The story goes that Marcus Aurelius hired an assistant to follow him as he walked through the Roman towns square. The assistant’s only role was to whenever Marcus Aurelius was praised, whisper in his ears, “You’re just a man.” “You’re just a man.”
They say two things define us. Our patience when we have nothing and our humility when we have everything. You know the greatest thinkers on the planet believe that they’re habitual learners, habitual students of reality and of life. It was actually Maya Angelou who said, “I’ve learned that I still have a lot to learn.”
The person that we will become in 5 years is defined by the people we spend time with today and the books that we read today. That’s why who we associate with, who we spend time with, who we absorb our energy with will really define what’s on our mind. Often what limits our learning is that we believe we already know. We already believe that we have knowledge. We already believe that we have the answers. But actually opening up ourselves to learn from the people around us, selectively choosing people who can be guides and wise advisors.
We often find that this feeling of “knowing” makes us actually judge others and criticise others. And that’s why we see that judging is critical but observing can be educational. And therefore, we should be so focused on improving ourselves that we don’t have any energy to criticise anyone else. And when we’re focusing on improving ourselves we surround ourselves by people who challenge the way we think and question the way we behave. And that’s why if you’re looking around and you find yourself being the smartest person in the room, change rooms. You’re in the wrong one. You want to be around people who lift up the way you think, who lift up your mindset, who really take you to new dimensions and horizons that you could never ever imagine yourself.
I believe that we should never let compliments get to our head and never let criticism get to our heart because when we do that, we can start to build with genuineness and authenticity. When we’re humble we can actually grow and rise up and always feel that we’re learning, always feel that we’re developing, always feel that someone can share insight at any moment that can change our lives.
Have you ever found it that similar situations keep coming into your life and actually nothing ever goes away until it teaches you what it needed to learn. So, when we don’t extrapolate lessons from situations we have to take the test again. We almost have to learn that lesson again, and therefore simultaneous or repetitive situations keep approaching in our lives.
When we realise that we’re students for life, instead of making people see how powerful we are, we want people to understand how powerful they are. And we learn how to empower others, We’ll actually attract people to work with us to achieve our goals. They say it’s better to know how to learn than to know. Because when we know how to learn it becomes a habit. It becomes a part of our mindset, it becomes a part of the way that we daily navigate life. We’re trying to draw lessons from every person, every situation, every interactions, every moment that can actually teach us something about ourselves, teach us something about society, teach us something about our world. Teach us something about how we can interact with that space.
And that’s why Brian Herbert said, “The capacity to learn is a gift, the ability to learn is a skill, but the willingness to learn is a choice”.
The story is a copy of speech in the Jay Shetty’s video:
https://www.facebook.com/JayShettyIW/videos/2014102652237523/
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