Learning is probably the most important occupation – be it termed a skill, hobby, education, absorption, whatever.
Learning will allow you to transcend almost any obstacle you encounter. And even the ones you can’t will still contain valuable lessons for you, if you know how to find them.
The ability to learn from one’s surroundings, thoughts, actions and past are critical to survive and thrive.
It is also one of the most reliable sources of dopamine release we are able to cultivate.
I have always loved finding the lesson in things, constantly honing in on improvement. I aim to create a repository of things containing valuable lessons, to be able to help seed the wisdom to a larger audience.
A Few Ways to Learn:
Reading is a great way to learn things. So is experience, and practice.
Reading – pretty straightforward. You can learn about the material being presented, you can learn about the author through the positions and biases revealed in the text, you can learn about yourself by paying attention to your own reactions as you read and exploring them further.
Most stories are enjoyable to read, but finding enjoyment in learning and personal growth through these actions will solidify the habit for you and change the perspective of reading as a chore/bore into something much bigger, much more exciting, and will increase your appreciation for books that are not novels.
Experience – can be a little more convoluted. You learn by doing. You learn by succeeding, you learn by failing. Sometimes the hard way – when your experience needs to repeatedly beat you over the head before the lesson takes. Other times, the easy way – by really paying attention to and trying to find the lessons that could be learned from a given situation. This is where practice comes in.
Most people practice something in order to get better at it. Like practicing the piano, for instance. Or, lifting weights. Here’s the kicker though: very few people regard every aspect of their life as a form of practice. Many people move through life fairly unconsciously; drifting from one thing to the next, finding a passion, pursuing it, discarding it, and repeating the process. Like finding shows to binge-watch on Netflix, or trying to find the bottom of a rabbit-hole on the internet. Or maxing out high scores in video games – there are countless examples of this sort of behaviour.
Time is a limiting factor. We only have so much of it. It is absolutely essential to have balance in your life, and to spend time relaxing and enjoying the benefits of living. But in our current culture, far too much emphasis is placed on consuming entertainment, idling our hours in between our job and sleep away. If you are not looking to learn what you can from your experience, you are either doomed to repeat certain behaviours until you DO get the lesson, or otherwise will spend a considerable amount of time idling away, forgoing the personal improvement and development you could be making – trading it for something that may feel good in the short run, but almost always will leave you comparatively worse in the long run.
The problem, and blessing, of experience is that it becomes completely individual; what may represent idle time wasting for one person could be an exciting avenue for learning and growth to another – one size fits all absolutely does not apply here. So being overly prescriptive in terms of approach almost never works here.
All of this said to emphasis the importance of practice. Everything we do, everything we think, is a form of practice, a form of cultivation. Buddhist understanding of seed consciousness, or scientific understanding of neuro-plasticity both point to the same thing – all of our thoughts and actions reinforce each other. You are constantly changing, developing, in the direction of the practices you cultivate. Identity is not static. The best learning comes from a sense of dedicated practice.
So then the question becomes evaluating practices. What is practicing something going to do for you? Evaluating our current habits and practices with this question is a very powerful act; so much of our time gets spent being driven by subconscious desires or perceptions that it is usually very beneficial to bring the light of day to these and explore them more fully, before allowing yourself to being driven by them.
This happens in very subtle ways, and creating the space to evaluate these processes, and being able to choose to respond differently, is a significant benefit of practicing mindfulness.
To sum up:
There are lots of ways to learn.
Beyond what we take in, we also learn from what we put out – everything we think, say or do.
However, the quality of the lessons vary greatly, depending on how much effort we are putting into the practice of learning.
Understanding all of our actions as a form of cultivation enables us to see the longer term impacts of what we are doing, where we will end up as a result.
This gives us a greater sense of control and ability to impact our future, knowing that the answer to any obstacles or problems we face is just a few points of learning and dedicated practice away.
Ultimately, learning represents freedom.