Learn

Live and Learn Right

/ jmfelicjan

Life doesn’t come with instructions. You may make mistakes, but you live and learn.

When we are born, we began to experience different things. We begin to experiment with our five senses. We hear sounds words, smell all kinds of things, we see different colors, shapes, sizes, objects, people, animals, etc. We touch various things, even tasting them. As we get older, we began to think and behave in various ways. We do things that are fun. We do things that we should and shouldn’t do. We wind up making mistakes and sometimes we get in trouble for them, but we continue living and we hopefully learn our lesson and not make those mistakes again. If your someone who has made mistakes, yet you continue to live your life, you’re just like everyone else in this world. Therefore, you’re not the only person in the world who has made all kinds of mistakes.

Your Always Learning Something

You’ve probably heard the phrase live and learn at some point in your life. Whether it was in a song, from a parent, a teacher, an actor in a movie or TV, those three words can be described as the concept of life itself. Everyday we learn something whether it’s about ourselves, about someone else, a new skill, acquire new knowledge about science, learn a new recipe, lyrics about a song, a new dance move, etc. While were learning all this stuff, we continue to live our lives. We learn something even if we don’t wanna learn something at the moment or if we’re not seeking new knowledge or experience. Our lives can get better from learning something new or we can go through a rough time.

Making Mistakes

Now let’s be honest with ourselves, we have all made all kinds of mistakes in our lives. I know I have made big and small mistakes in my life. Those mistakes probably made us feel bad about ourselves and probably affected other people in our lives as well. Our mistakes may have hurt someone’s feelings, started an argument, caused a fight, or messed something up. We are human, so therefore we are not perfect. Since we’re not perfect, we’re going to make mistakes one way or another; it’s just human nature. Even if we try our best to avoid mistakes, sometimes our best won’t be good enough. The overall moral is when we do make mistakes, we hopefully learn from them so that we don’t repeat them. What we do after we make our mistakes is what makes the difference. If you’re not making mistakes, chances are you’re not doing anything or not living a full life.

Learning From Our Mistakes

When we make a mistake is one thing, what happens after that is where the learning comes in and is the important part. A mistake tells us that something didn’t work out or was wrong. So we go ahead and correct it afterwards. We also learn from other peoples mistakes. We see or hear about their mistakes, and we hopefully don’t do what they did. We figure out what went wrong and come up with a solution so that it won’t happen again. We learn what we did wrong, fix it if we can, then move forward in our lives.

Learning is a Life Long Process

As I mentioned we learn something everyday, even if it’s something small. The learning process shouldn’t be rushed. We are going to be learning new things about ourselves, other people, our culture, and other things in life as we get older. Sometimes life’s greatest lessons come to us bits and pieces at a time. We don’t learn the full lesson at once. We just have to remember to be patient and not be hard on ourselves. If we want to grow as a person we have to continue to learn. Whatever our passion is, we have to follow it. Curiosity is the gateway to learning and exploring new things.

Embrace Life One Day at a Time

These days you may think how could we really embrace life when were busy with work, going to school, or raising in a family. Well you just have to stop and do some self-reflecting. Consider what matters the most to you on a personal level. Sometimes we get so busy with things we forget to prioritize what’s important to us. When we forget to prioritize the important things that our lives that help us thrive and bring us joy, we can get stuck in a rut and we run out of energy to do anything. Find what’s important to you whether that’s going on a hike, playing with your dog, building new things, reading, meditation, yoga, or painting. Any kind of personal reflection carries great meaning to a person. This is what adds value to their lives.

Finding the Right Balance

One of the big ideas of living and learning is finding balance in your life. You can spend years trying to find the right balance in your life. You try to balance your work life, school life, social life giving one or two of them more attention than the other and not letting one take full control and throw you off balance completely. Life can change so fast that one side can have more weight in seconds. It can be hard to keep up with things when life takes a sudden turn. I found it hard to do that many times myself. So once again you’re not alone in that department.

Final Thoughts and Sum Up

The lesson of living and learning is a lifelong process. We learn one thing and then another and another and another. We make mistakes, but the idea is to learn from them. We have to learn to find balance in our life so that we don’t get overloaded with one thing. It may take us longer to learn some things than others and that’s fine. Everyone learns at a different pace and that’s another thing we may need to learn about ourselves. Going back to my first post about not comparing ourselves to someone else, we have to figure out what we thrive at, what are passion is, and how we learn. How we learn is different than how someone else learns. Live and learn, it’s the best way to grow.

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Change = Growth…True

/ jmfelicjan

Have you ever gotten so comfortable with something that you didn’t want to it to change, but it did? Have you developed a routine that you got so used to that you did it every day, every other day, then all of sudden something happened and you had to change the way you operate and move things around? Well your not the only one as I myself have had to deal with this dozens of times in my life.

We all experience some kind of change in our life at some point. The change can be very exciting because something new can happen, but change can be scary and difficult because something new can happen. Any kind of change can be described as an upset in your life that can shake your world up, a new beginning, and an opportunity for growth. When we hear the word ‘change’ or the phrase ‘there are going to be some changes around here’ are attention is quickly drawn to whoever said it and our adrenaline peaks up. One of the first things that goes through our minds is that this change is going to be something bad and/or unsettling. Down the road reality can kick in and we find out that things didn’t turn out as bad as we thought or they weren’t bad at all. Sometimes change can be scary, but only if you see it that way.

Change can be an opportunity for growth. As we get older, we need to be able to expand our horizon of interests, skills, and add to preexisting things in our life. It can be easy to get stuck in a rut or routine just out of sheer habit or because you went into survival mode due to something bad that happened to you. The longer your in that rut or routine, any kind of change that happens to you will be bigger and more alarming compared to being in a rut or routine for a short time. Recently, I have been experiencing new things which have helped me grow more as a person. Experiencing new things, meeting new people, and going to new places are opportunities for growth.

In order for people to grow into healthy and functional people, we have to embrace change. Embracing change can help us in several ways. For example:

  • Our confidence builds up
  • Our self-esteem increases
  • Were more open to what people say
  • Were open to try new things in our lives
  • We learn to control our fear (Courage is fear controlled)
  • Expand our knowledge and creativity
  • We become more mature
  • We understand ourselves better

The more we embrace change and see it as an opportunity to grow and learn new things, the easier it becomes to deal with and it’s not as scary. There are people who thrive with change. They want to challenge themselves over and over. Now I’m not saying go full throttle, you have to go at your own pace. Some extroverts (people who are out-going) go full throttle because that’s who they are. Some introverts (people who are more reserved) take things slow. It’s important to stay true to who you are because that is what makes you unique.

Here are some ways you can better embrace change and see it as growth and understand the concept of it:

1. Learn and Experience Something New

To elaborate more on this idea, change can be scary, but look past the fear and see change as to better yourself. As you learn something new or experience something new you may get clarity on something you have been trying to figure out. You can connect with someone better because you both shared the same experience.

2. Look Past the Fear

Change has a way of setting off our alarm that something we may not be able to control is going to happen whether we caused it or not. We get scared and sometimes avoid the change entirely. Well we can’t always do that. Change can be scary if we see it that way. Positive self-talk can be helpful because it helps us to see what we can benefit from the change, ignore the fear, and gain the confidence to move forward. We break it down and see it for what it really is. Again, we need to look past the fear and see the benefits and opportunities for growth.

3. Change Happens at Different Times for Everyone

Change can be right in front of you, but maybe not for those around you. If there is some kind of change that is happening to you, but not your friends, family, co-workers, or those around you, don’t ignore it. Change happens at different times for everyone. You may go through a change now, but one day your friends or family members will go through a change and you won’t. Just be supportive toward them as you would want the same thing yourself.

4. Change can Lead to Openness

Change can lead to growth, but it can also lead to being more open to new things. As you grow, you expand your interests which can lead to embracing new opportunities and learning new things to expand your knowledge. You can become more open to hearing other people’s ideas and opinions. You get to see other peoples perspectives which does lead to connecting with someone and improving existing relationships.

5. Change can Increase Creativity and Curiosity

When you open up to change, your curiosity goes up. You begin to want to learn why things are the way they are? You may get curious about someone’s life story or the origins of something. This can lead to your creativity increasing because you’re open to new ideas which can spark ideas of your own.

Here is a video about change is growth from Nik Miller who is a veteran who served in the Marines and became a US Para-canoe representative. Here he talks about how he viewed change as a way to grow and to challenge himself.

Change is inevitable, but growth is optional. I believe change is the bridge that can lead to growth; it’s up to you if you cross that bridge or not.