The month of September is associated with the beginning of a new school year. Recently I was reading an article that indicated those that are having the greatest success in current job searches, or just keeping their careers fresh and on track were those who are continual learners. While learning is often associated with a school type of setting, I’ve learned in the last several years that there is no reason each and every one of us cannot learn something new every day. We just must keep our mind open to the learning opportunities.
Are you the type that believes you know what is going to happen before it even takes place? If you build your life on the assumption that just because something happened a certain way several times before it will again occur the same way, you are closing yourself off from a learning opportunity. What if the outcome is different? Have you paid attention enough to learn the details why? Have you just dismissed the result as a fluke occurrence? Or have you let a learning opportunity slip away?
We all have our views on the events that happen in our life around us. Is the only viewpoint the one you see from your own interpretation? Are you open to the viewpoints of others? Are you willing to listen to why they may view the same thing you are seeing and experiencing differently than do you? Being closed to other ways of looking at things as we have seen over the last several years, leads to a lack of progress in moving forward, walls of resistance between people and often anger, conflict and frustration. However it also is another way we lose an opportunity to learn about what is happening in the world around us.
Yes, life gets frustrating. It can often appear that we have a great deal of resistance stacked against us. And, many times it appears that the way things were for us, when we were comfortable, seemed to know the rules and how to play the game of life are not going to go back to the way we remember things to be. However, we do have power over the messages we choose to take in, evaluate and process. We don’t have to agree with them all. In fact, we may not choose to agree with many of them. However, we can choose to learn what works for us, what doesn’t work for us and how based on who we are how to move forward in an ever challenging world.
So, as another school year starts for our children and our students studying in college (whether they be young adults or more mature adults), I challenge each and every one of you to open your mind to learning something new every day. It does not have to be a topic you are learning through a course of study. It does not even have to be something you read in a book, newspaper or online. It can be as simple as opening your senses to the world around you, and increasing your awareness of some part of that world you had either not noticed before or fully taken in. Are you ready to take the “learning challenge”?
