Once You Work This Out, Learning Will Never Be Boring Again

An old school friend recently asked me an awesome question that I wanted to come share. She asked me 'When was it that I became so passionate about learning?'

Because she remembers me over 20 years ago, back in school where I was not investing my time in learning. I was more of the disruptor in the class. I was there to hang out with my friends, to disrupt my friends and really just spend time with people. Can anyone relate?

So it was an awesome question when she asked because these days, I spend so much time learning, and I absolutely love it!

It really first shifted for me back in my early twenties, when I found something that I was really passionate about. I have realised that back in school, I didn’t like learning because I wasn’t really passionate about the things I was learning. I was more passionate about hanging out with my friends. Plus I grew up in a small country town, and in small towns there are lots of sports.

Now I was working as soon as I passed the legal age to do so in Australia. So I never really connected with how important learning was to me back then, because I hadn’t found something that I truly loved and truly inspired me to learn about in every waking moment that I had free.

So I was sharing this with my friend and most of all, what I shared with her is that the number one thing that really helped me tap into my potential to learn was when I learned about myself, and how I learn best.

I got through high school without reading a single book. All of my exams. What did I do to get by? Well I either watched the movie, or I spoke to my friends, and got them to tell me about the book. And then I went away and sat the exam and I got through.

I was really proud of that strategy back then. It was the only strategy I really knew, and it’s a strategy that motivated me because I didn’t want to sit down and read a book. What I loved doing was hearing and talking through stuff.

And so when I started in the world of coaching and personal development, I really started to get curious about what creates a great culture, and what inspires people to be a high performing culture? How do you teach leaders to understand human behaviour to achieve results? And when I realised that that is what would make a difference in my career and my career helping people, that’s when I really started absorbing all of this stuff around human behaviour and started learning.

I developed a passion for learning after realising that I liked learning about human beings, and also learning about successful strategies that people adopt. So I started reading some books. You know nowadays, I’ve still got a couple of my favourite books on the go at any time. But I realised that that wasn’t my preferred way of learning.

It wasn’t until I came across audiobooks that I absolutely started soaking up the information, and taking action from what I’ve learnt. I realised that my preferred style to learn was Auditory stimulus.

I have this conversation so often with my clients, because one of the things that they talk about is that they just don’t have the time to learn. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to learn all this stuff about creating an Ultimate Life’ they will say.

But then when we talk more about it, and we look at their preferred learning style and what they’re going to get out of it, and how that contributes to the things that they enjoy and that they love. And then we look at what their preferred learning style is and then we modify the training to allow them to learn the best way for them.

At Charge Connect Grow we look at the best way for an individual to learn, and then I support them through that. We have audiobooks, videos, workbooks. We’ve got a community where we pull people together who are also on the journey to create and live their Ultimate Lives, whether at home or at work.

That’s what I love most about the cause and the community that we have created. Because I learned from my experience that there is not a one size fits all approach. The light bulb went off even more when I was talking to my old time school friend about how I shifted from, you know, the way I thought about learning back in the day, to how I think about learning now.

When you can find something that you truly love, that you are truly passionate about, and when you can see how it helps you create the results that you’re looking to create, it’s so much easier.

What are you passionate about learning about? And whats the best form for you to learn? Let me know in the comments.