Investing in your ongoing personal and professional development is essential for growth both in your life and your career. In my experience, adopting a mindset of learning has been both enriching and rewarding.
Without investing in learning, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. The Mum am I today. The coach I am today. The leader I am today.
You have opportunities for learning all around you. You will want to be open-minded and willing to listen in order to learn.
Recently I invited my client to take stock of where he was in our coaching, given we are half way through our agreed programme. It would have been so easy to dive straight into what he wanted to focus on, instead, I invited him to press the pause button and take a moment to reflect.
He shared how different he feels now from when we started, his energy is high, he is inspiring his team, he has the lowest turnover of staff in his school for years, he acknowledged how he bounced back from the toughest of times when budgets were cut, classes had to be cancelled and he had to make some tough decisions.
He asked me ‘why do I currently have lots of energy and feel good, but was on my knees two months ago?’
I shared what I had witnessed in him. During our coaching together, he had been open to learning, learning more about himself. I offered my observation of his commitment to his moral purpose – despite the toughest of environments, strictest of demands, and lowest of resources, he focused and was committed to ‘giving the children in his school a better education experience than they would have anywhere else.’
The transformation was the shift in his mindset. He chose to step into his courageous self. Make some difficult decisions. Be chirpy when the troops were down. Be in control and well organised in himself. He discovered his core strengths and how by delegating to others, he enabled them to step up and develop themselves.
This half-way check-in was a valuable moment of reflection and learning to his greater self-awareness and what had enabled him to feel good and have energy for the months ahead.
Below are my top ten favourite quotes for learning . . .
1. Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow.
-Anthony J. D’Angelo
2. Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
-Mahatma Gandhi
3. Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.
-J. F. Kennedy
4. Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.
-Benjamin Franklin
5. I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
-Maya Angelou
6. Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in life has a purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from.
-Elisabeth Kugler-Ross
7. Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.
-Henry Ford
8. I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.
-Ernest Hemingway
9. You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.
-Richard Branson
10. The key to a vital life is an eagerness to learn and a willingness to change.
-Maryanne Radmacher
