When you were little you could spend hours getting good at what every it was you were in love with doing that day. You would contort your fingers into witchy shapes and claws as you deafened the neighbours learning whatever instrument the school band needed. You would cut and stick and paste and make mess after mess creating your latest masterpiece. You would run until your legs felt like they might fall off playing the hottest playground game. You would learn. You would play.
You would, without knowing it, invest in your own growth.
In fact, almost everything you did when you were little was an investment in growing.
We went to school to learn in an environment which was designed (for better or worse) to help us grow. While no one’s school experience was perfect, and some even less though. But those years were time to invest in our futures. You had time to learn from teachers and learn by playing. The investments we made then have led us all, in part, to where we are now.
We spent all of that time investing in ourselves. As we grow older we seem to spend less effort investing in ourselves than investing time in other people and project. But we are not finite resources.
This year I’m taking a pledge to reverse that balance, as much as I can, to something more like where it was when I was small. I’m going to be a child again and I’m going to get myself back into school for the things I care about. I want to focus on learning, and having fun as I do it.
There are four key pillars to investing yourself and I’ve tried to put them in some familiar educational terms:
- Attend some classes – these don’t have to be physical, in 2019 there are plenty of online classes too. Unlike in school, you can choose to learn alone or with other people, however you work best.
- Do your homework – so no one really liked homework as a kid, but putting in the extra reading and adding breadth and depth to your interests is so worth it.
- Give yourself fresh air – there’s a reason you have so many breaks during the school day. You can’t learn non-stop, you need time to let everything you’ve absorbed percolate. You have to decompress and turn lessons into memories.
- Find a playground – you need to experiment. One of the best ways to truly use you new found knowledge is to grow is to take it apart and make it into something new for yourself. While you do that you have to have space to fail as well as succeed.
How are you investing in yourself? We remember best the things we teach others and I’d love for you to turn this into a forum for teaching and growing together.
