Many people stop learning the moment they leave school. They often stop exercising as well. Very unfortunate, because you can quite benefit from continuing to learn anyway. I also left school quickly, but was able to rectify this by continuing to learn about things. Lifelong learning, or at least in much of your life, can be very useful.
Reading to learn
For example, I read a lot. At some point you then catch up with people, because who reads, say, one book a week? This is not a lot of people. From memory, the average CEO also reads 30 to 40 books a year. So if you read 1 book a week, you are already reading more than those people.
There are also those who don't read anything, perhaps the Privé or so.
Right now I'm reading the book "Most People Suck" by Rutger Bregman. This is really a mastermind because it is so deliciously positive. The title is already a tasty idea and with all kinds of benefits he cites why we have survived as a species.
Some time ago I also tried to read Sapiens by Harari and I just think it's a terrible book. Really a depressing book. There are some cool things in it, but much of what it says is not relaxing.
Of course, you shouldn't stick your head in the sand for things that are just the way they are.
If we are a species that survived because we butchered all sorts of things, so be it. You can think something about that. I found it very depressing. There were cool things in it too, but it's not my advice to read it. There were also eye openers in it, but half the book was something I just didn't feel like reading.
News, for example, I also watch sporadically. The things they say, do I want to be influenced by that? Well as with the book Sapiens, rather not.
But Bregman's book has a bit about the Homo Puppy, which I found super fun. In it, he argues that we are so intelligent because we are so friendly. He cites a story of a certain fox and they domesticated it into a friendly little dog. To breed a new fox, they selected for 1 factor, kindness.
If the fox was not going to bite right away, i.e., who first backed away slightly before biting, it was used to breed on. After 4 generations, they had foxes that started barking and you could pet them. In the process, they were also suddenly more intelligent. They could do all kinds of tests normally done with dogs. The "wild" foxes could not do this.
Even monkeys couldn't do these tests. They couldn't find something, for example. Whereas human toddlers could.
For example, there are many examples in nature that kindness, that approachable animals and breeds, creates more intelligence.
Learning from other people
Even though they may not be smarter, they can learn. The larger the group, the more they can learn from each other.
If we look at humanity, which now numbers about 7 billion people, we can learn a lot from each other. And so we do. We may not learn from everyone, but we do learn from many.
We also have a smaller brain than the neanderthal. He was also probably smarter than us, but therefore not friendlier. As a result, at some point we had the advantage of being able to learn from each other, while the neanderthal could not.
About this he has all kinds of stories and examples of experiments and wars. That in war, for example, only a few percent of soldiers actually shoot. That we are not built as some murderous creature, an idea that is nevertheless there among many people.
If you strip everything away you are left with mostly friendliness and togetherness.
I find this a lot more enjoyable anyway, so to be influenced that way than with the book Sapiens.
Of course, it's hard to figure out what information in those books is correct now, because it also deals with things in the primeval times and those people are all gone of course.
What I then make of it myself is that evolution ensures that all the unfriendly people you know now are no longer selected.
That in itself is also a nice idea. I know quite a few unkind people and you see them in the newspaper or in magazines in the supermarket. Then you can think that evolution will select those people and only nice friendly people will remain. Nice isn't it?
Thanks to that book, I look at the world a lot happier. Surely this gives me a more hopeful motivational view of humanity.
https://www.buzzsprout.com/195236/1946966-homo-puppy?play=true
Lifelong learning mindset
So the idea that you go to school and then you are done learning is one that you may let go of. Since the beginning of this century, scientists have been working on how to help people become lifelong learners.
Even then, they recognized that knowledge would not only be needed in the workplace (perhaps they already knew we would someday work more from home?) and that society would become increasingly complicated or technical, so you just have more opportunities when you know more or can do more[1].
Lifelong learning becomes difficult if you associate learning with school and boring classes. I don't do that anymore, as you read, reading books is also a way of lifelong learning. A belief that helps you learn for a lifetime is to be aware that your thoughts or cognitions are flexible and thus you can keep making new connections in your brain. In addition, it is okay to try something new and make mistakes. As long as you want to learn something from those mistakes. In addition, it's helpful to be open to change. So for example, it's best to want to try your work in a different way[2].
So lifelong learning does not mean a lifetime of going to school. It means wanting to develop yourself and being open to doing so. This can be done with books, this can be done at school, but it can also be done by trying something new and seeing how it goes[3].
Hypnosis and keep learning
So if you feel you are not good at school - and therefore not good at learning - you can let that go. I wasn't "good" at school either and yet I'm pretty good at learning.
You, too, can achieve this. So much of this depends on your beliefs. Hypnotherapy can help you remove blocking beliefs so that you are more open to the idea that you can learn something.
"I'm stupid," for example, is one such belief that won't help you move yourself forward.
Instead, it's better to think, "I can still learn a lot." This is much more positive and also comes across as much less fixed than the blocking belief.
Sometimes just repeating helpful beliefs while in hypnosis is enough to become more open to learning new skills.
Another way is to undergo regression therapy. With this form of therapy, you first go into hypnosis. Then you go back to the first moment when you felt the conviction that learning is not for you. Then you will work with the hypnotherapist to figure out why that came about then and how illogical it really is. This can very quickly remove your blocking beliefs.
Another technique you can use is by looking right at your future. You may want to be able to do something next year. Under hypnosis, you then see how you will achieve that goal. How you are going to make sure that a year from now you can do what you want to be able to do.
This gives you clear steps, making it much easier for you to learn what you want to learn.
In addition, there are many other techniques you can use in hypnotherapy.
Hypnosis to make it easier to learn
In addition to using hypnosis to change beliefs about learning, you can also use hypnosis to learn better. This is because when you are learning, two processes are required in your brain. The process in which you are active with the learning and the process in which you store it. These two processes sometimes fight with each other.
When learning in the hypnotic state, there is much less competition. Instead, there is more coherence, allowing you to absorb the learning faster and remember it better[4].
Want to learn more about hypnosis and self-hypnosis? Then come to the free online master class on hypnosis.
Or register directly for one of our training courses.
Sources:
[1] https://www.learntechlib.org/p/8380/
[2] https://library.wur.nl/WebQuery/wurpubs/fulltext/425795
[3] https://wmich.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/u5/2013/WHAT%20IS%20EXPERIENTIAL%20%20LEARNING%3F%20%20.pdf
