Applied Learning

The present is the only time we have the opportunity to apply what we have learned toward our future aspirations. It is critical to have goals in anticipation of the future, but anticipation isn’t yet the actions that you must take. We learn and evolve from past learnings applied to the present goals only in the moments of now.

Critical to have learned from the past and also to anticipate with what goals you plan to obtain. In balance, the present remains the only time within one’s control. Past and future can limit us if over-valued, center on the now.

“In time, and as one comes to benefit from experience, one learns that things will turn out neither as well as on hoped nor as badly as one feared.” — Jerome Bruner —

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To be patient is a decisive action more than it is a pause. Not to sit still, but to adapt to the pace of things around you in analysis of learning experiences and planning.

There is a right time for right actions. Accept patience as wisdom in setting the precise time rather than rushing through on a bullish or convenient schedule.

Know your audience, know their motivation and know the condition best suited for your strategic actions. The right time is discovered by the patient learner.

“Adapt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson —

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Every day of our lives we have the chance to advance. For both mind and body, if we fail to use it, we will lose it. Opportunity is regularly presented for us to exert ourselves to one degree or another. From the effort, we learn, evolve and move to thrive.

Plan to use it and you will have learned from the experiences. Set a goal, make a commitment and then follow through with the actions to have used the opportunity. A younger person even has more to lose than an older one. Any stagnant day is wasteful and then diminishing over time if one continues to hold still.

The active mind and body works to generate and regenerate what we were born with. Potential varies widely among people, but those who invest in themselves will find the greatest significance and meaning in their lives. To thrive as we use it stretches potential and builds significance with and for others. No excuses, use it.

That which is used – develops. That which is not used wastes away.” — Hippocrates —

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There are a multitude of ways for you to learn a new and better way in your work, your life and in the relationships you have with others. One approach that does not work would be to only do the same things that you have always done.

From comfort of thought and actions, we learn very little. It takes a leap of faith and effort to go at it differently. In study of the experience and what varies from your adapted application, we learn to discover new things.

Shoot higher that what you can do with ease. Grow for yourself by having stretched for a greater outcome, to expect a greater good to come from the process. We set our own expectations, look up.

“Don’t do what you can – try what you can’t do.” — William Faulkner —

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I used to think of things in only one way, but now I think about it differently. If we would always believe the same things and in the same order, we would cease to have learned from our application of that knowledge.

In the expansive experiences of learning applied in one order or another, we hopefully aim to progress for a better way. A progress to experience outcomes, results and impacts differently from our actions.

Always the same in order of thoughts will become a comfortable burden, a rut of a sort for non-learning. Add a new thought to rearrange the order and you will continue learning. The wise among us have already done so while you were holding on to a former order of things.

“We learn by rearranging what we know.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein —

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Because we want something to be true, we often press to believe it despite no evidence whatsoever. Even when the evidence is in contrast of our hopes, wants and needs, we sometimes hold to the more convenient falsehood.

Better to appreciate reality in the thoughts and actions we will move forward with than simply believe what is most comfortable for us in the moment. Time is wasted and opportunities for growth are voided without evidence to resolve a problem or to overcome a challenge. Even when a number of others believe similarly to you, that does not make it to be of evidence.

Lead and follow rationally, not emotionally.

“The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.” — Bertrand Russell —

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In its simplest form for me, a luxury is having a thing that we really wouldn’t need. Those things that we feel are very nice to have and that we enjoy, if even for a moment. One persons luxuries are vastly different than another’s, what determination have you developed to experience something as a luxury or a need? A pretty important question to have in mind as you seek meaning and impact from your life.

For some, to simply have the free time to do what they want to do is all the luxury they need and pursue. For others it might be to have that item that promotes an image of success to others. Others may consider it a luxury to have paid the bills one month and still have monies left over to save or to invest. Luxury is temperamental and certainly in the eyes of the beholder.

For purpose-of-life sake, focus your pursuit of luxuries to make a contribution of some kind. A contribution that moves you and others to become inspired by that something. One extra thing that you would do or even purchase that would move you closer to having an impactful and gratifying experience from it. Fulfillment in this fashion leads to a hundred other benefits in our lives. Aim for purpose in pursuit of any luxury and happiness will follow.

“We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life. All that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic in life about.” — Albert Einstein —

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We are surrounded by circumstances and condition throughout our lifetimes. Some of these are experienced as pure blessings, helping us to to fulfill ourselves toward our purpose in life. Others remain unnoticed and others yet can be quite depleting, wearing us down if not dealt with appropriately.

The good news is that we have the capacity to determine what we will draw from the circumstances and conditions we are presented with. We set our course through our decisions to be made, not through the emotions that work to pull us one way or another. We choose our own way with the power to receive and respond to what life presents to us. This is how we learn, grow and evolve in a purpose-driven life.

Never to always be ideal, the circumstances and conditions we experience must be managed from our freedom to respond to them. A strong determination to remain on course toward our purpose in life will save us from a great deal of unrest and insecurity.

Just decide and move on to make the most of it all. Center your focus for decisions to pursue your intentional purpose in life and not the ability to have power and/or control over what we are dealt in the form of circumstances and conditions. Decide for your purpose.

“When we are no longer able to change a situation- we are challenged to change ourselves.” — Viktor Frankl —

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Some things we question, deciding for ourselves to look deeper into an issue than we had previously done before. In this exposure to look at an issue differently, we promote our opportunity to continue to learn and then experience better ways to act. When we question things and ask the right questions for discovery with others, we obtained applied wisdom.

If by questioning we grow, then we should be persistent to inquire and then navigate life in a better way. If we would settle in our thinking for only what we know today, we will have capped our own learning.

Focus to question things by assuming there is always a new and better way to approach with our thinking for the better. Focus thinking to ask the right questions at the right time and you will have gathered applied learning experiences to evolve with others. The answer is often just waiting for the right questions. Keep looking to keep learning.

“Find the right questions. You don’t invent the answers, you reveal the answers.” — Jonas Salk —

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There are times where we find out something we would have never before believed to be true. We find that we were simply wrong from ignorance. We become surprised and even embarrassed from what we didn’t truly know.

If we falter because of ignorance, we know that we should have continued learning rather than close our minds from a sense of assuring. We are all ignorant of many things in the very broad scope of the world. Best to simply recognize this with the intention to continue learning toward the most relevant knowledge and applied experiences for ourselves. We can humbly grow from ignorance admitted.

The real enemy is the illusion of knowledge. The obstacle is harder to overcome because we fully pretend with confidence to know something we have never learned for ourselves. Illusion from our closely held truths, the ones we make decisions from, is purely deceiving ourselves.

With admitted ignorance, we can come to humbly accept there is more to learn. With illusions, we somehow tend to persist on with those imagined beliefs. The opportunities to learn should never be overlooked, illusion is often the greatest obstacle.

“Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.” — Friedrich Nietzsche —

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