Last week, my very good friend and fellow thought leader, Gabrielle Dolan and I ran a The Winning Formula public workshop in Sydney.
To witness people finding their powerful stories and practising them using Gabrielle’s unique framework was inspiring.
To hear people connecting and sharing as they got curious about how to network strategically via the framework I teach, building their Inner Circle of support for personal and professional growth was enlightening for many.
And then to listen in as people started sharing their personal positioning with confidence was heart-warming and certainly reinforced for me why I love the work that I do.
This entire day reinforced for me the importance of continuous learning; that it’s ok to feel a little bit scared as new skills are road-tested; that it can be uncomfortable being stretched to become more…because ultimately on the other side of participating in the learning space lies growth and opportunity.
Richard Branson said, “The day you stop learning is the day you stop living. We should all pick up new skills, ideas, viewpoints, and ways of working every day.”
A life of continuous learning is essential to growth. Successful people know this; that’s why they have an insatiable desire and commitment to learn more, in more ways than one.
And yet many people don’t invest in their own mastery. They live a life of stasis, thinking they know all they need to know. Some of them leave school, complete their apprenticeship, get their degree and then stop.
The learning piece? Quite simply it’s lost in a sea of excuses – ‘it’s all too hard’, ‘I’ve got no time’, ‘what’s the point’, ‘I don’t need to, ‘I know all I need to know’.
We are living in a world that is moving at an incredible speed making current knowledge obsolete at a faster rate of knots than ever before. If we don’t at least try and keep up, if we don’t attempt to remain relevant and current, if we don’t keep expanding our knowledge and developing our expertise we risk becoming defunct and tossed out with the ‘maybe I’ll recycle that later’ pile.
Darren Hardy, the former publisher of SUCCESS magazine, wrote in his article ‘Leadership For A Changing World’ that, “By 1900, it had taken 150 years to double all human knowledge. Today it takes only one or two years, and by 2020, knowledge will double every 72 days.” That’s next year peeps!
Seth Godin in his blog ‘Tension vs. Fear’ says, “Tension is the hallmark of a great educational experience. The tension of not quite knowing where we are in the process, not being sure of the curriculum, not having a guarantee that it’s about to happen.” He adds, “Effective teachers have the courage to create tension. And adult learners on their way to levelling up actively seek out this tension, because it works. It pushes us over the chasm to the other side.”
Learning doesn’t just happen in the classroom of academia. It’s not necessarily about the letters that come after your name. It’s about learning what you do well, how you can do it better. It’s about stretching your thinking, challenging your preconceived ideas and encouraging you to push further.
If you are in Melbourne on 16th October why don’t you join us at The Winning Formula.
Become the student again. Let us guide you through the murkiness of the unknown. Because you never know, when you come out the other side you may finally find yourself becoming exactly who you wanted to be when you grow up.
Until next time.
