Inspiring Moments of New Learning

You’re in school right now, and that means you are learning a whole lot of new things about the body each day. But we know it can be exhausting to constantly cram your head full of muscles and bones and joints, oh my! You can actually give your mind a little break, and feed your spirit, by shutting the anatomy book for a moment and trying something completely different. This is what lifelong learners do, and cultivating the behaviors of a lifelong learner can enrich your life and your practice!

What is a Lifelong Learner?

Lifelong learners are people who are curious about the world around them and constantly seek out new ideas and inspiration. These people have tapped into the innate human longing to continually grow and evolve. When we seek out new learning every day, we broaden our possibilities. Learning does many things for us:

• It helps us more easily adapt to new situations.
• It feeds our innovation by providing a rich source of new ideas.
• It deepens our character and makes us more stimulating to those around us.
• It provides a sense of confidence and self-sufficiency.
• It brings context to the historical, social, and natural processes that limit or free our lives.
• It provides a range of perspectives to inform our own thinking and disrupt our biases.

Today, knowledge and inspiration are just a mouse click away, and it has never been easier to learn something new. Download the Learn Something New Graphic Organizer from the Picked Fresh section of this newsletter to capture your new learning and the thinking it promotes. Then, consider these opportunities for daily Internet learning:

• Subscribe to the Free Dictionary’s feeds, including “Article of the Day,” “In the News,” “This Day in History,” and “Today’s Birthday.”
• Subscribe to www.artdaily.org and contemplate a new art piece or photograph each day.
• Subscribe to Did You Know? to find out interesting facts, like why clouds are white.
• Subscribe to Aeon Magazine and receive daily or weekly enewsletters on ideas and culture, like “The Art of Attention” or “Where are the Ants Carrying all Those Leaves?”
• Subscribe to Brain Pickings and receive daily or weekly enews on a variety of topics spanning art, science, design, history, philosophy, and more.

Now that you’ve had your inspiring moment of new learning—it’s time to open up that anatomy book again!