Learn. Apply. Grow.

Be alive to opportunities for growth.

Don't go through life, grow through life.

— Eric Butterworth

Dear Student,

Before you realize any form of fulfillment, economically, mentally, socially, or in any other sphere of life that matters, you first must work on your own life, every minute detail. That is why I hammer on Personal Development. And the truth is, growing is very easy. Very easy, if you would take the path of deliberate practice, and not least resistance.

When I see and listen to uncouth, brash people, I wonder how they have lived, and how come they act in those certain irritable ways. It might sound like pride, but I think in this way because the only condition necessary for people to remain immature, insensitive, and mannerless in their actions and words is for them not to have been disciplined or awaken enough to the everyday lessons they can learn from the situations in their lives and circumstances that appear in their everyday life.

Yes. Every minute, of every second, everything that happens to us is meant to teach us lessons, and paying attention to these lessons, applying the knowledge gleaned from these lessons into our lives, attitudes and words is how we grow and become refined, ideal people.

Rob Dial put it this way, "Everything that happens to you in life, the loss, fear, failure, pain, traumas, abuse, betrayal, successes, heartbreaks, everything is a perfectly crafted curriculum for you to evolve into the highest version of yourself." If you are not learning, taking in all these lessons that come with every day and every person you encounter with in your life and putting it to good use, to help inform your actions, words, tweets, chats, decisions, attitudes and values, isn't that just sheer nonchalance, heedlessness and lack of discipline about the way you are living? Isn't that entirely your fault?

There is an opportunity to learn in everything life presents to us every day. It's not until we read a book, or attend a conference, or subject ourselves to official mentoring, or submit ourselves to a structured accountability that we grow or get the opportunity to grow. No! Every single thing that happens to us, the defeat, the victory, the disagreement with our friends, the trauma, the accident, the betrayal, hurt, pain, fear, failure, success, arbitrariness that we encounter teaches us invaluable lessons that gives us a clear opportunity to evolve our attitudes into the ideal person that we need to be for fulfilment.

While reading books, attending conferences and doing those specific things arranged towards personal development is good and are also practical things to help us develop, that is not where the growth and the true evolution from learning takes place. Evolution takes place the minute you imbibe those information you have learned from the books and conferences into your own attitude and you let it transform your actions and value system. Real growth takes place when there's a shift in the way you behave, respond to situations and triggers, the way you make decisions.

Growth doesn't happen when you read about how to be calm in situations that usually trigger your feelings, but it comes the minute the opportunity to be calm presents itself and you take it, by inculcating what you've learned from what you have read. The point where you have to apply what you have learned is the point of opportunity for growth that life gives you every single day. Think about this perspective!

Also, pay a little more attention to all that happens. The minute, trivial things that people say, events that occur, actions people take, they are opportunities to learn new things and then apply these things that will eventually cause you to grow, and evolve into your ideal self. You have to be more attentive and actively listen in, look at, take in your environment to learn, because there are endless, inexhaustible things to learn from your environment every single day. If you aren't doing this, then it tells of your lack of discipline and responsibility to your own life, your growth and your fulfilment as an individual. And it is your responsibility, completely. Nobody else.

This is why I fault people who are old enough to be reasonable, who have had years of opportunities to learn and develop themselves, but are still brash, insolent, immature, reclined, undisciplined, crude, puerile people that add zero value to themselves and to the people around them. I fault them, and I pity them, because even though the opportunities presented to everyone are not exactly in equal measures, and there are arguably outliers, the opportunities of the universe, like time, environment, and circle of influence given are all equal, and how we use it, respond to it and derive value from it borders on our deliberate practice and discipline.

Take the opportunities you have around you to learn and to grow. Be attentive to the things every single day teach you, be an ardent student to the situations of life, and then when the opportunity to refine your attitude with all you have learned comes, take it, for our growth lies in our taking opportunities to apply what we have learned, thereby refining our attitudes and eventually, our lives.

Cheers 🥂

To your growth,

Abiola Okunsanya,

Handzinspired.