Using Leisure Time For Adult Learning

This article is a continuation of Creating Your Success Through Balance series of articles describing the skills we need to create Balance in the Five areas of our life that is important.

In the National Post there was an interesting article called “Does life Suck at 40?” where researchers report that people are unhappiest while in their 40′s. Prof. Oswald, one of the report’s authors believes this unhappiness pattern occurs because people begin to confront their limitations and unrealistic dreams in their 30s and hit a low-point in their 40s. Prof. Oswald speculates that after their 40′s they move past their disappointments and go on to feel more satisfied as they age. Others offer solutions that say the unhappiness drops off because the pressures of middle age begin to disappear. Still others think that only happy people survive and the unhappy people die off. This is somewhat true, but when studying the curve, their are still many people who remain unhappy. Therefore, while some of these observations may be accurate, but they don’t tell the whole picture.

What else causes the unhappiness in middle aged person and what can we do to address this?

The disappointments and “unrealistic dreams” that Prof. Oswald speaks of is related to having set goals in our youth but not achieving those goals.

First lets get a working definition of unhappiness. Unhappiness is not depression and it is not consistent. Its a feeling that shows up when we are alone or start thinking about our life as a whole. It doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy our children, it doesn’t mean we don’t have fun and we don’t have a great life. It sometimes is represented by a feeling of something missing.

I am going to focus on one of the things that might be missing, try to understand why people have trouble solving it, and then suggest different paths for you to pursue to address the solving what might be missing.

As we age we change how we spend our time. You move from being material focused to being focused on a fuller life. As people age you get a deeper understanding of what it takes to become happy and successful as an adult. One source of the unhappiness in middle age is simply the transition from one stage in your life to the another stage. The transition, like all life transitions is difficult, and the movement from one focus in life to another is what causes the feelings of unhappiness.

There a whole number of different feelings in the transition to middle age. We need to sort through them all. And its complicated and most of us don’t have the skills for it. We turn to doctors or to religion as some solutions. But ultimately we need to come to terms with the fact we are responsible for the problem, and we need to solve the problem. I believe that most thinking adults, including you, can solve almost any problem. All you need is some guidance on where to find the solution to your problem.

Middle age is a new experience for us, we have never done it before and when faced with a new situation we all lack the ability to understand the situation is part of the problem. We have all experienced the feeling of being lost in a new situation. Gradually we learn to Recognize the problem, understanding how it effects the different parts of our life, and then how to solve the problem.

We go through this every time we learn something new, Therefore we need some new skills for middle age.

One of the feelings that come from the transition is that we now know that to accomplish everything requires “Hard work”. And “Hard Work” is different than the type of work we needed to get our job or our profession. Part of this work means learning even more things.

As an adult we sometimes think that only children and youth learn. We remember emotionally that “Adults know everything” and we since we are “Adults” we must know everything. While now, as an adult, we know this is obviously not true, it doesn’t help us address those feeling inside of us. These feelings stop us from learning as adults, because we might think we are “dumb” or not adults.

If we address the problem of learning as an adult, the feelings will go away and of course our life will improve in numerous ways with the knowledge we have.

The practical challenges are about what to learn and how to learn.

Going back to university is not practical. Giving up your day job doesn’t make sense, and you most probably like the work or at least parts of the work.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could have that feeling of excitement each day? That feeling of accomplishments we used to have in youth?

There is a way. Start setting new goals and start achieving those goals.

In each of the five area’s of our life – setting goals and achieving them is much more difficult than it was in youth. We are older and supposedly mature the learning is challenged by our self image and the great responsibilities we have. (The five areas of Balance are Growing, Health, Relationships, Giving Back, and Financial Stability. They are described in other articles in much more detail.)

As you move from the stage of the dreams and goals of youth to the stage where you realize the goals of middle age are different. In your youth you focus on gaining the skills of your profession. In middle age we must start learning more about ourselves. We must begin to use our leisure time for adult learning to rekindle the excitement of youth.

I don’t mean taking more “professional” courses, but using our leisure time to learn how to grow as a person, as an adult. In a separate article, I speak about what it means to Grow Emotionally. But in this article I want to focus our thoughts on helping you turn some of your wasted leisure time into adult learning time and to enjoying it.

How do people combine their leisure time with adult learning? Other than the odd professional course very few people take learning in a formal manner seriously as an adult. To do this you must focus on learning personal skills and growing your abilities.

We are not alone. The unhappiness of middle age has been recognized for centuries. Its not a new problem. Its been addressed over and over. And now its even easier to solve.

I am strong believer in continuous learning and my learning is focused on how to set goals and learn the different ways we can to achieve my goals. There are several articles on this website speaking about how to set goals and achieve them.

My approach to achieving any of my goals is to identify an expert on the goals I want to achieve. I then devour all the knowledge I possibly can from that person. Much of what is written on these articles have been taken from a number of different experts and combined into my personal approach.

I don’t think I am unusual in my approach. To break it down a little finer, to choose my expert, I start with some research, I look at who recommends them, I look at why they recommend that person, and I look to understand what that person stands for.

I use some of my leisure time for adult learning. My primary mode of learning is my MP3 player. I have both music and adult learning content on it. I have gone through a number of different (cheap) MP3 players. One of the problems I had was finding the different content on it and getting the audio MP3 files from an adult learning CD’s to go in the proper order.

I finally decided not to be cheap and bought myself an Apple Nano. “Oh My Gd” was I sorry I waited. The Itunes software made loading a no-brainer and the Nano just works perfectly. Adding an adult learning CD is simple. I put the CD into the computer and then connect the Nano to the computer. Itunes just does everything else.

I bought my Nano online at the Apple Store and that was another amazing experience. The online store let me engrave the back with my name, e-mail, and phone number. I ordered the Nano on Thursday and received it on Monday. I purchased the “Red Product” version so some my money went to AIDS in Africa.

The engraving and shipping was free. It cost me $15 more than Best Buy, but the warranty was a year, rather than 90 days. What a great deal!! Get the Product Red Nano online from the Apple store here. Do it now because its the first step to improving your life.

Today we have the Internet, we have audio tapes, we have MP3 players. The opportunities to learn how to improve our lives have never been more varied than today. We can use our leisure time for adult learning. We can listen in the car, we can listen on the subway or bus, we can listen when exercising. I even listen when I am doing the shopping. However, you don’t have to listen all the time.

Instead of every night watching some TV show that you won’t remember next week, skip one show and spend an hour once a week simply listening to a CD and having a cup of tea and a cookie in the kitchen. Or sit in the room while the kids or the spouse is watching a show you don’t like. You get to spend some time with in their presence and meanwhile, you are improving yourself. I read in the room while my kids play a video game. They show me when they have accomplished something that is important to them, and I get to accomplish something important to me.

If we were to work on ourselves on a regular basis, set some new goals, and start to achieve those new goals, we would have happiness in our lives. We would become excited trust like we were young again.

If you are serious about Adult learning there are a number of ways to start. Go here and read my review of Brian Tracy here and then read some of his articles. If you all ready know about Brian Tracy, go to www.BrianTracy.com there are number of different free newsletters that you can get. However, to really make a change, I recommend you start with focusing on learning the skills of setting goals. I don’t mean just having some ideas about what you want to learn, but hard core techniques of using goals to actually start making changes in your life. Today take action to create the enthusiasm that you had when you were young. The Ultimate Goal Program by Brian Tracy is a fine way to get started.

Another approach is Stephen Covey of the Seven habits fame. He has a new audio CD program which is excellent and is found here. He can help you create the principled centered life that is a source for happiness. The 7 Habits is not a reading of the book, rather its from several from a variety of recordings of Dr. Covey teaching these important principles. I am rereading the book and find it is a little dated and touch hard going. So this CD is a better approach because it includes current examples to illustrate the points. This contains about 8 hours. The book is about 300 pages, which means it will take you 6 hours to read so get the CD’s.

If you want to learn online, I have a number of suggestions as well. Click here to read some books online from different Authors.

Here is an article on how to set and achieve your goals by yours truly.

Formal lectures on Success Through Balance are found at the Success Through Balance Learning Center website.

The article at the National Post called “Does life suck at forty?” can be found here.

Feel free to scan the Sitemap for a list of my other articles. Everything is listed and organized by Category. You can find the sitemap here.

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Tagged as: Brian Tracy, Goals, Making A Change, Personal Growth, Stephen Covey