Attitude is the most important tool in learning!

The first tool is "attitude" and it is the most important tool you can develop. Let me give you my favorite example, give a child a tablet or a computer and they light up with excitement, however give the same device to someone over 50 and you might get a completely different reaction. Why is this? Most people will give an answer like this "the child grew up with all this stuff”. That's just not true, a child has not grown up yet so it has only the experiences of right now. On the other hand, we the older generation"50" and above have grown up with technology expanding faster than most of us wanted it to. The major difference between the child and the adult is the lack of fear and looking at everything as if it is game and we, the older generation, look at an increasing lack of time and a fear of failure or a lack of joy of learning anything anymore. We tend to hate change.

Changing our attitude may be the hardest tool to develop, because we have trained our minds to hate change and fear learning for many diverse reasons as we have grown older.  I have tried to keep my mind open and enjoyed learning for all of the professions I have been employed at. Change has come at an ever increasing pace over the years that I have been at my professions. Technology in many jobs or industries has incorporated computers, to our horror, most of us were having to learn skills that we thought were not available to us. That’s just not true. It has grown just like we have and was available for us to learn before we had to.  Because of our fear or just plain laziness, we were reluctant to embrace the changes and learn these skills to be ready for them in our jobs and our life.  

I was surprised when people my age got angry when confronted with smart phones, tablets, laptops and computers with more categories of devises to come in our future. Why is this and how can we ever hope to overcome this block of learning something that will enhance and improve our way of life. It is something that we must overcome. So many things, especially government forms such as unemployment registration and Social Security registration that we will have to fill out in the future are going to be only available on the Internet,

which means we will have to be able to use some type of device or computer to navigate these forms.  So you see it is extremely important that we give up our mental blocks of devices that we are afraid of learning how to operate. I have come to look at learning new ways of using and understanding my computers in the same way I look at going to Walt Disney World. When I walked through those gates I become 12 years old again and I wanted to see and do and learn everything that these parks had to offer. In the same aspect, when I turn on my computer I turn 12 years old again and I want to learn and find out about everything that they can do for me and make my life much easier and happier. Don't get me wrong, not everything that Walt Disney World has to offer is something that I'm crazy about, but most things are. Keeping that in mind, not everything that my computers can do is that interesting to me, just as it won't be to you, but having a basic understanding of everything that your computer can do is essential.

I have used the example of computers to show you that it is possible to change your attitude and have a more childlike enthusiasm about learning and this particular tool, “attitude”, is something that must be acquired within you.

No one can find out what excites you the most about learning. Sometimes it may be learning how to cope with some type of adversity that you or a loved one has acquired with age. You might also be excited about a new grandchild being born in the state further away than you can travel and learning how to receive pictures on e-mails or how to Skype (which is a videophone conference type system) so that you can see and speak with your children and new grandchild. But no matter what it is that you need to learn you will be much more successful with the proper attitude.

I know that I have introduced you to the most horrible thing about life and that is change. It is inevitable that we change our attitude about learning to a more childlike state. For us to enjoy learning we must look at it as if it were a game or something enjoyable for us. If we have to, make it into a game that we will enjoy and indulge in every single day.