When I am speaking of a self directed education, I'm not talking about continuing on towards another college degree. While that is admirable and sometimes even of great value, it is also very costly and time intensive.
No, I am talking about the power of developing the habit of reading from a great book for a certain amount of time each day and looking for other sources of relevant teaching such as audio recordings to incorporate into your daily routine.
Why?
Because if we are not having a constant input of new ideas and principles into our minds, how can we expect to ever have an improvement in our level of creativity, problem solving, or results of any sort?
Leadership Guru Orrin Woodward puts it this way, When you have worked for thirty years, will you have 30 years of accumulated experience and expertise or will you have one years experience repeated 30 times?
Sobering thought?
Einstein said (paraphrasing), That we can not solve the significant problems in our lives at the same level of thinking with which we created them! Meaning that if we don't actively pursue more and more new knowledge, we will constantly be stuck trying to solve problems with the same limited knowledge base for our entire lives!
Why would we want to willingly limit ourselves that way?
Way too many people get locked into the flawed mindset that when they finished their formal education, there would never be a need to do any more reading, studying or learning. How sad when you realize that we are living in a world today with
an inexhaustible supply of knowledge to be had by simply applying some effort.
Some of us are prone to be the deep-thinking types. But are we stuck with utilizing only the limited supply of knowledge that was input into our brains during our school years like floating around in our tiny glass bubble surrounded by a literal untapped ocean of new knowledge? Or are we instead, constantly sending our feelers out into that vast ocean looking for the next valuable piece of information that could change our limited paradigm forever?
I love the principle of "The Slight Edge"as taught in the book of that same name by author Jeff Olson. It is that there are so many important and valuable things in our lives that are actually easy to do. The flip side of the coin is that they are also very easy not to do! Are we going to discipline ourselves to do them so that we can gain the prize we seek?
Also, that the cumulative difference that can be made by doing one simple little action repeatedly day after day, may not seem like much in the short term. But multiplied out over 5 or 10 years will be enormous! Not because of the simple multiplication of the small act but because of the compounding effect it has combined with other positive actions in our lives!
So what is important to you right now? More profit, a better paying job, a more successful company or organization, a successful family, a stronger more productive relationship? All of these things can be greatly enhanced by seeking for new knowledge and principles to apply.
Interestingly, very often multiple problems in different areas of our lives can actually be solved by learning one new principle! All too often one missing piece of information is causing us problems in several different areas of our lives at the same time!
So what do we do? Get hungry!
Discipline yourself to develop the habit of reading from a book recommended by someone you trust for 15 - 30 minutes a day. If you do that simple little thing, you will end up averaging 1 - 2 books a month and put yourself in the upper echelons of our society!
Don't think you can find the time? Start using your "Cracks of Time". Keep a book in your purse or brief case, your desk, the car, the bathroom, etc. There's nothing wrong with having several different ones going at the same time, one in each of these places. In fact, if you do, you are more likely to have a thought in one book stir a deeper understanding of what you are reading in another!
Not sure where to start? Contact me for some of my favorite recommendations!
Have an awesome day everyone!
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