Last week, we discussed the importance of continuing self-education, and we learned that self-education is important not only for our business lives as salespeople, but for our personal lives as well.
Interesting people are those who continue to educate themselves throughout their lives.
What exactly is self-education, you may ask?
It is what you teach yourself and what you learn every day while you move along the measuring tape of life. It is improving, learning, and growing.
As you travel through the linear progression of life, and you find yourself headed down the wrong path, you don’t need motivation to speed things up—you need education to turn yourself around. Learning is the beginning of prosperity, success, and wealth. A whopping 75% of our lives are lived after we complete our formal education, and, after this, the rest is up to us. Legislation dictates that we attend school until the 12th grade. Many of us go on to college, but true success comes from deciding to learn for the rest of our lives.
There are many ways to learn.
One method is found in learning from other successful people.
Another method grows out of learning from our own experiences: gleaning insights from both our successes and our failures.
An often overlooked way to learn is the simple act of reading. The average nonfiction book is 200 pages long, and the average person can read one page in two minutes. If you were to commit to read twenty minutes a day, by the end of one year you will have read 18 books! Imagine how this simple activity could increase your self-awareness and lead to greater success in business and in life.
Have you ever wanted to sit down with great leaders or famous thinkers? You can learn from other successful people by reading their books and biographies.
Reading these types of books opens our minds to new ideas—these new ideas are like seeds that will grow in our hearts and minds, and, when applied to our lives, these principles generate our own achievements and successes.
The knowledge and inspiration we receive from books moves us forward to success.
I will say it again: make the last 75% of your life count! Establish your place in life and in the sales business by growing through self-education every day.
As Dr. Seuss once said,
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”
I am 17 years old, a senior at Bettendorf, and this article touched base with me. I want to get noticed at the place I volunteer and I believe I am making progress, slowly but surely. I made up mind to get online before I left for work and quickly surf the web. Little did I know I would find such an inspiring article! I have loved learning and the atmosphere of school itself. I will put a pressure on myself once I have graduated highschool, regardless of college, to spend all my time I can learning.