Built to Learn: Six Steps to Position Ourselves for Growth & Flourishing
Simple Ways to Cultivate Lifelong Progress & Learning
Image by Sandie Clarke from Unsplash
We take our cognitive abilities and our considerable capacity for caring for granted.
The truth is, human beings are amazing — you and I. We have the ability to use logic and reason, to hope, to imagine, and to employ conditional thinking to navigate people, subject matter, and experiences.
Our brains are intricate pattern and prediction machines. We are designed to detect and recognize, to develop, to progress — to LEARN — from birth to our most advanced years. Learning changes brain structure and brain function. We are literally built for learning, and we thrive when we are fumbling through, making mistakes, picking up cues, and incrementally refining our knowledge base, our thought processes, our skills.
Is Learning key to feeling at home with ourselves? To fulfillment? To happiness?
Research suggests that it is. Studies regarding brain neuroplasticity, intellectual pursuits, professional development, emotional and social growth, and personal fulfillment reveal common elements among diverse cohorts of people. Across cultures and socioeconomics, individuals who describe themselves as accomplished, content, and flourishing tend to be:
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, are connected to people and causes, and are developing our skills and intellect throughout our lives. In short, our sense of self, happiness, and fulfillment rises when we engage in continuous learning. There are many reasons why this is so. Learning increases our sense of self-determination. Learning broadens our perspective and connections 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 try again, and as we pursue new understanding and skills. The self-efficacy and personal agency that we experience when we engage in learning assists us in conducting ourselves from positions of restraint and well-considered decisions and choices.
Methods for Positioning Ourselves as Learners
The takeaway is this: Learning empowers us if we empower it. Learning is a life-long process of growth and connecting dots. The tie-in of lifelong learning to growth, satisfaction, and flourishing is clear. Methods that orient people toward lifelong learning include:
Read! The benefits to the cognitive, mental, and physical health of readers are documented and numerous.
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 could be, and never settle down.
Organize, enjoy, and track bit-by-bit progress.
Schedule, protect, 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, 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, perspective, and understanding.
Learning enhances life engagement, social inclusion, connection to self and others, employment prospects, personal growth, and self-actualization. When we position ourselves as life-long learners, we become comfortable with doing new things and being beginners.
Our affinity for discovery 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, grateful, curious, continuous learner and watch the benefits flow.