How important is self development for you?

Are you trying to learn new things, skills or languages? Do you think it matters if we acquire new skills?

I remember hating school, especially college; hated all 7 years of it. After my second college graduation, I felt like I just wasted 7 years of my life when I could had been doing so much more than staring at a computer screen all day, trying to solve complicated theoretical problems with less than $1000 income per month.

I felt like I was done with learning. My brain was full and couldn’t fit anything else in there, more and it’d burst. I didn’t know what all these expensive classes were trying to prepare me for. A lot of the stuff didn’t feel relevant at the time. I’m not sure if it’s relevant even now – perhaps only 10% or less.

My last college class was almost 7 years ago. I have been out in the workforce for over 11 years but only worked full-time in the last 6 years. Ever since the pandemic and I started working from home, I couldn’t help but notice my sudden urge for learning new things – an urge I wish I had when I was in school. Maybe my brain is now bored from doing repetitive tasks or maybe it’s an age thing. Perhaps as we get older, our affinity toward learning grows stronger.

In the last year or so, I have been listening to self-improvement podcasts. Listening to those podcast gave me a sense of hope, that life will be better as the years go on. I guess that’s the point of these podcasts – to help us feel better about ourselves. I have also been listening to quite a few history podcasts as well as business podcasts as my fascination for both of those things grew the more I listened to those podcasts.

So to answer this week’s Sunday Poser, self development is very important to me as I recently realized I and perhaps many others are lifelong learners. I think learning makes life interesting, it sparks a kind of inner hope, and I think it improves our mental capacity as we age.

#SundayPoser