The pandemic has been with us for many years now and brought us a lot of sickness and the unfortunate loss of life. However, I hope you are like me and have been able to find some positives from it despite all the bad news. Whether it is more time spent with the family working from home, being able to learn how to connect with people remotely through Zoom or other forms of social media, or maybe even finding ways to re-invent yourself.
For me, I have always been a person who likes to advocate for lifelong learning. It does not mean that one should sign up for a university course; you can still find many avenues to learn. A survey was conducted on 145 adults that participated in lifelong learning and several positive effects had been observed. These included improved self-esteem, self-efficacy, as well as a sense of purpose.
It seems that lifelong learning can be a way to find a direction in life that we may not of found by just sticking to the regular 9 to 5 of life. It is more than just picking up an informative book from the library or finding an interesting website online. It could be participating in a course in a physical college or even participating in online courses via Zoom or other video conferencing.
Continuing to learn will not only help you in terms of mental health; it will also help with your cognitive functioning and can also help you stay young, at least mentally. Other benefits include: a boost to your memory and general happiness, and in the case where you are interactive with other students, it will also help to restore your ability to connect socially with other like-minded people.
I have recently taken on a large amount of lifelong learning and to be honest with you; I have become a little overwhelmed with all the studying needed to keep up. However, now, looking at the research, I can understand how this endeavor has helped me immensely in terms of self-esteem and the ability to challenge myself to make new connections. I will reflect on my experiences and let you know about it in the next blog.
If you have any positive experiences with lifelong learning, please let me know.
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https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0305498042000303008
https://www.upskilled.edu.au/skillstalk/mental-health-benefits-learning-new-skill
