I’ve just returned from a trip to Europe (which is why we haven’t had any updates, sorry). I highly recommend that you visit Trier if you happen travel around western Germany or Luxembourg in summer—the green hills just make you feel as if you had ventured right into the heart of Hobbiton; and the home of Karl Marx and Emperor Constantine offers a tranquil break from the hustle and bustle of the bigger European cities. I’m still in travel mode, but I’ll stop before this whole post turns into a crappy travel guide. Now let’s switch the topic to discovering your passion.
What we’re talking about is the discovery of an activity (such as a skill) that you have a burning desire to pursue. Not every activity should be sought for the purpose of accumulating riches, but earning a living from something that you love to do and are passionate about can grant you both time and the necessary resources to keep pursuing that passion.
“…true education means mind development; not merely the gathering and classifying of knowledge.” ~ Napoleon Hill
Compulsory education does many things well, but it fails to genuinely communicate the most important lesson to young students—that education is not the memorizing of dates and formulae, but the development of the mind.
Anyone with a healthy brain can cram data into his or her organic repositories. It just takes time and effort to memorize information. But if we look at memorized information, it’s actually not that much different from having reference books on the bookshelf (or your iPhone). It’s considerably faster to search for the quadratic formula in your brain than it is to find the correct page in your high school math book, but unless you want to become an expert at math, it could be wiser to know where to retrieve that piece of information.
Landing a permanent job does not mean that you stop learning. We already should know that joining a company is like a direct extension of your previous studies—that’s when you really start learning the ropes. You notice that the college courses you completed were just an introduction to what you would be facing in working life.
And there is always more to learn. No one can be a true master of their profession. If you are a math teacher and have completely mastered the curriculum you are teaching, there is still a lot more to do to improve yourself as a math teacher; you can develop more effective ways to explain difficult mathematical concepts, or you can make your courses more interesting by setting your applied questions in more attractive contexts.
There are a number of ways to prove yourself an expert at something. You can apply for certification at an institute. Winning a competition or breaking a world record will bring recognition and fame. A university degree is a commonly accepted measure of your competence. Also, friends can spread word of your skills. But what if you want to pose the question to yourself? How do you measure your own ability?
Self-Learner is a blog about self-education and self-improvement based lifestyle design. Goal? To become the best "version" of yourself, and feel excited to jump out of your bed every morning.