🎵 🎵 back everybody this is food for thought thoughts
if it were you season two and i'm your host neogentrix
like i said i was going to be covering a lot
of different facts and a lot of other information
stuff that people need to know that they do not
know it's the year 2020 it's time to start a
new decade of our life moving forward however
There's a lot of skills a lot of people don't
have, and I want to make sure that they understand
what they are so that they can have them. Most
of them for school, but you can use them for
other things as well. Last time we talked about
what learning actually is and how it's effective
in our lives and what we use it for. Today I'm
going to cover lifelong learning and how it affects
our life moving forward outside of schooling,
not just in school or any of the educational
branches, regardless of whether military or otherwise.
There's so much information out there that a
lot of people need to know that they don't know.
And I feel like if we don't cover it all, or
at least try to cover some of it, people will
continue to walk around being ignorant of what
they do and do not know. And it's not that I'm
saying everybody's an idiot. Believe me, that
is not the cause or the reason for why I'm doing
this. I do it because I enjoy doing it and I
enjoy helping other people. Everyone's got a
purpose. Everyone's got a role to play. I know
what mine is and I'm going to go ahead and do
just that. So today we're going to cover lifelong
learning. And if I have time, I might start on
another topic before close to the end of this.
And with that being said. Please feel free to
look forward to another podcast coming later
today. I might do more than one. So let's have
a great day, everybody. Today's topic, lifelong
learning, and the next topic after that is the
different learning styles. So let's get started,
shall we? right everybody and we're back let's
go ahead and get started with what life lifelong
learning is now as i mentioned before most people
associate learning with formal education typically
schools college university even military believe
it or not you know we're told from an early age
that we should get a good education generally
speaking it is true that a formal education of
some resulting quality is important now Education
does maximize our potential to find better and
more satisfying jobs, possibly earn more, perhaps,
maybe, or become more successful in any chosen
career, or in some cases just enlighten us to
be a lot better than we are currently. But schooling
is only one type of learning. Keep that in mind.
There are many other opportunities to further
your knowledge and develop your skills throughout
your lifetime that people are just not aware
of. Knowledge can be acquired in... Skill sets
develop anywhere you go in the world, regardless
of what it is. It's unavoidable. You can't avoid
learning. It happens all the time. If you're
listening to this podcast, you're learning. Because
chances are, you don't know what I'm about to
talk about. Lifetime learning is about creating
and maintaining a positive attitude to learning,
both from personal development and even professional
ones. Lifetime learners, my dad is an example
of this, are motivated to learn and develop because
they want to. It's a delivery and voluntary act.
It's a choice. Okay, you want to know more. You
don't want to be sitting there dumbfounded while
everyone else does all the work. And in some
cases, even if you're lazy that way, at some
point, you know, you want to be, you want to
hear those words, congratulations, well done,
thank you for your service. You want to have
that feeling of joy in you. Everyone does. But
before you can get that, at some point, You have
to get up and say, you know what? I want to learn
something. I want to be useful to someone else.
There's too many reasons for learning throughout
our lifetime, okay? First one is for personal
development, and the other one is for professional
development. As I mentioned a second ago, lifetime
learning enhances our understanding of the world
around us and provides us more and better opportunities,
as well as the quality in our life being better.
These reasons may not necessarily be distinct
to personal development. or can help improve
your employment opportunities or professional
development, but they do enable personal growth
beyond where you currently are. Learning for
its own sake begins, or rather brings its own
advantages. For example, learning in whatever
context helps you, it can be... fun. It can boost
your confidence and self -esteem. It makes us
less risk adverse and more adaptable to change
when it actually happens. It helps us achieve
a more satisfying personal life or challenges
our ideas and beliefs. You know, that's just
one of the many, many ways that it does that.
So with that being said, I'm going to take a
short break here. I'm going to split this next
piece in two on purpose. And we're going to talk
about personal development and Professional development.
All righty then. Let's go ahead and move on with
the first topic of the two. Learning for personal
development. Okay, well, let's see. There doesn't
need to be a specific reason for learning since
learning for the sake of learning can in itself
be rewarding in its own right. I mean, me learning
how to do a podcast and even doing that in the
first place was mostly for personal development,
not so much professional. You know, there is
a common view that continuous learning and having
an active mind throughout your life may... delay
or halt some progress of some forms of dementia,
although there's actually no scientific proof
or evidence that supports that. So, with that
being said, keeping your brain active does have
its advantages. Now, that being said, since learning
can prevent you from becoming bored and thus
enable a more fulfilling life at any age, you
know, there are, of course, many reasons why
people learn for personal development. You may
want to increase your knowledge or skills around
a particular hobby or pastime that you enjoy.
I enjoy bowling. I love cooking and I love learning
stuff on the computer. I also enjoy doing these
podcasts, so it could be for that. Or perhaps
you want to develop some entirely new skill that
will in some way enhance your life. Take a pottery
or a car mechanic. course, for example, or perhaps
you want to research a medical condition or your
ancestry like most people do nowadays. These
are just a couple of examples. I mean, perhaps
you're planning to take a trip and you want to
learn more about the history and culture of your
destination. Actually, let me hold off on that
for a second. That's something you should do,
period, especially if you're going to a country
you've never been to before. Just throwing that
out there. But I mean, still. It's for personal
development. You're not using it to make money.
You're going there to explore. Or maybe you'll
decide to take a degree course later in your
life simply because you just enjoy your chosen
subject and the challenges of an academic study.
While this one is not as common as it used to
be, it still to some degree holds a lot of weight,
and a lot of people do it. Take me, for example.
Regardless of what I get my degree in and what
I'm going to school for, Whether I get a decent
job or not, using that degree is irrelevant to
me because I actually enjoy studying in my field.
It's just something that, you know, it piques
my interest. You know, like the fact that I love
cooking. I'll go and learn everything I can about
that just for the sake of doing it. Not so much
because I want to go work and own my own restaurant.
If that happens, great. That's not the end goal.
So, yes. We're going to take a short break. And
I'll come back and we'll talk about professional
development. Alright then, and we're back. Next
on the list of things to cover is professional
development. Now, our capacity to earn is directly
related to our willingness to learn, if that
is the main topic of our discussion in the first
place. Being well -educated is not necessarily
the key to employment, although qualifications
may get you an interview, actually helping you
get the job and so much more, whatever it takes
to do so, but presentation is also important.
I do believe I already covered that in a podcast
previously, so feel free to go check that out.
Employers are typically looking for people who
are well -balanced. You know, people with skills
that they can use in multiple fields, different
areas. This includes the ability to demonstrate
that you're able to actually still learn and
grow, as well as develop other abilities that
other people may or may not have. You know, if
you find yourself unemployed, then use the time
wisely. With that being said, learning something
new can help pay off with new opportunities,
which might not otherwise have arisen if you
had stayed with the current skill set that you
currently were employed with. At the same time,
if you are employed, take advantage of training,
coaching, mentoring, opportunities, anything
that you can get your hands on that'll help you
continuously grow in some way or form. This will
allow you to become more popular in the employer's
eyes, and possibly increase your pay rate, depending
on the type of job you have. It makes you more
indispensable, regardless of how you want to
look at that. Now, with that being said, putting
the time in for extra learning brings its own
reward. In other words, it means that we can
get more personal satisfaction in our lives,
as well as our jobs, if we at least understand
more about who we are and what we do, or what
you can do. I'm not telling you go learn a skill
just simply because you want to get a job. You
have to actually have a talent for that skill.
Or you can do like other people and work really
hard and get it, but that means you're going
to have to work even harder to maintain it. That
being said, this can lead to way better results
working day in, day out. I mean, if you choose
to learn another complementary sector alongside
the current type... The skill set that you have
not only does it open up more opportunities,
but it allows you to specialize in certain areas
and potentially earn more and become more connected
with your industry if that's something that you
care about. Wider experience helps build more
knowledge, which begets more skills, which begets
more transferable abilities and more adaptability.
From a financial standpoint of view, a more highly
skilled and knowledgeable worker is an asset
to any company and can lead to... Faster promotions
with associated salary increases. Someone who
can offer more expertise will be worth more than
a person who, well, doesn't. Or just employs
regular people who used to be customers. Expertise
is also often a key quality of an effective leader.
If you have that, then you can obviously teach
other people about stuff they don't know. With
this being said... If you're frustrated with
your job, continuing to hone your skills will
make it easier to find new ways out of potentially
stressful work situations, and keeping an open
mind to learning and giving yourself room for
flexibility is the key to a great job satisfaction
of an environment you actually like, and furthermore,
potentially staying ahead of competitors for
jobs by being more experienced and knowledgeable
in your area. It just basically gives you an
edge. So, with that being said, I'm going to
take a short break right here and next we're
going to cover mastering your ability to learn
and why that's even important in the first place.
Now, let's go ahead and talk about mastering
your learning. In his book, Make It Faster, Colin
Rose used the mnemonic master to describe the
six stages he believes are key to becoming an
effective learner. And these stages can be applied
to any type of learning, either formal or informal.
The first one is motivation. The next one is
acquire, search, trigger. Exam and reflect. I
know it doesn't make much of a sense, and I guess
some of them are kind of understandable, but
I'm going to go through each one in short so
you get a good idea of what I'm talking about.
First things first, motivation. Lifelong learning
requires self -motivation. You need to feel positive
about learning, about your ability to learn,
and if you're struggling to see the point of
learning what you are learning, you're unlikely
to do well. So you need to be motivated. I do
believe I did do a podcast on self -motivation,
so feel free to go check that out. Next is acquire.
Effective learning requires that you acquire
information through reading, listening, observing,
practicing, experimenting, and even experience.
I mean, information is all around you. The trick
is to acquire relevant and meaningful information
to develop those information and knowledge that
you have into skills. Now again, going back to
a previous topic I covered, study skills. Next
is to search. This one might seem a little weird,
but learning is successful when you can search
for a personal meaning in the information we're
acquiring. I mean, we find it hard to remember
facts without understanding them and being able
to put them into context. Learning is about applying
what you acquire and asking questions to yourself
such as, how does this idea help me in my life?
Or... What has this experience taught me about
myself? These are questions that people need
to ask in order to know if they understand the
material that they're learning. Next is trigger.
Human beings are notoriously bad at retaining
information, as I clearly just stated. You cannot
remember and you will not remember everything
that you read, hear, or experience, okay? But
you can help trigger recollections in various
ways. For example, Taking notes, practice, discussion,
experiment with new ideas, skills, and other
things that you've learned. This is why in math,
they tell you to do the problems over, over,
and over, and over, and over. They want you to
create triggers so that the next time you see
that problem or its type, you know exactly how
to solve it. In some cases, you may not even
remember, but you'll just start solving it anyway.
Next is to examine. You should regularly examine
your knowledge to help reinforce your mind of
what you've learned. You should always try to
keep an open mind, question your understanding,
and be open to new information. Those who lock
themselves away, well, good luck to you. Talking
to others and seeing their point of view can
be a powerful way of examining your own perception
and understanding of a subject and allow you
to be more open. Finally, reflect. When you reflect
on your learning, And think about how you learned
and why you learned it, including how you felt
about the particular topic and or subject before
or after you developed your knowledge. You know,
it helps. And on that note, learn from your mistakes
as well as your successes and always try to remain
positive. With this being said, I'm not telling
you that you shouldn't learn from only your mistakes.
You can learn from your successes too if you
know how to do it. With that being said... I
think I should go ahead and cover note -taking
and reflective practice too as well, but those
are topics for the future, so look forward to
that. Alright, so to wrap this up and, you know,
move on into the next topic, let's talk about
what learning gives you. First off, it gives
you options. The bottom line is this. Whatever
your life path, there are a number of sometimes
unanticipated benefits to continual personal
and professional development, whatever your age.
It's never too late to start. Now, successfully
changing career paths in midlife and spending
time informally developing the XPs? The expertise
is more common than ever especially since there's
constant and rapid change in market conditions
every single day Most people still rely on succeeding
in employment from their abilities to earn a
living Rather than learning something new that
will help move them up the ranks faster The more
flexible we can be about our direction, the easier
we can make our lives. Our economy is shifting
increasingly towards short -term and part -time
contracts with more flexible work patterns whilst
old industries are shifting abroad. The time
we used to work from the bottom up is almost
gone. Just to go ahead and state that as a fact.
You know, we have to adapt to changes going on
in the work world while making improvements to
ourselves and make more of ourselves. by stepping
out of our comfort zones or our ideas and how
we believe on our life and how it's going. There's
no way to move forward unless you do so. Relying
on job permanence for earnings and promotion
is not as feasible as it used to be, so keep
this in mind. Because of work -life instability,
more people of all ages are turning their hobbies
into a business idea. Continually following one
passion outside of work can lead to you getting
paid for doing what you love aside from the job
that you have. And typically you'll develop business
and other transferable skills as you go along.
Until the point that you, you know, can delegate
your least favorite jobs to someone else. Keep
in mind that no matter how far you go in life
or what you end up doing, at some point you're
still going to end up working for somebody or
having someone work under you. And having the
ability to do what is necessary and lead other
people from the different skills that you know
may actually be a step up in the right direction
for you. Now, I did cover a lot of personal skills
in the past. I don't remember covering... Too
many of them. I know there's still more to cover.
And there's a lot of other skills I wish to cover
and finish cover, such as leadership, learning,
presentation, and writing skills, and even more
on parenting skills as we go forward. But, you
know, only time will tell. Everything has their
own area. Everyone has their own expertise, even
me. So with that being said, look forward to
other podcasts coming soon and other developments
as we move forward. Again, this is food for thought,
thoughts that fit with you. I'm your host, Neogentrix.
and I'll see you all next time.