The Joy of Learning

I am writing this blog post, early in the morning, with my iPad and I both huddled under the covers while my roommate sleeps on. I feel a little like a kid at camp must, who has been told that it's lights out and who, instead, huddles with friends under the blankets with a flashlight, telling ghost stories.

Why am I not taking advantage of the time away from the day-to-day household noise, enjoying the lovely hotel bed that I won't have to make, sleeping in for a change? Because I am away attending an amazing conference and I am too excited about what I am learning. I can't wait to get home and start applying it. I can't wait for the day to get started so I can get into the conference room and learn more. My mind seems overloaded with new thoughts, ideas and concepts. And yet...it miraculously opens up to new thoughts, making room in a space that had previously seemed full to bursting.

Although I do feel a sense of overwhelm and do experience questions in my mind concerning what I am going to do with all of this new information, I am far too excited and jazzed about everything to allow anything to break my buzz.

Here's my question to you. When was the last time you felt like this? When was the last time you allowed yourself to be a student and opened yourself to learning something new? And not just something new...something that got you excited, ideas that you could feel physically, with an almost butterflies in the stomach kind of wonder?

This is how we felt as children when we were learning. We experienced the wonder of new ideas. We let them sink in and connect with other things we had learned until we then asked questions to increase our understanding and strengthen those links. And not just one or two questions, we asked QUESTIONS! We weren't concerned with what other people thought about the quality of our questions, we were solely focused on our own understanding. We wanted to know, we wanted to understand and, perhaps most importantly, we wanted to learn more.

As I prepare to head out to experience my final day of this conference, I invite you all to crawl out from under your covers with me and open yourself to new ideas and thoughts today. Adopt the learning model and pose of a child. Look at the new idea with wonder, not skepticism; with joy, not reluctance; with excitement, not dread.

This is my new motto, and I invite you all to explore and perhaps even adopt THIS new idea... To learn as a child. You might just be surprised to rediscover the pure pleasure of learning.