The following is one of numerous short blogs I wrote for my kids as they graduated from high school. Each received 12 blogs, tailored to each one, in a book.

Live a Life of Learning

The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who can’t read. ― Possibly Mark Twain.

“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.” ― Henry Ford

“You'll never know everything about anything, especially something you love.” ― Julia Child

“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” ― Socrates

Scripture: 

Make sure you carry out The Revelation that Moses commanded you, every bit of it. Don’t get off track, either left or right, so as to make sure you get to where you’re going. And don’t for a minute let this Book of The Revelation be out of mind. Ponder and meditate on it day and night, making sure you practice everything written in it. Then you’ll get where you’re going; then you’ll succeed. Joshua 1:8

Story

After graduating with my MBA in 2005, I thought I knew everything I needed for life. I stopped learning. I started a business and it was actually successful. I thought I was a genius and started another business at the same time. It was clearly revealed I was not. Just before that flop, I joined a CEO round table (a group of business owners that help each other out). I was challenged to begin to read and learn again. I was shocked at what I still did not know. Looking back, one of the key issues leading to that failure was my lack of continuing education. Since then, I have continued to read continuously, and I am regularly shocked by finding new information that addresses specific problems in my life and business.

Lesson

There are two really big problems with not learning:

1. There is so much applicable knowledge in the world that you could never learn it all

2. Learning is time-sensitive.

It has been said that the more you learn, the more you realize how much more you need to know. The cumulative centuries of humankind have developed a vast body of knowledge no brain could contain. If we just consider the knowledge applicable to one person’s life, it is more than one could absorb. So there is always something more available to you that will help you and/or the people in your circle. At some level we have a responsibility to learn more to better the lives of those around us.

If you could somehow learn everything you needed in a year, you would still need to keep learning, because learning is time-sensitive. You can learn about dealing with stress, but until your life becomes stressful you can’t REALLY LEARN about it. There are many things that can only be learned when you are in the right situation to need the information.

You also need to be sensitive to where you learn. There is a lot of misinformation available to you, so you must be careful to access the most reliable information. The more reliable sources are more curated, (reviewed by knowledgeable editors.) Journals, TED talks, books, and magazines are all team efforts and the content is reviewed by multiple people before publishing. On the other hand blogs, podcasts, and website content may be the work of a single crazy person.

Recommended Resources 

https://www.ted.com/talks/ben_dunlap_talks_about_a_passionate_life#t-1117715

Questions

1. What are the ways that you enjoy learning that you can continue through life?

2. What have you learned that was very timely and it affected your life significantly?