Best-selling author and personal growth giant Denis Waitley said, "Never become so much of an expert that you stop gaining expertise. View life as a continuous learning experience." These words will always apply to every aspect of your life and mine. There should never be a point where you assume you've mastered anything. There is always room for improvement.
Having the mindset of continuous learning should never be discouraging. Sure, on one hand you can think that you'll never be perfect. You'll never get to a point where you can say, "I'm done improving." That should only be discouraging if your end goal is to finish what you're doing and move on. But that's not how life works, at least not for the most important things in life. How can you say you're done growing spiritually? Or that you've learned so much there's no room to expand your mind and grow intellectually? Or that your relationships are so good that any more emotional growth or awareness is unnecessary? You can always grow physically, be in a better situation financially, and do more within your vocation. You're never done, and that's the best news I can give you.
Start on the Floor
Think of an Olympic gymnast. Years before she was competing in the Olympics, you could have found a little three-year-old just learning how to use her body. When she first started in that run-down gym as a three-year-old, her level of excellence was clearly not where it would be years later. As a little girl, her balance beam routine took place on the floor, and as long as she stayed on the four-inch painted line on the floor, it was considered a success. She was congratulated by her coach for just staying on the line. No other measure for success was used. As she grew up, her coach would start to expect more. As a five-year-old, she was now expected to stand up straight, smile, and point her toes throughout the entire routine. As a seven-year-old, she moved to the beam. Now elevated from the floor, her margin for error shrank significantly, but all the other measures for success remained. As she continued to grow, her level of difficulty increased, but the foundational measures of success stayed the same.
I encourage you to look up an Olympic gymnast performing a balance beam routine. Everything about it is impressive. I'd be impressed with myself if I could walk from one end to the other without falling off, and she is doing handstands, cartwheels, and flips on it like it's nothing. But she didn't start there. She started on the floor. She mastered the floor, then slowly added in more and more difficulty until she was on the Olympic stage, most likely being critiqued for the slightest bend in her knees. She once celebrated as a three-year-old for just staying on a four-inch painted line on the floor, and now she's devastated for not landing her backflip on a four-inch beam with one hundred percent perfection.
Judge Yourself by Today, Not Yesterday
The gymnast, or any other world-class athlete, understands what it means to be a continuous learner. I'm sure there was a point in her career when she thought doing a flip on a four-inch beam was impossible. But the important thing is to judge ourselves based on where we are today. Not on where we've been, and not on where we want to be, but on where we are today. If, as a three-year-old, the gymnast judged herself by Olympic standards, no progress would ever have been made, because she would have lived her whole life as a failure. If, as a sixteen-year-old, the gymnast judged herself by three-year-old standards, she certainly wouldn't be competing in the Olympics.
Continuous learners judge themselves based on where they are today. They don't judge themselves based on previous standards, because that's no way to achieve any sort of progress. Imagine a year ago you weighed three hundred pounds. Today, you weigh two hundred pounds. If you stepped on the scale tomorrow and weighed two hundred and ten pounds, would you celebrate because you've lost ninety pounds in three hundred sixty-six days? Or would you be annoyed that you've put ten pounds back on in a day?
Once you've set a higher standard for yourself, you need to work hard to maintain it. You're no longer holding yourself to the previously lower standard. When you're two hundred pounds, you don't live by three-hundred-pound standards. When you're an Olympic gymnast, you don't live by three-year-old standards. That's the essence of continuous learning. It means we are continually raising our standards. We can always be a little bit better than we are today. When we judge ourselves based on where we are today, we're judging ourselves based on our current capacity in a given area. When continuous learning becomes important is when we reach or exceed our capacity and continue to seek new heights and greater capacity. Once we've grown our capacity, that's the new measure. We continually grow our capacity and raise our standards, and ALWAYS judge ourselves based on where we are today.
Zero-based budgeting is another great example of continuous learning. The biggest mistake most people make when creating a budget is forecasting future expenses based on past spending. Past spending is useful information, but just because you've spent money on something in the past doesn't mean you should continue to spend money on it in the future. A good budget is mindful of previous spending and uses that information as necessary, but it never plans for an expense solely on the basis that money has always been spent in that area. Just because something was done in the past doesn't mean it's right for the future. In zero-based budgeting, you're creating a plan that best suits your needs for today, not for yesterday. For continuous learning in any area, we need to seek best practices for where we are today, not where we were yesterday.
