Built to Learn: Six Steps to Flourishing
How to Cultivate Lifelong Progress & Learning
Image by Sandie Clarke from Unsplash
We take our miraculous mind, body, spirit, our cognitive abilities, our potential and considerable capacity for growing and caring for granted.
The truth is, human beings are amazing — you and I. We have the ability to use logic, to reason, to hope, to imagine, to create, and to employ conditional thinking to navigate people, subject matter, and experiences.
Our brains are amazing pattern and prediction machines. We are designed to detect, to recognize, to develop, to progress — to LEARN — from birth to our most advanced years. Learning changes both our brain structure and brain function. We are built to learn, and we thrive when we are fumbling through, making mistakes, picking up cues, and incrementally refining our knowledge-base, our thought processes, and our skills.
Is learning key to feeling at home with ourselves? To happiness? Research says it is.
Studies regarding brain neuroplasticity, intellectual pursuit, professional development, emotional and social growth, and personal fulfillment reveal common elements among people who are thriving. Across cultures and socioeconomic levels, individuals who describe themselves as accomplished, content and flourishing most often are:
1- Dedicated life-long learners
2- Intrinsically motivated, where subject matter & action itself motivates
3- Committed to fundamentals, habits, and systems
4- Tenacious doers with a penchant for action
Research on fulfillment suggests that human satisfaction and contentment rise when we focus on growth and gratitude, when we are connected to people and causes, and are purposefully, deliberately developing our skills and intellect throughout our lives.
In short, our sense of Self, happiness and fulfillment rises when we engage in continuous learning. How so?
Learning increases our sense of self-determination.
Learning broadens our perspective and connection to people, places, cultures, ways of doing, history, and the future.
Learning builds resilience as it requires us to dust ourselves off when we stumble, and requires that we try again.
Finally, the personal agency and self-efficacy we experience when we engage in learning assists us in conducting ourselves from a position of well-considered choices.
The Roadmap to Lifetime Learning
Image by Lusas Lenzi from Unsplash
The takeaway is this: Learning empowers us if we empower it. Learning is a life-long process of keeping abreast and connecting dots. The tie-in of continuous learning to life satisfaction and flourishing is clear, and the six methods that most-effectively move people toward lifelong learning include:
Read! Benefits to our cognitive, mental, and physical health are undeniably clear.
Be confident in your potential to progress and grow, and realize that chronological age is an immaterial detail.
Be broadly curious. Take interest in life, the world, and others. Care about what is and what can be, and never settle down.
Organize, enjoy, and track your incremental progress.
Schedule and prioritize time to pursue growth, goals, and challenges. Don’t allow your work, your environment, naysayers or circumstances to deter you from developing your interests, or your mind, spirit, and engagement with life.
Be open-minded about change, differences, new ways of doing, and leaving your comfort zone. Everyone we meet can broaden our knowledge, our perspective, and our understanding.
Learning enhances life engagement, connection to self and others, employment prospects, personal growth, and self-actualization. When we position ourselves as learners, we become comfortable with what’s new and with being beginners. Our affinity for discovery expands and our world-view EXPANDS.
Embrace growth, change, and be young by positioning yourself as a life-long learner. Believe in your potential to progress and improve. Become an engaged, continuous learner and watch the benefits flow!