Lifelong learning

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. A lifetime of 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’re a species that has survived by slaughtering all kinds of things, then so be it. You can make of that what you will. I found it very depressing. There were some cool things in it, too, but I wouldn’t recommend reading it. There were some eye-openers in there as well, but half the book was just something I didn’t feel like dealing with.

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 Neanderthals. They were probably smarter than us, too, but certainly not friendlier. As a result, at some point we had the advantage of being able to learn from one another, while Neanderthals 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’re done learning is one you can let go of. Since the beginning of this century, scientists have been exploring how to help people engage in lifelong learning.

Even back then, they recognized that knowledge would be needed beyond the workplace (perhaps they already knew that we would one day be working from home more often?) and that society would become increasingly complex or technical, meaning you simply have more opportunities when you know or can do more[1].

Lifelong learning becomes difficult if you associate learning with school and boring lessons. I don’t do that anymore; as you’ve read, reading books is also a way to learn throughout your life. One belief that helps you engage in lifelong learning is the awareness that your thoughts—or cognitions—are flexible, allowing you to keep forming new connections in your brain. In addition, it’s okay to try something new and make mistakes —as long as you’re willing to learn from those mistakes. It’s also helpful to be open to change. For example, you might want to try doing your work in a different way[2].

So, lifelong learning doesn’t mean going to school your whole life. It means that you want to develop yourself and are open to doing so. You can do this through books, or of course at school, but you can also do it 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 limiting beliefs, so you’re more open to the idea that you can learn something new.

"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].

Would you like to learn more about hypnosis and self-hypnosis? Then join the free online masterclass on hypnosis.

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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

[4] https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article/23/4/801/343536