You must test your boundaries and see how far you can go. Challenge your own beliefs to increase your sphere and strengthen your resolve in your own life. Of course, don’t do anything to risk life and limb. However, it is important to risk and overcome your fears.

We all experience some element of fear. Fears keep you isolated and immobile in one or more parts of your life. Fears tend to develop to replace desire. Instead of desiring change to achieve success, you begin to fear change so that you can remain stable. Instead of desiring more money and responsibility in your job, you fear losing your job and the income. Challenging your fears can allow you to overcome many issues and feelings that have piled up over the years.

Take a course on something of interest to broaden your horizons. Learn something new to enhance your job and make you more valuable. Travel to a new place that you’ve never visited. Set a goal every year to learn one thing new, create one new thing, and go to one new place. It’s easier to try out new facets of your life and character when you are away from the familiar surroundings that remind you of how you “should be living.”

As you meet new challenges, you encounter new character traits, gain new confidence, and enhance your sense of accomplishment. Additionally, the mind wants information to process, store, and reference. As you meet your fears and broaden your horizons, your mind will be too busy to worry or fear the inconsequential things that life throws at us from time to time.

Mary’s supervisor asked her to attend the coaching skills training being provided by the company. The problem was that Mary wasn’t a coach. She wasn’t even a supervisor and she didn’t see any value in attending this workshop. All she could think about was, “What good is this going to be for me?”

Kat was excited about the workshop session she had registered for. It was on a topic she was interested in and wanted to learn more about. She saw how mastering these skills would help her reach her goals. She arrived early and sat close to the front. The problem became clear very early on though. The material was too basic. She already knew this stuff! She was disappointed, to say the least. She put out her own money and time for something that was going to waste both of those things.

I guess you can relate to at least one or perhaps all of the scenarios you’ve just read. These are just some of the common barriers that get in our way of being the most productive learners. We are forced to be there, we don’t see the learning as relevant or valuable, and we feel like we already know the material.

While these barriers are real, there are things we can do to jump over or break through these barriers – to make the time invested in these situations more valuable and useful to us. Here are three specific suggestions that will help you in each of these situations and many more.

1. Use the time to review and focus. So you feel that you already know the material. So what? You are there. So be there (and get over yourself)! Rather than having your little pity party, or being cynical about the material and the experience, use the time to review what you know. Use the time as an opportunity to do some thinking. Reflect on your experiences with these concepts. Think of ways you can improve on what you already know. You may become a valuable resource to other learners, or you may learn something new through your reflection. The time is there, so use it wisely. Even if what you learn is different than what others learn, you will have made good use of your time, improved your mood and outlook, and taken something valuable from your time spent.

2. Look for the nugget. Everyone can learn something new. Maybe you do know much of the material being covered. If that is the case, be a detective. Look for and uncover at least one nugget that you had forgotten, that you have stopped applying, or one twist on something you already know well. Often one well-applied nugget will “pay” for your time invested many times over. And without sleuthing, it is the value you would never have received.

3. Be a beginner. Remember what it is like when you first learn something new? You are excited, interested, and having fun. Once we think we know it all, we stop looking for any evidence to prove ourselves wrong. One of the best ways to remove all of these barriers is to come to any learning situation as a beginner by asking yourself, “What can I learn?” The Zen saying states it well, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.” Give yourself more options. View the world from a possibility perspective. Come to the learning table as a beginner.

These three suggestions can have a major impact on the value you get from any learning experience (classroom or otherwise). Once you know and apply these strategies, these common barriers to your learning will be a thing of the past. And, you’ll get more value out of all your future learning experiences.

I realized how slow we, as adults, resist learning. I’ve often heard it said that as we get older, our thought processes slow down and it isn’t as easy for us to learn. Is this true? Or is it simply we don’t want to learn?
When my daughter Kelsey was four years old, I was watching her one day. I noted some differences between children and adults. The fact is, I was getting prepared to scold her when it occurred to me that I should be quiet and study the situation instead. I was observing how she was learning to work with what she has and the tools around her.

Kelsey had dumped a small bucket of mud and stones on the pad behind the house which is typically where we set up our outside table and umbrella. My wife, Crystal, often cleaned this area by spraying it with the water hose, which washes pebbles and dust from it.

Before I could scold her, she whipped out two brooms she had collected from where we keep our outside tools. Why two? Because there were only two! Likely she didn’t know which one would do the best job, so she brought them both. The first broom she dragged across the mud with the brushes pointing upwards. This did not produce the effect she was trying to achieve, so she discarded that broom in favor of the other one. The other broom she dragged across the mud with the brushes pointing toward the pad.

She studied the two brooms for only a glimmer of a second. She discarded the second broom and picked up the first one again, and this time she had the brushes pointed toward the mud.

Finding the right tool and learning how to use it is part of daily life for someone who is four years old. Each day is filled with new challenges, and they greet it with such enthusiasm. Could our lives benefit by adopting such a strategy? Could our businesses benefit from us learning at least one new thing every day?

Learn From It
Do not forget that problems reward you with a bunch of new lessons learned. To determine what knowledge you have achieved from it and hang on to it in your memory. Commit to memory that whatever you have learned is applicable in just any other problem that will come your way in the future. The reason the problem is given to you is that He wants you to learn something new. In addition, if you forget that lesson, He will have to give you the same type of problem to help you regain the lesson. So make sure that the lesson remains not only in your mind but in your thoughts as well.

Change is something that gives us courage and strength since we can make positive and personal transformations that help us to grow. Take your time and figure out what you need to do to make the changes that lead you to success.

We can use several psychological techniques to help you along your journey in making positive, personal changes. First, consider meditation. Meditation is a mental workout that promotes your mind to focus on an object you want to use to expand your knowledge. It opens your mind up to new ideas. You can use meditation to develop your imagination as well.

When you can develop new ideas, it keeps you pushing ahead. The new ideas can help by encouraging your creative mind to assist you with developing solutions that will assist you with self-development. Personal transformation and self-esteem are part of this process.

Life is forever changing. We all must learn something new each day to stay afloat. For this reason, we must encourage our minds to focus, stay determined and continue learning until the day we leave the world.
We have inner strengths that help us to learn.

Self-talk, for example, can assist you with practicing meditation. There is nothing wrong with talking to yourself since you have all the answers that will assist you with completing your self-development. You can expand your skills while broadening your mind by using self-talk.

Another great way to expand your mind is by using techniques, such as integration. Integration is the process that incorporates your knowledge, experiences, and events of the past into a mixture of assimilation that encourages your mind to reveal hidden messages. These messages are buried in the subliminal mind. Speaking of subliminal learning is encouraged today. We can practice subliminal learning, which will walk us through our past and right into the future. Similar to the steps a psychoanalytic uses, one can use subliminal learning to retract and build memory through systematic procedures that walk that entity into the traumas and misconceptions of his or her past and right through the systematic process of self-development simultaneously.

It is incredible what the human mind can do. The human mind can store speaking hundreds of volumes of dictionaries and encyclopedias. The average human only uses 10% of the brain. Imagine the many smart people in the world operating on this percentage. Now, think of a person that uses 75% of their brain. Do not think it is not possible, because continuous learning, subliminal learning, and various other tactics could make you one of the top dictionaries walking the face of the earth. It is possible. Anything is possible, and you just have to believe that.

However, even if the role of a student wasn’t forced on me in my life, I think I would be a lifelong learner. I love to learn. The universe is such a large and diverse place, and even our small corner of it is so complex and varied that you can find a new challenge in any direction you look. I love learning big things and small things, and even trivial things.

I love the investigation and the discovery involved in the process of learning. Sometimes only the process interests me, and I don’t worry about the result. I’ve always suspected that being a lifelong learner was a good thing, and I recently came up with three good reasons for embracing lifelong learning.

However, researchers at the University of Toronto have found learning can not only be good for your life but also your brain. Learning may protect the brain from the negative impacts of aging, such as memory loss, by building alternate neural networks absent in less-educated people. The more years you spend learning, the more prevention against memory loss you have.

Dr. Paul Nussbaum has also done extensive research in this area, and he reports that new and complex stimulation promotes a healthy brain. He says: “New learning translates to neurophysiological growth and mental stimulation in the same way that aerobics translates to cardiovascular health.” Nussbaum encourages people of all ages to continually promote their brain’s health by challenging their brain by learning new information and new skills as well as pursuing activities that may be challenging to master at first.

Lifelong learning also offers additional ways to keep your brain healthy. Studies show that it is important for human beings to have a role and a sense of purpose. Actively pursuing knowledge and skills can help you achieve both as well as the stimulation your brain needs to be healthy.

Finally, there is the financial incentive for learning. Studies show a strong correlation between health and finances. Other research shows that the more education and skills (learning) a person acquires, the higher their income. People who know more not only earn more money but know how to use it as a tool to further build their financial resources. No matter what your income or your age, it is never too late to begin learning how to manage your money better.

Three very good reasons for becoming a lifelong learner include promoting your brain’s health, giving your life a sense of purpose, and promoting your financial security. Any one of these reasons should be enough, but all three combine to a powerful motivation to learn.