Why It Is Important To Continue Learning

By Sam Makhoul

This article is in a series of articles about the system of daily rituals, habits and hacks you that will completely transform your days. When you live by this four-five-six system, you will find that obstacles and setbacks will not trip you up.

You will find that on the days where motivation abandons you, you will still stay on track.

In case you missed the three previous essential daily rituals here are the links. It’s a good idea to go back and read them as a refresher anyway.

Essential Ritual #1: Journaling

Essential Ritual #2: Movement

Essential Ritual #3: Meditation

But this whole series started with this article that so many people absolutely loved: Is Motivation Destroying Your Identity

In this article we will go through:

Why continuous learning is important to your success?
How and when to infuse learning into your day?
What books and podcasts should you learn from?
Who or what are the best teachers on earth?

Why Learning Is Important:

Learning is how we grow personally and professionally. It is the sixth most important area in our lives and the foundation upon, which A Higher Branch has been established.

It is the essence of our philosophy of climbing higher in life and the quest for constant upgrade and improvement in all eight areas of our life. Without learning, we stagnate in those areas.

We do the same things every day because we do not know any better. Learning empowers us to try new things and reach for new goals and dreams.

All the latest brain research also shows that continuous learning and looking after your brain is good for our health and longevity.

3 mistakes we make when it comes to learning:

We stop learning after we finish school and/or university.
We only continue to learn about our job and subject matter expertise. True learning is a lifelong adventure where you continuously learn about each of the eight areas of life.
We learn from the wrong sources. We live in an era of information overload and making sense of this information is difficult when digested in an unstructured way. The internet is also filled with information designed to promote one fad over another; one diet over another; one lifestyle over another; one product over another.

When Should You Learn Daily?

Something becomes a ritual when you do it at the same time every day or on cue. Learning should not be done as part of your morning and nightly rituals.

These times are reserved for movement, meditation and journaling for the reasons previously discussed in those articles. Welcome to Commute College.

Most of us commute to and from work daily. This is the perfect time to plug in, listen and learn.

Learning should be done whenever you have dead time. Boredom should be your cue to read, listen and learn. In the car, on a plane, train or bus or whenever you having nothing to do.

You need to resist the temptation to drift to mindless entertainment on radio, television, and social media. You need to be in conscious control with what you let into your brain.

This is what the highest of achievers do. Learning is their daily ritual.

What Should You Learn?

You should be seeking books and podcasts about all eight areas of your life and not just one area of interest (typically health). This is a problem in itself.

I know some people who become obsessed with one area and start to neglect other parts of their life, especially relationships. It is important that you spread the learning equally among all areas.

We are so fortunate to live in an era where we have so much to read, listen and watch. We not only have so many books written by pioneering minds, but we also have audible, we have podcasts and we have YouTube.

But we need to be discerning and distinguish between entertainment and information. Two decades ago the challenge was the lack of information and lack of scientific research.

Today the challenge is to sift through all the overwhelming and often conflicting information. To help you on your learning quest, check out the below podcasts.

In these podcasts, the hosts are caring, knowledgeable, authentic and share information generously with no strings attached. They also interview experts, researchers and actual practitioners across the eight areas of life.

Is JIM KWIK The Best Teacher On Earth?

The standout and foremost world-renowned expert on the superpower of learning is Jim Kwik. He is a world expert in memory improvement and optimal brain performance.

1 (founder, Sam Makhoul) attended one of Jim’s workshops and implement his brain training methods and let me tell you, it is unbelievably effective. It has helped me think smarter and faster in meetings.

Jim is also one of the humblest people I have ever met. He has worked with actors on the biggest Hollywood blockbusters, top global organisations and CEO’s that includes Harvard, Virgin, Nike and GE.

His personal story is also compelling. One of the principles I learned from Jim is that your own curiosity is the best teacher on earth.

If self-awareness is a great teacher of all things internal, then curiosity is the greatest teacher of all things external.

Applying Curiosity To Information:

So, it is important when you read or listen to books and podcasts that you apply a curiosity mindset. Are you accepting everyday information as it is or are you adding to it or contradicting it with your curiosity?

This means having your own opinion and questioning everything you learn. Do this by asking yourself, “yes and…” or the “yes but…” principles.

To apply these principles, we must let our curiosity break through our fear barrier. We all have this curiosity inside of us as children but over the years fear tends to keep it locked away.

Trust that curiosity. Unleash it. You will find behind every curious thought is the potential to discover your own wisdom on what you read. It is that curiosity that leads to genius or a genius idea.

Applying Curiosity To People:

There is also another huge area of knowledge, apart from books, where we can learn from – people. This is the fastest way to acquire knowledge.

Therefore, we must master the skill of listening with undivided attention. We can never know everything in life but by listening to others we can learn from their experience and that accelerates our learning.

Listening is a dying art. Many people overindulge in constant talking that they go through life never really learning from others.

But my advice is that the people you must listen to first come from the eight areas of life, in the following order:

Your partner who often knows you best.
Your mother, father or grandparents – they have experience and perspective.
Your work mentors, colleagues and customers.
Your closest friends.

But as always you need to filter any knowledge from these sources by using your own curiosity and asking the two questions above. This does not make you a contrarian. This make you progressive where you build on wisdom from others to create what’s right for you.

Want to read the rest of this series? You can find them here:

Powerful Daily Habits
Ritual #1 – Journaling
Ritual #2 – Movement
Ritual #3 – Meditation

Learning: Essential Daily Ritual #4