Taking it Forward

You and I are learning every moment of our lives whether we know it or not. For some people ‘conscious’ learning stops the moment they leave school – their perception of learning is about remembering what seem to be a lot of useless facts. There is some truth in this as I’ve not yet found a use for Latin or Algebra since I left school and only marginally touched on trigonometry when I was learning to navigate a boat.

The trouble with Western education systems and I know Bob Proctor will agree with me here is they don’t teach children how to learn, or at least don’t do it very well. Learning is about understanding and being able to apply knowledge. It’s parallel in the IT industry is turning data into information which can then be acted upon. What IT cannot do is the ‘understanding’ bit – at least not yet.

Lifelong learning is often cited as the ‘secret of success’ by leaders in business and politics and is especially favoured as a maxim by those engaged in the sphere of ‘personal development’. Learning however is not, as some people would like it to be, an end in itself. You can have all the knowledge in the world, you can understand every aspect of it, but it is utterly useless unless and until you do something with it, unless and until you apply it.

Knowing and understanding which learning to apply is what we call ‘wisdom’, but even that is irrelevant unless ‘something happens’ or something is prevented from happening as a result, You can have all the certificates, degrees, qualifications in the world but unless you use that learning it just becomes what we refer to a ‘shelf development’ and I admit to having some highly knowledgeable, even wise, shelves which are currently serving no useful purpose even though a fair proportion of their content has been created by myself!

I’ve used my knowledge, understanding, learning and wisdom to create the Freedom Academy. I hope you are learning from it and will put some of it into practice for you own and others’ benefit. The question for you is ‘what do you need and want to learn?’ Use the worksheet which follows to plan this out. Check off against each topic you write down ‘need’, ‘want’ or ‘both’ then get down to prioritising what you choose to do first and so on. If you need help in deciding or finding a suitable source of the knowledge you seek, please book a coaching call.