Tag: experience

Education – it’s not just about schooling

“Education is the movement from darkness to light.” – Allan Bloom

Go to the light! Don’t stay hidden in the dark…

Consume new material, information, and ideas. Take time to think about what you just read and learned.

Go in with an open mind and your initial thoughts about a subject can change.

Process the information and put it to use. If you’re not educating yourself (in the form of experiencing new things, reading/watching/listening to new things, etc), you are keeping yourself ignorant. You are hiding in the dark.

When will you actually pull the trigger?

You’ve been talking about how you want to do this or how you’d like to do that…but how long have you been saying this?

Stop procrastinating. If you want to do something, make it happen. Just do it.

It all starts with taking action. Sure, you need to plan and prepare. But you can only do that for so long. Eventually, you’re just lying to yourself that you need more time, more money, more…something…

When are you actually going to pull the trigger and do what you want to do? Do you want to get healthier? Start today. Do you want to go on vacation? Book it today.

What if you wait ten years to do something, only to find out you absolutely love it? Wouldn’t you want more time to experience that thing? Start now and live without regret. Because even if the experience isn’t everything you dreamed it would be, at least you would know if you like it or not. You would have clarity on what is, and not worry about “what if.” Stop waiting and just do it.

Less, but better

Focus more on quality (of experiences and of items), not quantity.

Why do you want a bunch of junk? Just because you’re getting more of something doesn’t make it better. In fact, having a surplus of worthless items creates more clutter, more stress, and more work for you.

Even is you consider a less extreme example, why would you want many mediocre items to manage or care for when you can gain more time back and improve your experience by having higher quality items?

Sometimes, less is more. Focus on having less material items to care for, but making sure that the ones you do have bring joy to you, serve a purpose, and are of the best quality you can reasonably afford.

Experience makes things easier

Whenever you first encounter a new problem, it can seem overwhelming. You don’t know what to do. Trying to find the right answer or response is hard. But once you figure it out, once you’ve experienced it, the next time you face that problem, it will seem easier. But the obstacle hasn’t changed, only your ability to overcome that obstacle has.

The obstacle is what it is. How you (and others) view it depends on what it is in comparison to. Your experience has shaped you and helped strengthen you, making the “hurdle” that is the obstacle appear to shrink. And over time, as you continue clearing the hurdle with relative ease, it will seem even smaller.

So, as you face new challenges, keep that in perspective. It may seem like a massive undertaking today, but you’ll look back at this in a year and wonder why you thought it was such a big deal.