Embrace lifelong learning as your ultimate duty

Lifelong learning is a form of self-initiated or self-directed education that is focused on personal or professional development. It is the ongoing, voluntary, and self-motivated pursuit of knowledge for either personal or professional reasons. Generally, it refers to the learning that occurs outside of a formal educational institute, such as a school, university, or corporate training. It is being voluntary with the purpose of achieving personal fulfillment either through informal or formal education. Lifelong learning is key to achieving personal fulfillment and satisfaction as we become driven to explore, learn, and grow.?

The Importance of Lifelong Learning

“Education is the key to self-development and empowerment” - Lailah Gifty Akita

Lifelong Learning is important for personal development and fulfillment, and is a significant step toward career advancement. If you are an employee, you will need to keep up with the fast pace of the industry you are in as a result of continuously evolving corporate world, industries and jobs expanding at a rapid rate, changing job descripts and skill sets needed for a particular. Many people today are worried of keeping their jobs as a result of automation and artificial intelligence and emergence of the gig economy. Thus, it is important to keep upgrading your skills so that you can adapt to changes in the workplace, including to develop skills and grow your career. Subsequently, lifelong learning is key to your professional life and personal development.

What is lifelong learning

“We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.” - Peter Drucke. ?

Lifelong learning is about gaining knowledge and learning new skills throughout your life. Embracing lifelong learning is one of the most effective ways to deal with change because change is constant in life: Our personal lives, our work lives, our local communities, governance, associations, and organizations. As a result, lifelong learning will help enhance our understanding of the world around us, leading to more and better opportunities and improvement of the quality of our life.?

How to be a lifelong learner

“It is never late to earn a degree, masters or doctorate. Learning has no age limit. All age groups are welcome to the act of learning.” - Lailah Gifty Akita

One way to become a lifelong learner is to undergo training for skills development while you are working. In addition, you can attend seminars and conferences, subscribe to email newsletters of industry associations, and expand your network, so you don’t miss out on the latest in the industry. You can also participate in continued education at colleges and universities, attend art classes at the recreation center, or study and debate important issues in online groups.?

Who should embrace lifelong learning?

?“It's essential to keep moving, learning and evolving for as long as you're here and this world keeps spinning” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

With the rapidly changing world of work, everyone needs lifelong learning to advance their skills and stay relevant. Lifelong learning will help you to acquire fresh knowledge and skills which can lead to a hobby or starting a new career. Lifelong learning is for all ages because of the many benefits that accrue to the individual and their communities. Thus, lifelong learning is vital for everybody, no matter the age or level of education as you will be driven by the desire for more knowledge, self-improvement, or career aspirations.?

When to embrace lifelong learning

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Learning is a never-ending process because there’s always something to learn in order to enrich your life and career. lifelong learning is about creating and maintaining a positive attitude to learning both for personal and professional development. You can embrace lifelong anytime, especially after your formal education when you are given the ‘Power to Read and Do What Appertains’ to your degree. To become a lifelong learner, you will need to be motivated to learn and develop because you want to, thus a deliberate and voluntary act. Whatever your age, it's never too late to start, including changing your career path in mid-life or spending time informally developing your expertise.

Where to embrace lifelong learning

?“All the world is my school and all humanity is my teacher.” - George Whitman

You can go back to the university, take online courses, or attend industry-specific seminars and workshops, or whatever can fit into your life for career and personal growth. With online learning you can learn from wherever you have internet access. You can also take online classes at whatever time of day works best for you, keeping you in control of your schedule. For example, you can earn a degree online with access to accredited universities across the world.

Benefits of lifelong learning

?“Learning new skills is one way we can rewrite the story of our lives. Whether it is to pursue a different career, for our own intellectual curiosity, or to strengthen our ability to focus, monotasking learning can be very rewarding.” - Thatcher Wine

1. It helps you stay employed: You become knowledgeable about your work and can adapt to changes.
2. It keeps you motivated: You can become motivated by further honing your skills or learning new ones.
3. It helps improve the quality of your life: It can help you understand how the world works and realize your passions and boost creativity, which will lead to living a better life.
4. It can help you succeed at your job: Take the time to acquire the skills employers are looking for.
5. It can help your brain stay healthy: Learning keeps brain cells working at optimum levels, which may slow cognitive and memory decline as we age, thereby keeping our brain healthier.
6. It can help you stay connected: You will keep making friends and avoid becoming out of touch with the modern world.
7. ?It can help you stay fulfilled: It helps us achieve a more satisfying personal life. Lifelong learning is enjoyable and can increase our sense of self-fulfillment. In turn, this will open our minds as we gain wisdom that can help us make the world a better place through social change and other life-affirming endeavors.
8. It’s easier than ever to engage in lifelong learning: Lifelong learning is now a real possibility, no matter where you live.
9. It boosts our confidence and self-esteem.
10. It makes us less risk averse and more adaptable to change when it happens.
11. It challenges our ideas and beliefs.
12. It can be fun: Learning for the sake of learning can in itself be a rewarding experience.
13. It can increase your knowledge or skills around a particular hobby or pastime that you enjoy.
14. You can develop some entirely new skill that will in some way enhance your life – take a pottery or car mechanic course for example.
15. It is important if you are planning a trip and want to learn more about the history and culture of your destination.
16. You can also take a degree course later in life simply because you enjoy your chosen subject and the challenges of academic study.
17. Learning gives you options and expands your possibilities.?

How to become an effective learner?

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1. Motivation: You need to feel positive about learning and about your ability to learn.
2. Acquire: Acquire relevant and meaningful information and develop this into knowledge and skills through reading, listening, observing, practicing, experimenting, and experience.
3. Search: We can search for a personal meaning in the information we’re acquiring, including understanding them, being able to put them into context, or apply what you acquire.
4. Trigger: You can help to trigger recollection in a variety of ways: You can take notes, practice, discuss, and experiment with new ideas and skills to help you learn and develop.
5. Examine: Regularly examine your knowledge to help reinforce in your mind what you have learned, including to keep an open-mind, question your understanding, and be open to new information. For example, you can talk to others and see their point of view which can be a powerful way of examining your own perception and understanding of a subject.
6. Reflect: You should reflect on your learning - how and why you learned, including how you felt about a particular topic or situation. The key is to learn from your mistakes as well as from your successes and always try to remain positive.

How to adopt lifelong learning in your life?

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1. Recognize your own personal interests and goals: Reflect on what you’re passionate about and what you envision for your own future.
2. Make a list of what you would like to learn or be able to do: Explore what it is about that particular interest or goal that you want to achieve.
3. Identify how you would like to get involved and the resources available: You will need to figure out how to get started by researching and reading about the interest and goal.
4. Structure the learning goal into your life: Plan out how the requirements of the new learning initiative can fit into your life or what you need to do to make it fit.
5. Make a commitment: Committing to your decision to engage in a new learning initiative is the final and most important step. To do this effectively, you will need to set realistic expectations and have the self-motivation to see it through, and commit to it without making excuses.?

Leadership and lifelong learning

“Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future.” - Brian Tracy

Educated leaders are a major asset to the society since no society can develop beyond the mental capacity of its decisionmakers. The benefits of lifelong learning in leadership development include increased functionality ("skilling up"), improved life satisfaction, enhanced "transferability," and greater empathy. You can take control of your professional development through a continuous process of seeking, sensing-making, and sharing:

• Seek: It is about finding things out and keeping up to date. We need smart filters to sort out the valuable information.
• Sense: It is how we personalize information and use it. It includes reflection and putting into practice what we learn.
• Share: It includes exchanging resources, ideas, and experiences with our networks as well as collaborating with our colleagues.

Leave your comfort zone

?“We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.” - Peter Drucker.

To become a lifelong learner, you will need to step out of your comfort zone and embrace discomfort because the path to success leads through hardship and countless obstacles. As a result, you will need to you challenge yourself to overcome more and more challenges.?

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Conclusion

?“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” - Dr. Seuss.

It is said that the key to success is to become a lifelong learner. Lifelong learning helps us to develop and grow, thanks to our ability to learn. Lifelong learners are happier, healthier and live longer because it can keep both the body and mind in shape leading to mental sharpness, especially for senior citizens. They may also have a significant financial advantage over the course of a lifetime. Lifelong learning leads to a well-educated citizenry which makes for a better society for all of us. Thus, lifelong learning is good for your health and good for everyone around you, and can prevent you from becoming bored and thus enable a more fulfilling life at any age. ?

Standing on the shoulders of giants

Today we shall be standing on the shoulders of the following giants, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants,” - Sir Isaac Newton:

1. “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” - William Butler Yeats
2. “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” – Socrates
3. “Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.” - Isaac Asimov
4. “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.” - Henry Ford
5. “The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.” - Michel Legrand
6. “All I have learned, I learned from books.” - Abraham Lincoln
7. “Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.” - Albert Einstein
8. “There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.” - Michel de Montaigne
9. “You'll never know everything about anything, especially something you love.” - Julia Child
10. “Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.” - Samuel Johnson
11. “I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led.” - Thomas Jefferson
12. “The education of a man is never completed until he dies.” - Robert E. Lee
13. “All the world is my school and all humanity is my teacher.” - George Whitman
14. “Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future.” - Brian Tracy
15. “Self-education is lifelong curiosity.” - Lailah Gifty Akita
16. “Learning new skills is one way we can rewrite the story of our lives. Whether it is to pursue a different career, for our own intellectual curiosity, or to strengthen our ability to focus, monotasking learning can be very rewarding.” - Thatcher Wine
17. “It's essential to keep moving, learning and evolving for as long as you're here and this world keeps spinning” - Rasheed Ogunlaru
18. “The path of spiritual growth is a path of lifelong learning.” - M. Scott Peck
19. “That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you’ve understood all your life, but in a new way.” - Doris Lessing.
20. “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” - Dr. Seuss.
21. “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” - Mahatma Gandhi.
22. “Being a student is easy. Learning requires actual work.” - William Crawford.
23. "He who laughs most learns best.” - John Cleese.
24. “Change is the end result of all true learning.” - Leo Buscaglia.
25. “Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” - John F. Kennedy.
26. “The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.” - B.B. King.
27. “In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time — none, zero.” - Charlie Munger.
28. “It is what we know already that often prevents us from learning.” - Claude Bernard.
29. “I am learning all the time. The tombstone will be my diploma.” - Eartha Kitt.
30. "I believe the more successful an actor becomes, the more chances he should take. An actor never stops learning." - John Garfield.
31. “We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.” - Peter Drucker.
32. “Wisdom…. comes not from age, but from education and learning.” - Anton Chekhov.
33. "Commit yourself to lifelong learning. The most valuable asset you'll ever have is your mind and what you put into it." - Albert Einstein.
34. "It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.” - John Wooden.
35. “No thief, however skillful, can rob one of knowledge, and that is why knowledge is the best and safest treasure to acquire.” - L. Frank Baum.
36. "When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people." - Abraham Joshua Heschel.
37. "When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people." - Abraham Joshua Heschel.
38. "Formal education will make you a living. Self-education will make you a fortune.” - Jim Rohn.
39. “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” - Mark Twain.
40. “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.” - Malcolm X.
41. “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or self-confidence.” - Robert Frost.
42. “Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.” - Isaac Asimov.
43. “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” - Haruki Murakami.
44. "Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.” - Pele.
45. “The man who is too old to learn was probably always too old to learn.” - Henry S. Haskins.
46. “The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live.” - Mortimer Adler.
47. “Continuous learning is the minimum requirement for success in any field.” - Brian Tracy.
48. "A ‘genius’ is often merely a talented person who has done all of his or her homework.” - Thomas Edison.
49. “The correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.” - ?Plutarch.
50. “Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow.” - ?Anthony J. D'Angelo.

Additional Resources

1. The Importance of Lifelong Learning https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/elearning/the-importance-of-lifelong-learning/
2. The Many Benefits of Lifelong Learning https://www.waldenu.edu/programs/resource/the-many-benefits-of-lifelong-learning
3. Why lifelong learning? https://docs.rutgers.edu/vp/news/why-lifelong-learning
4. Importance of Lifelong Learning https://study.com/academy/popular/importance-of-lifelong-learning.html
5. Agreed! The Power to Read and Do What Appertains https://newtimesconsultants.com/?p=2722
6. Lifelong Learning https://www.skillsyouneed.com/learn/lifelong-learning.html
7. Lifelong Learning https://www.valamis.com/hub/lifelong-learning
8. 9 ways to become a lifelong learner https://www.opencolleges.edu.au/blog/2015/03/09/9-ways-become-lifelong-learner/
9. 12 Powerful Habits of People Dedicated to Lifelong Learning https://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/12-signs-you-are-lifelong-learner.html
10. 12 Powerful Habits of People Dedicated to Lifelong Learning https://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/12-signs-you-are-lifelong-learner.html
11. Follow These Four Simple Steps to Become a Lifelong Learner https://www.mba.com/business-school-and-careers/career-possibilities/follow-these-four-simple-steps-to-become-a-lifelong-learner
12. 10 Ways To Engage In Lifelong Learning https://www.teachthought.com/learning/ways-to-engage-in-lifelong-learning/
13. 15 Steps You Can Take Right Now to Become a Lifelong Learner https://thriveglobal.com/stories/15-steps-you-can-take-right-now-to-become-a-lifelong-learner/
14. 10 helpful habits to develop a lifelong learning mindset https://www.phoenix.edu/blog/develop-lifelong-learning-mindset.html
15. ALWAYS BE LEARNING: 5 STRATEGIES FOR LIFELONG LEARNERS https://www.yoh.com/blog/5-strategies-for-lifelong-learners
16. Lifelong learning and leadership development success https://hospitalityinsights.ehl.edu/lifelong-learning-and-leadership-development-success#
17. Why all great leaders need to be lifelong learners https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/why-all-great-leaders-need-lifelong-learners-gemma-leigh-roberts/
18. Great Leaders Are Lifelong Learners — Here's What That Means https://www.businessinsider.com/lifelong-learner-secret-success-learn-what-kind-you-are-2019-12?r=US&IR=T
19. Why Leaders Should be Lifelong Learners https://fisher.osu.edu/blogs/leadreadtoday/why-leaders-should-be-lifelong-learners
20. How Lifelong Learning Can Help Leaders Stay Relevant In The Age Of Change https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinessdevelopmentcouncil/2020/03/05/how-lifelong-learning-can-help-leaders-stay-relevant-in-the-age-of-change/?sh=12d36c306bba
21. The Best Leaders Are Constant Learners https://hbr.org/2015/10/the-best-leaders-are-constant-learners
22. Effective Leaders are Lifelong Learners – Here’s Why https://motivationexcellence.com/2021/01/20/effective-leaders-are-lifelong-learners-heres-why/
23. Why Lifelong Learners Continue Leadership Development Training https://limitlessleadership.com/why-lifelong-learners-continue-leadership-development-training/
24. Change is the end result of all true learning ~ Leo Buscaglia https://mavensophie.medium.com/change-is-the-end-result-of-all-true-learning-leo-buscaglia-7587b93c9672