
You don’t need to buy a journal. A place to write your daily learning is enough to create a learning journal. At day end, you can mentally revisit the way you spent the entire day, the people you met and I am sure you can find out answers to two questions –
1) What are the possible things you learned today? and
2) What you could have done to make it a better day?
By answering these two questions, you can collate all the points and fill up the journal daily.
This daily practice can really change the way you look at things, make you more aware and this can transform and impact your life with a huge change.
We all know learning is life-long, rather learning is a journey.
We come across lots of beautiful quotes on learning and by reading those, we feel happy. But the fact is knowing and reading those will not help unless and until we learn the deeper meaning and we action accordingly. And you don’t need the right environment and the right time to start learning. If you believe in learning something new, the first step will be to start learning now.
“| Minimalist| Strategizer| Explorer| Enjoys Silence| – That’s what I am & What I do |” – That’s how Shouvik defines himself. An avid photographer, a Raghu Rai enthusiast, who also eats, sleeps and dreams the Vision of Steve Jobs, Shouvik has given birth to The HR Monks in a vision to change lives.
Greatly influenced by the passion of service of Mother Teresa and Karmayoga of Swami Vivekananda, he dreams of building an organization of the HR family, who will not only serve the nation by creating India a happy work-home but also creating a monks team who takes work as worship.
In his personal life, he is touched by Dr. Wayne Dyer who believes in a shift.