This week I share with you Tip #9 from Ten Self-Care Tips: Looking for Sane Practices in Times of Insane Demands – Keep Learning. Learning keeps our minds young and agile. It supports our ability to adapt, to be creative, and to be confident. It is integral to fulfilling our potential, to reaching our dreams.

There was a time in the late 1980s that I made a conscious decision to not learn anything new. Nothing. That’s because I was burned out. I was not taking care of my needs and my health. When something needed to be done at work, I jumped in and did it. Others didn’t. I found myself often doing work that was assigned to someone else, someone who said that she didn’t know how to do it. So, she just didn’t. But I did know how, and if I didn’t know how, I would learn. That’s just what you do, right?  Evidently not. Some people don’t learn. They just stop. End of story. I decided to join that group.

Thankfully, I didn’t hang out there for long. I couldn’t. Learning, growing, and stretching to meet life’s challenges—and its joys— give us hope, energy, and appetite for more. When we decide we have no need to learn, or we just don’t want the bother, our minds are in danger of atrophy, of wasting away. Henry Ford, the father of the modern automobile, said, “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young”. 

Okay, I’m going to stop complaining; and instead, start learning about the technology issues that plague me, steal my time, and make me want to dig in my heels and close my eyes to them .  . . . like how to delete that app I downloaded that now is bugging me with messages every day, or how to open a file from my email without having to first save it to a folder on my computer, and silliness like that. I can learn. I might even find I enjoy the relief it gives me and the boost in confidence. It might remind me that I’m an amazing woman, and I can do anything.

So, I just have to ask: What are you learning? What will you learn that will move you toward your goals and make you feel just a little lighter, a little younger?