I try to learn something new each day.

It is a goal that I set for myself a long time ago and I have been reasonably consistent in achieving it… the root cause of this mindset was my father. My father would always encourage us to read books and to take some time to think about what we had read so we could be constantly learning.

Smart man.

It can be something small, something simple or something radically thought provoking that it makes me change my understanding and in turn it impacts on how I might be as a person.

It can be something I have read, I have watched or uncovered during the day, and very often it can be something I have lived through as an in-the-moment experience.

The key thing here is that it helps me evolve, improve and get better at some things and over the course of time it opens me up to other viewpoints and builds tolerance of other people and their strong opinions.

The world would be a better place if we had more tolerance.

Empathy, man!!

Take the time to learn something each day.

A ‘learn’ can come from anywhere and anyone, but you have to be on receive mode to be able to take the full benefit from it.

I find that taking the time to reflect on the day is always a great way to recap and to grab some learning.

That is why I recommend journaling to people. It’s never a natural thing at the beginning but after time the habit of journaling will give you such rich insights.

Yesterday I learned something but I only noticed the learning after journaling about it this very morning.

My 8am journal update:

“You can drive in absolute accountability in a workplace and make it work to the success of all as long as you do not drive in fear.. adding fear, through aggressive leadership and abusive behaviours will only result in isolationism, silo thinking, jealousy, unhealthy competitive practices and a whole bunch of unhappiness”

Reflecting on the above, and flipping my thoughts…

‘What if you worked on instilling absolute accountability without the fear and then as a leader you focused on encouraging networking, shared responsibility, partnering, openness and you promoted a feedback culture and sprinkled in some fun. What would happen…?’

I went on with the reflections.

‘What for good measure, you then celebrated and recognised the individual skills involved in demonstrating the process of togetherness and partnering, their ability to drive innovation and the improved performance working as a team, and just say you recognised this as much as you do the output: the result, which is often measured, what would be the impact?

At times in my scribbles, I would deviate to a more lighthearted path…

‘This would be a place people would want to work and could very well change the dreaded Monday mornings for everyone, people would go above and beyond to engage and Monday would be a celebration….’

I continued to explore my thinking…

‘What would happen to the performance? How would you describe the culture? What would be the downside? Would everyone thrive?’

I went on a bit.

I caught a ‘flow’ moment as they say.

The idea here is that I let rip with the writing while journaling and as I ran out of steam I looked back at what I had wrote and from that I plucked out the key ‘learn’ for me from that stream of thought.

This is a great exercise to do as a compliment to your journaling.

Identify what you can learn from your journal entry.

Remember, this is just one way to learn, don’t ignore the others.

What do I learned today?

I learned to ‘flip my thinking’…. which is a sentence I will now use in my future journaling and in my daily life.

Always be learning.

What’s the alternative?