A few weeks back I wrote a guest post on Dumb Little man about How to manage your ego in order to reach your full potential. As I was submitting an application this morning to what may well be my dream job (something I have all the skills for), I remembered something from my last semester in business school that made a tremendous difference in my life, and that was operating from a learning perspective. What does it mean to operate from a learning perspective? It means that you approach everything in your life as an eternal student. Every experience in life gives you an opportunity to learn. But in order to get the valuable lessons from each experience, it’s essential to operate from a learning perspective. There are opportunities to be a learner in your personal, professional, and academic life.
Personal:
If there’s any area of life we often tend to forget that we should be operating from a learning perspective, it’s in our personal life. Our ego tends to rear its ugly head quite a bit in our personal lives. Admitting we don’t know something or can’t accomplish something without help is not easy to come to terms with. As a personal development blogger, sometimes I find it ironic that I’m giving so much advice and yet I have challenges following my own advice and look to other personal development bloggers and personal development programs for advice. We all have strengths and we all have weaknesses on a personal level. There’s nothing wrong with that as long as we are willing to learn about the things that could improve our weaknesses. While I don’t believe that you should focus the bulk of your efforts on improving your weaknesses, I think that keeping an open mind is a good approach to dealing with them.
Professional:
If there’s anything that seems to be the credo of some of the most successful business people in the world, it’s that they surround themselves with people who are smarter than they are and who can teach them something. People who are ego driven are terrified that surrounding themselves with people who know more than they do will lead to their demise. Ironically it’s the exact opposite. Given the amount of research that shows you become the byproduct of the people you surround yourself with, wouldn’t it make sense to surround yourself with people who can teach you the skills to get you the next level. One thing I’ve heard about a truly good manager is that he or she grooms people to take over his or her job. In fact, that is the quality I recommend anybody look for in a manager when embarking on a new career.
Academics:
The world of academics is one that I’ve been familiar with my entire life. My father is a college professor and part of growing up in the Indian culture is the importance our parents place on getting good grades. While other kids were getting there A- report cards put on the refrigerator with magnets, we were asked “why didn’t you get an A+.” I’m being somewhat extreme here to make a point, but the importance we placed on grades was somewhat counterproductive. I got relatively bad grades as an undergrad, and the classes which I got bad grades in were the ones that I learned absolutely nothing in. My final two semester in business school, I decided that I wouldn’t pay attention to my grades at all. In fact, I didn’t even check my grades. Instead I operated from the attitude that “the only thing I care about this semester is learning as much as possible.” In my course in consumer behavior, my natural fascination with the material and the pure desire to learn caused me to do some of the most creative and innovative presentations I did during my business school career. In fact, by operating from the learning perspective, I got the highest grades I’ve ever gotten and it seemed to be the least amount of effort I had ever put into my work. What had once been a pain in the a#$ had become effortless effort.
I encourage you to be a lifelong learner. No matter what happens in your life, use the power of questions and ask yourself “what can I learn from this?.” I think you’ll start to see a tremendous transformation in your life.
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Learning everyday is the way to go. It doesn’t matter in what context, but make sure you can use it some how. That way you can remember and apply it. Later you can even adapt it and teach others.
I love how you explored this top in 3 different areas of your life. Thanks for sharing what you’ve learned in this post!