The Many Benefits of Lifelong Learning

From the time we’re children, we’re pushed to learn things. By adulthood, most people are somewhat relieved when the learning portion of their lives is over. The problem is, saying goodbye to learning isn’t a good idea. There are so many benefits of lifelong learning, stopping with graduation, and a diploma would be a serious mistake.

 

What are some of those benefits?

 

Solutions Are Easier to Find

 

A brain kept sharp through continuous learning is going to be better at finding solutions to problems, in part because of better cognitive function. Also, because there’s just more knowledge available to draw on to find a solution. 

 

You Just Sound Smarter

 

When you constantly challenge yourself to find out new things, your conversation shows the effects. You’re more up on current events, and your ability to talk intelligently in social situations increases. Knowledge also raises your cred on social media, especially on sites such as LinkedIn, which is essential when job hunting.

 

You’re Better Prepared

 

Not sure what to do in a crisis? Spend time learning. By understanding the basics of first aid or how things are supposed to function in your workplace, you will be better able to handle an emergency.

 

You Mind Sparks

 

Looking for an idea or new perspective? Perhaps you want to be more creative? You can easily enhance each of those areas through learning. 

 

You Become a More Capable and Confident Employee

 

When you’re always learning in the workplace, you become more self-assured in your work, a feeling you’ll start carrying with you into other aspects of your life. It’s this attitude that gets you noticed, especially when the time comes for promotions.

 

It’s Good for Your Brain

 

Finally, perhaps one of the most important reasons for pursuing knowledge is that it’s good for your brain. Studies have shown a brain engaged and continuously challenged with new information is sharper, with better cognitive skills. The benefits don’t stop there. Learning means your brain keeps growing, creating new neural pathways. Learning things has also been proven to help prevent Alzheimer’s and other effects of dementia. It has even shown to reverse some of the impact of those issues as you age. No wonder it’s a good reason to keep learning as you grow older!

 

Lifelong learning is something to be pursued, not just because it’s ‘good for you’ like taking the proverbial vitamin pill. Chasing after learning can be both enlightening and fun and will serve you well throughout your entire life. With that in mind, it’s an easy decision to become a lifelong learner. Only through knowledge can you truly become your very best self.

 

6 Ways to Fire Up Your Creative Spark in 30 Minutes or Less

Not feeling very creative, but have a little time to try and boost that creative spark? Below you’ll find several tips that will set your brain back in motion in just 30 minutes or less!

 

1. Create something. By using your hands to create something new, you stimulate your brain to think creatively. Buy some modeling clay and see what you can make. Take up knitting or crocheting. Try baking something (especially bread dough that you can knead yourself). The key is to put your fingers in motion.

 

2. Get outside – specifically in a green space. Studies have shown that exposure to green spaces stimulates the brain in numerous ways – one being in the areas associated with creativity. To get your fill of green, visit a park. Or if you’re feeling more adventurous take a hike. Have some space? Try gardening.

 

3. Spend time with your BFF. By getting together with someone you know well and have come to trust, you can relax and talk about the things that are really on your mind. Your BFF is the perfect person to brainstorm with, or even to talk out a problem. And who knows, they might even have the solution you’re seeking!

 

4. Try yoga. The gentle movements involved in yoga makes it an ideal exercise for anyone. But did you know that there were specific poses said to inspire creativity? Add to this the fact that yoga is known to reduce stress and relax the mind. That means it’s the perfect exercise for the person who is stuck and needsto find a creative spark.

 

5. Try something you’ve never done before. By experimenting with a new skill, or even a new recipe, you stimulate parts of the brain that you haven’t used in that way before. That inspires new connections in your neural networks, which are so necessary for creative thinking. 

 

6. Last but not least – take a nap. It could be that you’re just too tired to be creative. Half an hour is the perfect amount of time for a cat nap, to rest and recharge that brain!

 

Having a limited amount of time shouldn’t keep you from being creative. There’s a lot of things you can try in only 30 minutes or less. The key is to get your mind engaged in something new or interesting. Pay attention to what works, and then consider using whatever caused the spark to create a new habit. That will keep the creativity flowing year-round!

 

Overcoming Negative Thoughts

Everyone falls prey to negative thoughts sometimes. It’s like watching a movie that begins with clear skies and happiness and seeing it turn into dark clouds and horror. The bad thing is that there’s no eerie music to alert us when that turn takes place in our minds from positive to negative. We can only tune into our thoughts once in a while to see how we’re doing.

 

When you catch yourself thinking negatively there are a few things you can do – actually practice – that can help you overcome the negativity and get yourself into that “happy ending.”

 

1.  Adjust the tone of your voice, both inner and outer. When you find that your speaking or thinking tone is harsh and negative, change it to a lighter and more positive tone.

2.  Meditation. Finding some time for yourself to meditate or just relax and restore your energy levels can do wonders for your outlook. When you combine some yoga stretches or deep breathing, you can make bigger leaps.

3.  Smile. The best way to diffuse a negative situation is to smile – really smile, with your eyes and your entire face and demeanor. It can lift a mood almost instantaneously and help to relieve stress too (and it takes less facial muscles to smile than to frown).

4.  Help someone else. Becoming a benefactor to someone can fill your heart and mind with happiness. And, how can you think and project negative thoughts when you’re so happy?

5.  Keep a gratitude journal. Those who have had to overcome great obstacles in their lives say they kept and still do keep a gratitude journal and wrote a few things in it every day that they were grateful for. It helped to get them through bad times.

6.  Choose positive people to be around. You may have to work with negative people, and you may have some in your own family, but your friends that you choose can be positive ones who help you put things into perspective when you’re thinking negatively.

 

Do whatever works for you to lift your spirits and get you out of negative self-talk. Some people exercise. That gets the endorphins flowing and keeps you from becoming depressed.

 

Dancing and singing are also proven mood lifters. You don’t have to be good enough for “American Idol” or “Dancing with the Stars.” Just dance or sing unfiltered and see how the stress can melt away.

 

You are in charge of the choices you make in life and you can either choose to be a negative or a positive person to go through life.

 

7 Easy Ways to Think Positive and Change Your Life

Positive thinking can add so much to your life – and now we know that positive thinking can add years to your life. When you think positive, you get rid of stress and tend to live a healthier life and make better choices. If you’re naturally a negative thinker, there are ways you can change that thinking and get on the path to a life-changing way of thinking.

 

If you really want to begin to think positively and change your life for the better, look at the following ways you can incorporate into your own lifestyle:

 

1.  Be responsible for your thoughts. No one can tell you what to think or controls how you react to your thinking. When you begin to take responsibility for your thoughts, you’ll face the reality of what they’re doing to or for you and be more able to change those negative thoughts.

2.  Plan to think positively. So many of our thoughts come from the subconscious mind. When you plan to think positively, you won’t be as apt to take what you’re thinking as reality. Instead, you have the time and opportunity to think it over and come to the conclusion that reflects the reality of the situation.

3.  Avoid negative people. Negative people can ruin your best laid plans to think positively. They can feed the fire of self-doubt and anxiety. It can sometimes be classified as a crowd-mentality, so don’t fall prey to it. Think for yourself.

4.  Write down your thoughts. It’s helpful if you can see at the end of the day what your thoughts have been. For awhile, take the time to write them down. You’ll see what went wrong with your thoughts and be able to improve them.

5.  Consider the repercussions. For example, if you have a deadline for an assignment and it becomes clear that you’re not going to meet it, consider what might happen. If you finish it on time, it won’t be as good as you wanted. If you take more time, it may cause other problems. Also, consider solutions. For example, you could ask for an extension to the deadline.

6.  Minimize catastrophic thinking. Rather than thinking the worst about a situation, try to minimize it and lower your anxiety level by being practical about it. If you’re susceptible to those thoughts, avoid situations (such as television news) that might cause you anxious thinking.

7.  Live for the moment. When you spend too much time trying to guess or analyze the future, you’ll convince yourself of failure – especially if you’ve failed in the past. If you think you’ll fail, you probably will.

 

Accept the reality that you can control your thoughts. You’ll become more empowered to face stressful situations in your life and to change the way you think. It will become easier to maintain a positive attitude the more you practice thinking positively.

 

Why You Need to Know How to Think Critically

Do you ever wonder what heights you could rise to in your personal and professional life if you put all of your thinking into focus? So much of our brain capacity is unused and lying dormant. What if you knew the secret of thinking so that you life would improve tenfold and help you achieve all the goals you have in life?

 

Critical thinking is developed over time and is like learning any sport or art. You can’t just get up one morning and say, “I think I’ll become a critical thinker today.” No one can simply will it into happening. For many, it takes years to develop the critical thinking knack. In some older citizens, we call it, “wisdom.”

 

The only paths through which a person can develop insightful thinking are by knowing and accepting the truth that there are flaws in your thinking. You must also constantly practice becoming a thinker who can effectively solve problems through logical thinking rather than emotions.

 

Becoming a critical thinker can help you develop strategies where you overcome the obstacles that life presents. Here are some obstacles you may want to obliterate from your life – and that’s possible with critical thinking:

 

·    Analyze the influences in your life. Learn to make your own decisions rather than falling under those influences.

·    Get your ego under control. Your ego may be keeping you back from advancing at work and from developing better relationships. Critical thinking can help you think without the influence of an inflated ego.

·    Solve problems. Being too scattered to solve problems and “thinking” with emotions usually doesn’t solve anything. Using critical thinking can help you get in touch with your emotions and solve problems through logical thinking.

·    Stop wasting time. You may be wasting entire days of productivity by going in many directions at once. We may not actually be enjoying anything we do to waste time because we know we’re going to be behind on our work or frustrated about wasting the day. Critical thinking can teach you how to evaluate your time and spend it wisely.

 

We all have great capacity to think critically and to improve our lives immensely, but most of the time, it’s dormant. That’s because it’s undeveloped. We can make it better with practice, just as we would when learning a musical instrument or sport.

 

Non-critical thinking is a habit that we’re not even mindful of most of the time. We sit, staring at a mindless program on television, playing mindless video games or engaging in gossip or other pursuits that don’t require critical thinking.

 

If you want to develop the traits of a critical thinker, know that you must study and research – then, put what you’ve learned into practice on a daily basis. It’s worth the effort.

 

Critical Thinking and Creativity

Critical thinking and creativity go hand in hand. Critical thinking lets you look objectively at a problem, issue, object or person and take into consideration the entire picture. Creativity enables you to take that entire picture and look at it in a new way. While some may think of critical thinking as more scientific, while creative thinking is more abstract, they’re more alike than they are different.

 

The creative person is likely to be seen as an imaginative and emotional type such as artists, writers and philosophers. A critical thinker is more likely to be thought of as a scientific genius who may be skeptical and lacking in imagination and creativity. Actually, both types are masters of the thought process.

 

The reasoning process of critical thinking shows imagination to be able to proceed to the next level. Critical thinking is present in creativity by carrying the thought process further than critical thinking logic and presenting it in a creative light. Great critical thinking minds such as Thomas Edison and Benjamin Franklin could never have brought their inventions to light without the streaks of creative thinking that took them beyond the realm of logic.

 

Here are some attributes that are similar in both critical and creative thinkers:

 

·      Interested in exploring new possibilities.

·      Challenge assumptions and standard ways of thinking.

·      Imagining alternatives to a situation or problem.

·      Have multiple perspectives on everything.

·      Use trial and error experimentation methods.

·      Thinks about new ways of doing things.

 

The phases involved in critical and creative thinking are also similar. For example, both types of thinking are triggered by a thought or even that takes the thinking process outside the realm of common thinking.

 

Then, the thoughts are appraised and clarified, opening the door for ways to explore the thought and how to present it to others. This leads the way to developing alternative ways to think and then implementing the thinking process through inventions, writing, art or ideas.

 

Both types of thinking also require a large measure of self-confidence and the ability to think of and present multiple ways to view a situation or problem. To promote both critical and creative thinking a person should have an inquiring mind that drives them to read, to engage in out –of-the-box thinking and to try things that are outside what they would usually do to try.

 

Critical and creative thinking can complement each other by bringing new ideas and ways of thinking into your life. 

 

5 Barriers to Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is essential to using your overall experience, background, common sense and other attributes to become more aware of how your efforts for success are being spent. When you have barriers to the critical thinking process, it can seriously harm your ability to move forward.

 

When you’re aware of these barriers, you can better overcome them and focus your thinking on what’s going to move you forward rather than getting stuck behind a barrier – unable to move forward.

 

Here are five barriers that can impede the critical thinking process:

 

1.  Thinking in Black or White – Some people ignore a situation’s complexities by thinking that there’s only one way to solve a problem. The problem is placed in a category, given a label and that’s the only way that matters. Thinking in black and white comes from our need to have certainty in our lives, but it’s false logic to assume that everything is totally one way.

2.  Thinking with the Ego – Egocentrical thinking is thinking with a lack of understanding others wants and needs. It limits your thinking to only your point of view and doesn’t have room for others’ ideas. This thinking process is deeply embedded in our psyches, and it sometimes takes deliberate effort to overcome it.

3.  Social Thinking – The drone mentality of social thinking only lets us see things in the way of the popular point of view – or the way that our spouse, companions, parents and friends think. Thinking outside the box is almost impossible when you have a barrier of social thinking and it can greatly impede the critical thinking process.

4.  Authoritative Thinking – Just because someone in authority says it’s true doesn’t mean it is. You’ve likely been swayed at one time or another by political leaders who say one thing is true only to find out later that it was a lie or a misleading way of thinking. The authority could be a person, peer group, institution or anything that makes you think that they’re right because they’re in an authoritative position.

5.  Judgmental Thinking – When you judge something or someone based on moral evaluation it’s usually done in haste and based on our past in some way – such as the way we were raised, educated or other values and mores. Judgmental thinking is usually non-rational thinking and can block understanding and insight about a person or an issue.

 

It’s important that we recognize our own barriers to the critical thinking process and replace those barriers with rational and reasoned thinking and then make a concentrated effort to avoid them.

 

Smart Shaming Trend

Trends can be anything you can think of from Cotton ball diets to rainbow-colored hair. Who would have thought that smart-shaming would also be included in the latest list? What’s wrong with being “smart”? Why is smart the new target of bullies? What does it mean to be smart these days? 

 

To answer questions popping in your head right now, indeed, smart shaming is already a trend – people would often comment things like, “Yeah, always the smart one!” in bitter tongues. There are many pseudo-names you should be aware of: The Grammar-Nazi, The Honor Roll and yes – The Smart One!

 

Smart-shaming can be viewed both in a positive and negative light. Focusing on the positive, this trend may mean that with or without the shaming part, “smart” is gaining popularity and getting noticed as a great influence in ones’ whole personality. How? Check the list below: 

 

·    Being smart means you’re not just book-smart but street-smart as well. Street smart is defined as having the ability to cross the street with ease, knowing how to haggle for prices, and surviving the metro (commuting, having your own apartment, paying your bills, etc.) Hence, your chances of surviving this world are higher than most. 

·    Being smart beats out being physically attractive in the long run. How so? Because the fact is we all grow old, and no amount of serum or snail secretions can counter that. The good thing is, being smart is the opposite. Brains grow by the year, meaning, you can get smarter provided that you ‘feed’ it with worthy experiences and new learnings. 

·    Being smart makes you a cool person these days. Why so? Because you can talk about a lot of things – books, experiences, etc. and you sure are not a bore in any gathering. That’s why people would want your company.

 

The list could be longer and there are longer eBooks if you would want a more readings regarding this millennial trend.

 

Healthy Habits for Healthy Brains

The brain is an organ and of course, in order to maximize its capacity, you need to take care of it just like any other part of your body. What makes your brain stand out from the rest of your organs is its intellectual function. You use it to memorize, learn, keep memories, do daily tasks, converse with people, amongst other things. So, can you imagine how a poor-functioning brain can affect your life? It may cause havoc your relationships, your career and even your finances. Of course, nobody wishes for this to happen. So, to make sure that you have healthy brains that healthily function, here are some habits to start practicing: 

 

• Sleep at least 7 hours a night – It takes at least two days for your body to recover from an all-nighter. This means your brain needs more. Remember the time when you are so sleep-deprived that you ended up giving extra bills to the cashier at the coffee shop or said yes to a suitor and wonder about the sweet you received the following day? Healthy brains need sleep. 

• Let the sun rewire your brain – This may sound a bit crazy but there is really unseen brain activity that connects you with the sun. Not that convinced yet? Well, notice that there are rhythms, patterns, and seasons in this world you live in and that somewhat has a connection to your brain. That’s why it knows night and day, Christmas and summer. 

• Take supplements – Fish oil is healthy for your brains. Do this especially if you’re the picky one when it comes to your food. picture this: you massage a muscle when it’s overworked, you bandage a scratch, but you can’t even hold nor see your brain. Show some love then by taking in supplements that it needs for proper function. 

 

The brain is a complex organ and so will discussing it. For further readings, eBooks are available for easy access.