A recent post to the Jack’s Winning Words blog had this quote that I liked immediately.
“The most compelling reason to get a good education is that it makes the inside of your head an interesting place to spend the rest of your life.” (Judith Shapiro)
While I agree with Shapiro, I might have phrased it thus – “The most compelling reason to always continue learning is that it make the inside of your head an interesting place to spend the rest of your life.”
When we think of getting an education, we most often think about our school years – the time when we were focused upon learning above all else. All to soon the demands of life to make a living, first for yourself and then for your family, become our focus and learning new things unrelated to that focus almost always takes a backseat. Even the most challenging of jobs can eventually become routine and boring. Sometimes that makes the inside of our heads a boring place, too.
That is why it is so important to stay curious about new things and new people in your life…to continue learning. When one stops learning their mind stops growing and the world may start to feel like it is shrinking and closing in on them. The brain loves exploring, organizing and storing new information and relating it to information that is already there. Your brain can get bored and atrophy if you stop challenging it with new experiences and learning.
So, make the inside of your head an interesting place to spend time by making a conscious effort to learn something new each day. Read something new. Try somethings new. Meet someone new. At the end of the day think about that new learning and figure out where it fits into the stuff that was already in your head. Process it and find it’s spot in your mind. It doesn’t just have to be a new fact. Maybe it was a new feeling that you had during the day or a new reaction to something that occurred.
You’ve got the rest of your life to spend inside that head; make it an interesting place to be – keep learning.
Where did you do your most learning?