Experience
or Repetition?
I
once sat in on a job interview where the applicant proudly spoke
of having 30 years experience. When he left, the employer turned
to me and said "The guy learned everything he needed for
the job in one year." I asked why that was important . "Well",
came the answer, "he doesn't have 30 years experience; he
has one year's experience repeated 30 times."
That
was when I resolved that life has to be an ongoing learning and
growing experience. Each day, if we are to grow and evolve, we
have to be learning something new ... stretching ourselves.
Knowledge
truly is power. Do you make it a priority to learn something new
each day? With the internet so freely available, it is so easy
to become a wealth of useful information. Trust the Universe to
direct you to what you will use one day.
Do
you interact with new people on your commute to work or in line
at the bank? Even making small talk with customer service agents
and telemarketers on the phone, gives you opportunities to learn.
Recognise that everyone has something valuable to teach you -
everyone. It may be facts, it may be skills, it may simply be
tolerance and acceptance.
One
of the amazing things about the internet is our ability to reach
out and make new acquaintances to learn about other towns, cultures,
ideas. I am currently taking online courses to strengthen my outreach
abilities and the New Thought Centre is planning more online courses
and "webinars". We're stretching ourselves into new
frontiers.
Take
a few of those hours you spend watching useless reality television
shows to gain information. Watch the Discovery Channel or some
of the other magnificent TV sources that will give you insights
into science, beliefs, cultures, life. Once you arm and inspire
your mind with those insights, your imagination and your desires
will be fired up.
Make
it a point to read the abundant supply of abundance books ...
or self-help, history, and how-to books. Your library shelves
are full of them. If you drive to work, get Wayne Dyer's CDs and
the like and listen on the way to work instead of listening to
prattling DJs wasting air space between commercials. Our Gold
Coast library has a service where you don't even have to go to
the library ... you can download those books right on the internet.
And
if tapes don't do it for you, get quick lessons from the Dummies
series of books ... instant simplistic learning for the easily
bored (or easily confused).
And
don't think it has to come from books or TV. Go to a meeting,
a gathering of minds, have conversations where no one whines and
complains, sit on a bench and observe how people create the patterns
of life in all their behaviours. The world around you is the best
educational institution in the world. Every encounter and experience
offers something new to learn.
Personally,
I have a goal ... by the end of any week, I want to see that I
have either a new skill (or a more finely tuned skill) and more
knowledge. But having it is of no importance unless I can put
it to good use to communicate and share.
So
make a mid-year's resolution for yourself: Tap all resources of
information that you can to learn something new each week. That's
how you evolve ... personally, spiritually, socially and intellectually.
The alternative is repeating the same year over and over and over
again and pretending that you have 30 years experience!
Self-Reflection
Questions:
1.
Are you comfortable making small talk with complete strangers
and learning from them?
2.
How can you stretch yourself each day?
3.
How can you make the time to take a class that teaches a skill
you are interested in?
