How Learning Destroys Your Ambition And You Don’t Even Realize It
Don’t continue learning as you did it
“Life is hard. After all, it kills you.” — Katherine Hepburn
Life is hard. Consuming information will not improve your life.
I am a radical learner. I learn as much as possible. And I love it.
Especially in the last year, I learned more than in the five years before.
I read books as much as never before. I read Medium articles regularly. I journal every day and every time I think something is valuable to be written down.
When you are a passionate learner like me, you want to see yourself making progress. You need to find a direction which fits for you. You try to build your own set of values and beliefs by learning more and more about the sets of values and beliefs of role models, idols or astonishing personalities.
You read a lot. Sometimes you will find yourself in a state of a total flood of information and you might be a little bit lost.
Even if you sympathize totally with some persons, the probability is enormous that some of these persons’ words are dissonant to another person in this sympathetic group.
That’s where my point comes in.
You must not be a raw consumer. Never ever.
If you are a raw consumer you will never ever make progress unless you start creating and managing your own thoughts proactively.
Progress doesn’t happen while consuming. Progress happens while creating.
Whatever you do, never stop creating your mind and yourself.
Creating doesn’t mean to just write down what you learned by your consumption although this definitely helps and if you don’t write your insights down you live with a huge drawback on becoming your best version.
Creating means to build the next thought. Creating means to see the next step in your chain of thinking.
I push so hard on creating because this is the only way you get to understand the persons whose content you consume.
“Motivation is garbage.” — Mel Robbins Speaker, Author of The 5 Second Rule
“Motivation is key.” — Jim Kwik, Brain Expert, Speaker, and Coach
Mel Robbins and Jim Kwik are persons whose content I really love to consume. I learn so much from their talks and posts.
How does it come these both great people have such an opposite view on motivation? Who is right?
Both are. In their own understanding of the term motivation.
Two different persons, two different understandings of a word which might be totally clear.
Mel Robbins handles motivation as something which comes and goes. Thus motivation is not appropriate for your long-term success.
Jim Kwik handles motivation as the urge to take action and to do something. Of course, this is suitable for your long-term success.
The same fits for happiness.
“Making yourself happy is the only thing that counts.” — Gary Vaynerchuk Author of Crushing It
“There is more in life than being happy.” — Emily Esfahani Smith Author of The Power of Meaning
What do you think?
The point is
Take care who you are listening to
You must never ever stop thinking on your own terms about what you are consuming. The question you always have to ask yourself is What does that mean.
When you learn from many different sources like me, you have to pay attention. Everything comes down to your attention.
You cannot listen to people’s content with your pair of ears. You have to listen to their content with their pair of ears and your own mind.
While being a radical learner you will find two versions of content which sounds very opposite but for real they are quite similar. Then it is your job to think clearly about what they really mean.
To create and enhance your own set of values and beliefs you must never stop being a creator.
Otherwise, you drain in the flood of information which is quite common today. Information is everywhere in enormous measures. Prevent a decision fatigue or even a burn-out by being a creator.
This is how you build self-confidence.
“Getting information off the internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.” — Mitchell Kapor
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