Welcome to Day 85 of the Wellbeing 9-a-Day blog! Yesterday, we continued our final look at each of the habits within The Wellbeing 9-a-Day Journal, considering how Exercising helps you move your body and improve your physical fitness. In today’s blog, I move onto Learning and the importance of expanding your mind to improve your mental fitness.
Learning
While Exercising daily helps us maintain and improve our physical health, Learning something each day helps us maintain and improve our mental health.
Whether expanding our knowledge, increasing skills or trying something new, Learning about ourselves and the world around us is one of life’s greatest pleasures.
“Learning never exhausts the mind.” – Leonardo Da Vinci
Throughout my time with The Wellbeing 9-a-Day Journal, I have been reading The Daily Laws by Robert Greene. Each day, the book offers a page of writing that explores an idea and encourages the reader to think about how it applies to their own life.
“Daily Law: The more skills you learn, the richer the landscape of the brain.”
As I have read many of the books that this one is based on, the daily act of reading and thinking about the laws gives me the chance to revisit these ideas and see how I can use them to develop my own journey.
As it happens, the first three months of the year focused a lot on mastery and the acquisition of new skills, helping me to learn more about how I learn.
The Learner’s Journey
“That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do so has increased.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have written previously about how the Hero’s Journey structure mirrors the journey we go one when we learn a new skill and adapt it into our life.
At the start (Normal Life), we do not yet know what we do not yet know – Unconscious Incompetence.
As we begin to learn (Accepting the Call), we begin to see just how much we do not know – Conscious Incompetence.
Through practice (Facing Trials) and persisting through difficulties (The Ordeal), we can learn the skill or skills (Claiming the Reward), and we can now do what was once alien to us – Conscious Competence.
The final stage of the learner’s journey (Re-integrating the Reward) is to make the skill a part of ourselves – Unconscious Competence.
It’s just like riding a bike. Even if it has been years since you got in the saddle, the skill remains a part of you.
The Wellbeing 9-a-Day Journal empowers you to take the daily steps that move you closer to learning skills or knowledge, making them a normal part of your daily or weekly routine.
With just a few minutes of purposeful practice every day, you can continue your journey to Unconscious Competence, transforming yourself into more than you were before.
Call to Action!
Think of something you would like to learn. Whether a skill or knowledge, you can get closer to your goal by setting yourself daily Learning targets. With just 15 minutes of reading or practising each day, you can acquire new skills and knowledge that will serve you for years to come.
This blog was written as part of a 90-day blog writing fundraiser for Live Well with Cancer, a volunteer-led charity serving North Tyneside and the surrounding areas. If you enjoyed this blog, please show your appreciation by donating to my JustGiving page. Every penny raised from donations or sales of the journal will help deliver workshops, events and support groups that empower better health and wellbeing for those affected by cancer, including family, friends, carers, and healthcare workers.
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