View learning as an investment

I realised something while chatting with a friend recently. I really like the concept of investing in yourself as part of your training. I like to refer to things in positive ways,. e.g. what are you investing your time in as opposed to what have you sacrificed. The former is positive and makes you feel like you gaining something, the latter is negative and makes you feel like you're missing out.

I feel I want to use phrases like:

• what are you going to invest your time in today.
• How have you been investing your efforts lately
• What knowledge have you invested in this past week.

That sounds really good. That's pretty much how I feel about knowledge of how our minds, bodies and souls work. I want to encourage people to invest in knowledge in what actually goes on through out your body. some will be very specific and focused on science. Other parts will be more conceptual and based more on teachings from the past, much like those from many traditional sports such martial arts.

I feel it matters less about how or where you learn it and more on what you take from it. How deeply you understand the teachings. The investment comes because every day afterwards you're now mentally stronger and fitter due to this knowledge. It can't ever be taken away from you. It becomes a foundation that you can always rely on.

It's also like climbing a mountain. To reach the top, the pinnacle of understanding, you have to make many steps. Each bit of knowledge you learn is the next step. When people are inexperienced and in training, I provide the steps for people as I'm their coach and taking them up their first mountain. In time they need to take these steps themselves and learn about how to invest in themselves on a regular basis.

when they do it regularly enough and with enough quality (as usual quantity isn't the key) they'll start to look out at the landscape. With all this knowledge they taken a lot of steps. Since they're further up the mountain they'll be able to take it all in so much easier than they could at first.

How's that for an analogy. If there's one thing I know about it's how to learn something, do it, and then teach it. That's what I've been doing since I was a nipper and I'm really glad that's what I've learnt to do. I look back now on what I've achieved and I've essentially learnt how to learn and how to put it into practise and get results.