The Importance of Continuous Learning As An Adult

Learning is not just for children and young adults. And it doesn’t need to happen in a school (or online, as is the case for most of our students these days). Learning should be a continuous pursuit throughout our entire lives, and prioritizing learning actually becomes more important as we get older. Here’s why.

​Continuous Learning Is Good for Our Brains

We all fear losing our mental capacities as we age, and while there is no way to make sure you never get dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, there are some things we can do to keep our brains healthy as we get older, and making sure we’re constantly learning is one way to help prevent, or at least delay the onset of dementia.
​
Learning can also help mitigate the effects of a stroke or other forms of brain damage. The more neural pathways we’ve built up and maintained, the more options the brain has when one section is down. Think of it as setting up potential detours. When one section of your brain is not functioning, having more neural pathways provides more detours your mind can use to work around the obstruction and reach the same conclusion.

Continuous Learning Reduces Stress

I talk with a lot of entrepreneurs and small business owners about fear and doing things they don’t want to do, and there seems to be a common thread running through them all: fear of the unknown. We tend to fear something if we’re not very familiar with it, and that fear can lead us to avoid it, which prevents us from getting to know about it, and the cycle continues.
​
By focusing on continuous learning throughout our adult lives, we can reduce stress by learning about all kinds of things that used to scare us. Most of the time, we find it’s really not all that scary.

Continuous Learning Makes Us Better Business Owners

Few things are as scary as starting and running a business. There are so many different elements and moving parts, and most entrepreneurs who are just starting out have to be a kind of jack-of-all-trades, doing everything from marketing to customer service to billing, even if they’ve had little or no training in those aspects of running a business. 
​
I always recommend hiring help whenever possible so you can focus on your genius zone instead of wasting time and energy on something that doesn’t give you joy or make you money. But even when you do hire help, you should know at least a little about the task you’re hiring them to do so you can make sure you’re hiring the right person for the job. So if you’re a business owner, you should constantly be learning new things about your business, even if you delegate certain tasks to some of your team members.

​Continue Your Learning with My Online Academy

Click on image to get to my Online Academy!

My belief in the importance of continuous learning as an adult is why I started my online academy. It’s a great resource for entrepreneurs and small business owners, and it’s chock full of so many valuable tips and tricks about starting and running a business that the price makes it a total steal! It’s perfect for business owners who need some help, but aren’t yet ready to hire a coach.