The I Statement

When was the last time you learned something YOU wanted to learn, OUTSIDE of school/university?

Like for real, for real- When did you last pick up really learning something new as an adult?

I mean reading the books on it, watching the tutorials, doing it almost daily, talking about it, the podcasts, joining groups… all of it.

If you haven’t, it’s probably because learning as an adult has a learning curve— It’s hard!

It is kinda what happens after we are trained to only learn for gain, title, profit or by force for most of our lives.

In my day job, many times they provide these “learning opportunities” called continuing education (CEU’s), that are usually taught the same way every time: An article and/or video followed by a quiz.

It takes the guess work out of everything: It’s easy for them, but boring for us.

Your brain literally gets lazy and has to do nothing but memorize.

But when you choose something, maybe a skill or a specialty, that you REALLY want to learn in your personal life…That CEU style of learning doesn’t fly.

Chances are, if you want to incorporate some meaning into your life, you end up having to learn HOW to learn again.

The journey of learning looks very similar to this:

Learning = Time x Effort.

TIME and EFFORT, leads to lfg ^_aka Let’s f**king Go.

At first it’ll be aight.

Then you have some hope of being more than aight.

Then its like super ducking hard.

If you push past that, it gets easier and before you know it you’re a ducking MASTER.

Would you say you’ve been giving time and effort to something you truly want to learn and get better at?

No?

That’s alright, I wasn’t either until about 4 years ago.

Before that, I was doing everything wrong really well and not learning to do a damn thing otherwise.

Well… I can definitely say my life has grown exponentially better in the last 4 years.

I am here to tell you it is ALL due to the growth and expansion learning new things has given me.

Your time living at the level you’re at has expired. It is time to teach yourself some new tricks.

If you’re an adult, screw that, even if you’re a teenager, the time has come to learn some sh*t that will actually bring meaning into your life, not just learning for profit, title, money, a job, or by force.

Learning for the sake of LEARNING, is growth for the sake of your expansion.

If you so happen to be one of the fortunate few who has learned something you can monetize, GREAT. But don’t let that be the driving force.

Learn because you’re a smart ass b**ch who wants to expand and be better.

Learn because you have an interest and you deserve to explore it.

Learn because you are multi-faceted and paying attention to all these different wants and needs is self-love.

I’m here to tell you that I am STILL learning.

Still giving maximum effort and time to things that matter to me, by making it part of my lifestyle.

Let me share some of my learning strategies with you:

• Pick up a podcast you really like and listen to it on drives, on walks, and while doing chores.

• Trade doom scrolling for 10 pages of a book on the thing you want to learn every night before bed.

• Read and participate on forums on the thing you want to master.

• Youtube. Not much more to say there.

• Take some classes on it! Or hire a Mentor!

• Have pep talks with yourself about it if there is no one to talk about it with.

• Practice daily, even if it means waking up earlier.

• Pick exciting projects to work on and give yourself a deadline.

• Include your loved ones and talk to them about it, maybe even ask them to volunteer to help you master it.

• Create a social media page on it.

My strategies aren’t all that creative, but they’re effective.

And most of all, they’re EASY if you LOVE what you are learning.

Chances are you’ll do these automatically if you chose the right thing to learn.

So what do you say?

Here’s to your growth and expansion as an awesome human!