Day 85! How to Keep Learning When Classes are Boring!

Sorry guys but someone has to say it: classes in school and college usually are really boring! So why are so many of us still spending so much time and money continuing to take classes we cannot wait to be over with? The REAL PROBLEM is that we get programmed to think that a CLASSROOM IS THE ONLY PLACE WE CAN LEARN! The truth is that I have learned more by doing independent study than I ever did in school AND taking responsibility for my own learning is the best thing I have ever done for my career. I hope in watching this video you can see that school might be boring but learning must be fun because a desire to learn is critical for growth and happiness while school is not. When we then sit in class and get disinterested with what the teacher is saying, the logical leap is that all studying is boring. While I used to think the time I spent in elementary school was fun, by middle school and junior high I thought learning was a waste of time because it was not fun and was not teaching me anything useful. With believing the only place I could really learn was in an lecture hall by the time I was in college, I gave up on actively trying to learn and considering anything related to be boring. Thankfully I was attracted to go back to university as a graduate student enrolled in a PHD program. As I continued my courses, I realized after becoming a founding member of the University of South Florida's doctoral leadership institute that while taking classes might be boring, learning for the right reasons was REALLY EXCITING! As I started reading book after book that my program required, I realized that if I kept learning on my own, I was free to choose what to study AND that meant I could craft myself into a person with really valuable knowledge in a very short amount of time. In the five years since then, I have been able to reach over 100 million people online with the videos I have made and have read or listed to more than 100 books from start to finish. Now I have a set of skills that I love using which is also very valuable to the work of business, startups, entrepreneurs online, and hopefully to you in living a happy life today. I share this with the hope you may be able to separate the boring nature of studying in class with the majestic experience of reading and learning! My exercise for today is to continue my habit of reading at least five books a day and watching at least 5 minutes of a video class online today. Thank you very much for watching or listening to this episode of Happier People podcast and I hope you enjoy it!