For me school was a great experience.  I remember the smell of freshly sharpened pencils and all those crisp, new notebooks waiting to be filled with all the cool stuff I’d be learning in the coming months.

Whether you also loved learning as a kid or dreaded the thought of setting foot in school each day, here are four reasons to embrace being a life-long learner.

Reason #1 – Learning Valuable New Skills

This is the most obvious of the reasons to always be learning something.  We live in a society that is unprecedented in terms of the access and amount of knowledge that’s available either on the Internet or through more formalized education and training programs.

Taking a class or obtaining an additional certification can help you do things like advance in your current field, pursue a new, more satisfying line of work, or develop a new capability within your business.

Dave and I both have degrees in Chemical Engineering.  Since 2012, the majority of our formal learning has been in the areas of Marketing and Personal Development, which has been tremendously helpful to add to our skills as business owners.

Reason #2 – Keeping Your Mind Sharp

I’m a big advocate of healthy eating and exercise to keep my body healthy.  And learning is effectively like healthy eating and exercise for the mind.

Exposing your brain to new and different information burns new neural pathways and enhances your ability to solve complex problems.  Becoming a life-long learner provides your mind with a steady diet of healthy “brain-food” to keep it functioning at a high level.

Reason #3 – Triggering Creative Solutions in Other Areas

I’ve often found as I’m working my way through my latest course, seminar or book that I have at least one “Ah-ha moment” in a completely unrelated area.  I could be working through a program related to building my Social Media presence and gain an insight on a new exercise to share with my private coaching clients, a topic for a new blog post, or even a better way to relate to my kids.

Creative problem solving is all about making new connections among existing pieces of knowledge and remaining a life-long learner gives you more feedstock to enhance that process.

Reason #4 – Taking the Pressure Off

A big area of continued personal growth for me is to not always be so fixated

on getting instant results from my efforts.  When signing up for a class or coaching program in the past, I’d immediately begin to focus only on the visible results and if they weren’t fast in coming, I’d either lose interest or get frustrated and walk away.

Now, I always have a “learning for learning’s sake” component of my personal development plan.  It’s a reminder that instant results should not be my immediate focus, but instead, a commitment to remain in continuous action and moving in the general direction of my goals.

Your Assignment

If you are already doing some form of learning more often than not, great!  However, if not, review your goals and think about how you might make progress against one or several by doing some learning.  You’ll find that continuing to exercise your “mind muscle” helps you in many expected and unexpected ways!