Apply your heart to instruction and your ears to words of knowledge.
Proverbs 23:12 NIV
Learning
“There are 24 hours or 1440 minutes in a day. Invest just 1% of your time each day to learning new material or skills (that’s just 15 minutes a day, rounding it up) and over the course of a year you will have invested an extra 91 hours in additional study time. That’s like going back to college for three whole weeks every year!
R. Ian Seymour
R. Ian Seymour, excerpt taken from Maximise Your Potential
Advertisement in an old magazine: “FOR SALE – Complete 24-volume encyclopaedia in excellent condition. No longer needed, got married, wife knows everything!
Q. Why is dyslexia such a hard word to spell?
Do you know how they teach dolphins to jump high out of the water and over a rope? The trainers start by putting the rope below the surface of the water and then every time the dolphin swims over the rope it gets rewarded, but every time it swims under the rope it gets nada, zilch. Of course, the dolphin soon learns to go over the rope every time and it continues to do this as the rope is gradually lifted higher and higher out of the water. The trainers build up the dolphin’s belief system; they encourage them to overcome any self-imposed limitations and to keep climbing higher.
R. Ian Seymour
R. Ian Seymour, excerpt taken from Discover Your True Potential
If you are anything like me, lessons of life seem always to be learnt the hard way. It seems as though I often have to make the same mistake time and time again before I finally figure out how not to do something. Either that or I discover that what I am attempting to do simply isn’t going to work or I finally understand I need to change direction. In her book, “There’s A Hole In My Sidewalk,” Portia Nelson wrote a piece of prose entitled, “Autobiography in Five Short Chapters.” Here it is, see if you can relate to it.
Chapter One
I walk down the street.
There’s a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost… I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.
Chapter Two
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in the same place.
But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
Chapter Three
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in… it’s a habit.
But my eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.
Chapter Four
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
Chapter Five
I walk down a different street.
Portia Nelson
There’s A Hole In My Sidewalk
Some words of wisdom: 10 lessons I’ve learnt the hard way (but still tend to forget sometimes!)…
- Don’t major in minors – don’t sweat the small the stuff (and it’s mostly all small stuff when it comes down to it)!
- It doesn’t always pay to wear your heart on your sleeve – some things are best left unsaid.
- Accept people for who they are, even if you don’t always agree with their views or behaviour. Don’t try to change people to fit your mould. People are different. Be who you are and let others be who they are.
- Everyone has an invisible sign hanging from their neck saying, ‘Love me, please.’ (You don’t have to particularly like someone to show love to them.)
- When you stoop to help lift another to their feet you can’t help but lift yourself at the same time.
- The older we get the more we realise that life is short, and life can be tough a lot of the time… so make the most of things. Seize today with all its blessings and challenges. Live every moment. Live, love and laugh everyday (or at least try to do). Enjoy the journey. Make the most of every chance you get.
- Don’t waste a £1’s worth of time of a 10 penny decision.
- Other people are not responsible for your happiness… certainly they can help to contribute towards it but ultimately they are not responsible for your happiness, you are! Happiness is a choice: You are about as happy as you choose to be!
- Understanding your uniqueness, and your own gifts and talents frees you from the need to measure yourself by the runner in the next lane.
- Count your blessings – not your problems – and be thankful.
R. Ian Seymour
It’s interesting and appropriate that the word ‘LEARN’ is also made up from the words ‘EAR’ and ‘EARN’.
“The mediocre teacher tells; the good teacher explains; the superior teacher demonstrates; the great teacher inspires.”
William Arthur Ward
“We hear only about half of what is said to us, understand only about half of that, believe only about half of that and remember only about half of that!”
Mignon McLaughlin (journalist and author)
“When I was eighteen I just couldn’t believe how little my father knew, but by the time I was twenty-one I couldn’t believe how much he had learnt!”
Mark Twain (1835-1910), American novelist and humourist
If you give a man a fish you feed him for a day. If you teach him how to fish you feed him for a lifetime.
Ancient Chinese proverb.
The Bible: read from it, feed from it, heed from it, lead from it…and succeed from it.
“The two great laws of life are growth and decay. When things stop growing, they begin to die. This is true of men, business or nations.”
Charles Gow, author
When you thought I wasn’t looking you hung my first painting on the refrigerator,
and I wanted to paint another.
When you thought I wasn’t looking you fed a stray cat,
and I thought it was good to be kind to animals.
When you thought I wasn’t looking, you baked a birthday cake just for me,
and I knew that little things were special things.
When you thought I wasn’t looking you said a prayer,
and I believed there was a God that I could always talk to.
When you thought I wasn’t looking you kissed me goodnight,
and I felt loved.
When you thought I wasn’t looking I saw tears come from your eyes,
and I learned that sometimes things hurt – but that it’s all right to cry.
When you thought I wasn’t looking you smiled,
and it made me want to look that pretty, too.
When you thought I wasn’t looking you cared,
and I wanted to be everything I could be.
When you thought I wasn’t looking, I looked…
and wanted to say thanks for all those things you did when you thought I wasn’t looking.
Mary Rita Schilke Korzan
Let the wise listen and add to their learning and let the discerning get guidance.
Proverbs 1:5 NIV
In 1961, the Soviet Union sent the first cosmonaut into space. When the cosmonaut returned to Earth, the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev declared they’d been to space and didn’t see any god there. About 10 months later, the United States sent John Glenn into space. He circled the earth three times on his Mercury mission, came back down, and told the world, “I saw God everywhere! I saw his glory in the galaxy. I saw his splendour in the universe. I saw his majesty in the stars.” Which one was right? They both were. Jesus said, “Unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God” (John 3:3 NLT). Before there is spiritual transformation in your life, you’re too narrow-minded to see the possibility of what God wants to do in your life.
Rick Warren
Source: Daily Hope with Rick Warren, 31/12/2017
Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Psalm 90:12 NIV
Did you hear about the chap who entered his donkey into the Grand National? ‘He’ll never win’, a friend said. ‘I know,’ he replied, ‘but we only ever learn and grow by association.’
“Every man I meet is in some way superior and I can learn from him.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), American poet and essayist.
If you want to keep up you simply can’t afford to let up.
“Personally, I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like to be taught.”
Winston Churchill
Never begrudge investing money in your own education.
“Knowledge is power.”
Francis Bacon (1561-1626), philosopher and writer
Knowledge is like underwear – it is useful to have it, but not necessary to show it off!
“If you have a choice, always work for either the best or the worst boss. Why? Because from the good ones you learn what to do and from the bad ones you learn what not to do. But from those who are mediocre, you learn practically nothing.”
Fred Smith, US businessman, speaker and author
“The best helping hand you will ever find is at the end of your own arm.” – Anon.
“To attract people you must be attractive. To attract powerful people you must be powerful. To attract committed people you must be committed. Instead of going to work on them go to work on yourself first.” – Jim Rohn
Some of us are like the little girl who thought she’d exhausted the subject of mathematics once she had learned her twelve-times table. When her grandfather asked with a twinkle in his eye, ‘What’s 13 times 13?’ she scoffed, ‘Don’t be silly, Grandpa, there’s no such thing.’
Source: The UCB Word For Today, 26/1/2015
Go to every worthwhile seminar, conference, meeting and training class that you can get to. Some of them will be life-changing events but the problem is, you can’t tell which events they are and if you don’t go you’ll never know.
Lesson One: The only way to coast through life is downhill.
“Only those who constantly retool themselves stand a chance of staying employed in the years ahead.”
Tom Peters, author and management expert
“Our goal should not be to be employed, but to be employable.”
Patricia Fripp
“Empty the pennies from your purse into your mind and your mind will fill your purse with pennies.”
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790).
Books you don’t read can’t help you.
“Some books are to be tasted; others to be swallowed; and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.”
Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, statesman and essayist
“Master books but do not let them master you. Read to live not live to read.”
Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron (1803-1873), British novelist, dramatist and statesman
“Don’t let your learning lead to knowledge. Let it lead to action.”
Jim Rohn
True knowledge is not information but transformation.
Four things a man must learn to do
If he would make his record true:
To think without confusion clearly;
To love his fellow-man sincerely;
To act from honest motives purely;
To trust in God and Heaven securely.
Henry Van Dyke
I am the LORD your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you by the way you should go.
Isaiah 48:17 (New King James Version)
“Study your Bible like you pick apples. First, shake the tree, then shake the limbs, then shake the branches, then shake the twigs, then look under every leaf.”
Martin Luther
“I am always best when alone; no place like my own study; no company like good books, and especially the book of God.”
Matthew Henry
“Among the earliest ambitions to be excited in clerks, workmen, journeymen, and indeed, among all the struggling up from nothing to something, is that of owning, and constantly adding to a library of good books. A little library, growing larger every year, is an honourable part of a young man’s history. It is a man’s duty to have books. A library is not a luxury, but one of the necessaries of life.”
Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), U.S. clergyman, leader in the movement for the abolition of slavery
Education is expensive, ignorance more so.
Every penny invested in your own education is worth a pound, every cent a dollar.
R. Ian Seymour
It’s been said that formal education can earn you a living but personal education can earn you a fortune.
If you can read, thank a teacher.
We must do for others what they cannot do for themselves, but we must not do for them what they will not do for themselves.
Libraries offer knowledge for free. All you have to do is take your own container.
“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.”
Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729), British essayist and dramatist
“We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.”
Tyron Edwards (1804-1894), U.S. Theologian
Having a chip on the shoulder usually means there’s wood higher up!
“Wear your learning like your watch, in a private pocket [or under your cuff]; and do not pull it out and strike it, merely to show that you have one!”
Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773), English Statesman and author
Learn more and earn more
The 4 steps to learning:
a) I talk, you listen
b) You repeat, I listen
c) I do, you observe
d) You repeat, I observe
I keep six honest serving men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
and How and Where and Who.
(from ‘The Elephant’s Child’ by Rudyard Kipling.)
If you do not regularly read non-fictional books, articles and magazines to keep you ‘in-the-know’ then you are making a SERIOUS mistake. And, if you take this admonishment lightly then you’re making an even bigger one! – Remember this: Reading keeps you on the grow!
When you’re green you’re still growing, but when you stop you’ll start to rot!
“Some people will think nothing of splashing out £20 or £30, a head, on a meal – food for the stomach – but yet, those very same people become penny-pinching paupers when it comes to investing in a good book or audio programme – food for the mind. They don’t seem to realise that the nourishment from the meal lasts for only 24 hours whereas the benefits of investing in personal development lasts for a lifetime!” – R. Ian Seymour
R. Ian Seymour, excerpt from Discover Your True Potential
Have your ever considered how much your television costs you? Not to actually purchase the thing but to keep watching it. Maybe it’s time you switched off and switched on instead!
“If I have seen further it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”
Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), English scientist famous for discovering the law of gravity
Funny selective attention test