Since the days of Socrates and Plato, philosophers in one way or another have characterized life as a continuous learning process. Guess what, they were right, it is. Learning takes place from the moment we leave our mother’s womb until we take our last breath.
Whether consciously or unconsciously, our environment around us is constantly changing and in order for us to adapt, we must always learn from those changes, take what we have learned and apply it accordingly. That is the basic component for survival of the fittest, learning to adapt to a changing environment. Ignorance and failure to do so will result in extinction. Continuous learning is also essential for driving. This is how new discoveries in science and medicine are made.
The search for knowledge is the great antithesis of aging. Henry Ford once said:
“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The best thing in life is to keep your mind young.”
The metamorphosis of aging takes its toll on almost every fiber of our physical being, except for our willingness and ability to learn. However, very few people are not cognitive enough to notice.
All the blind ignorance of today’s society should be proof enough of this. People are too quick to adopt the thoughts and opinions of others instead of thinking for themselves. Whether through laziness or lack of ambition, when we allow others to do our thinking for us, then our willingness to learn enters a state of intellectual atrophy and, as Henry Ford said, we begin to age.
Just as learning to survive is a macro instinct present in all living creatures, learning to thrive is a micro-quest for knowledge that emanates at the individual level. In the corporate rat race, those whose mere existence is putting in their 40 hours for a paycheck that lasts only until the next paycheck are part of the macro survival instinct. Those who seek continuous improvement through learning focus on moving beyond living paycheck to paycheck. They are on the path to prosper at what they do and position themselves to get ahead of the survivors.
Opportunities to learn and grow in this great country of ours are available to everyone. The quantity and quality of opportunities will vary based on demographics, but they are there nonetheless. It is the willingness to recognize and take advantage of available opportunities that sets the benchmark of thriving over surviving.
If your prospects for growth and learning are limited, then, as Henry Ford said, you will grow old, not only intellectually but also in your personal and professional endeavors. On the other hand, if his gaze is fixed on a constantly moving horizon, there will always be news in his life and in his career. Every opportunity you seize will lead to a new discovery, and every new discovery will lead to a new opportunity.
Opportunities to thrive begin at an early age as early as kindergarten. Each progression to the next grade is another opportunity to learn and grow at another level based on the choice to continue or not. Although in some respects early opportunities may be mandated either by law or by a parent’s will for a child to continue, whether or not we successfully complete a given opportunity remains a matter of choice and will. There is no law that requires a high school diploma or college degree, only opportunities to take advantage of if there is the will and desire to do so. Those who take advantage of opportunities in education want to prosper and those who don’t simply want to survive.
The corporate rat race is also full of opportunities. Corporations are well aware that productivity depends on the continuous learning of their workforce.
A company that makes old genies can survive for a period of time, but as competition enters, a new and improved genie may be needed to stave off the competition. In addition, efficiencies in the manufacture of new and improved explosive devices will need to be improved as price competition enters the equation in the explosive devices industry. Then there are the forecasting methodologies that may come into play as distributors and consumers demand the ability to order just in time.
The plain old wunderkind company cannot meet the demands for product improvement, competitive pricing, and new inventory paradigms simply by flipping a switch. Investments in plant, machinery, technology and people are needed to make it all work. By investing in a new bang to go with the genius, the company is seizing an opportunity to thrive in a genius industry and also creating opportunities for employees to take advantage of based on the choice to thrive alongside the company or not.
For example, there are two employees who work on the cool part of genie making and they are very good genie makers. The company is looking internally for people to learn the new blasting process, however putting the blasting into the genie is a complex process and requires a great deal of additional technical training.
A genie maker, who has been with the company for 20 years, decides that the genie process has provided him with a good life for 20 years and he has no desire at this point to move on to blasting. The other employee, who has been there for five years, is excited about the new bang process and decides to take the learning opportunity to put the bang in the genius. How will the company view each employee?
Let’s say a year has passed and a position opens up for a whiz-bang production supervisor and only the two employees mentioned above apply. The requirements for the new position are that the prospective candidate have a minimum of five years with the company and experience in both the whiz and bang manufacturing process. If you were the one making the decision to award the job, who would you give it to, the employee who jumped at the opportunity to prosper or the one who until then just wanted to survive?
What opportunities are there to take advantage of in the company you work for? If you’re not sure, a good place to start is with the survival basics in Know the Rules, Written and Unwritten. Buried within the volumes of company rules, procedures, and guidelines, you’ll also find opportunities. Training classes, certification programs, tuition reimbursements for continuing education, and the like are explicit benefits that companies make available to their employees.
The problem, however, is that too many employees don’t see the aforementioned programs as an opportunity, but simply as a benefit. Why, because benefits are generally viewed as choices employees can make to promote or enhance their well-being, not as a means of superiority or advantage.
Categorically grouping opportunities as benefits can be for convenience or convenience to a business, as both can be considered workforce investments. It can also be attributed to the fact that benefits and opportunities are matters of choice left to the choice of an individual. Your well-being is served by profit and your advantage in the corporate rat race is served by opportunity.
The difference is that the benefit of a health plan is considered a necessity and a continuing education program is not. Unfortunately, you can’t thrive in the corporate rat race by weighing the importance of choosing between the need for benefits and opportunities. To survive you can choose a benefit and ignore an opportunity, to thrive you need to take advantage of both.
Opportunities to thrive are not limited to explicit training, continuing education, and certification programs; there are also implied opportunities for sixteen. Examples of implicit opportunities would be offering to fill in for the boss while they are on vacation; volunteer to be the team leader for a new project; or finding extra time to spend with a new employee to help them get acclimated to their new job.
The implicit opportunity will never be found in the benefits manual or appear as a business or personal mandate, as they are the manifestation in the form of someone’s request for assistance. Small or trivial things that feel like a nuisance when you have your nose on the grindstone can also be unspoken opportunities that invite you to take advantage of them.
As with the explicit opportunities, you can choose to ignore or sixteen the implicit ones. It’s about whether your interests lie in surviving or thriving. If you are simply a survivor, you will ignore the implicit opportunities, but as someone who wants to prosper, you will take advantage of them. Just like the lottery, you can’t win unless you play, so what are you prepared to do?
Repeatedly, it all comes down to the choices you make. No one is thinking about taking advantage of a program to go back to school for a degree or certificate. You can choose to take that upset customer’s call and resolve their issues or let someone else do it. Each and in itself can be opportunities to prosper that you can choose for the sixteen or not for the sixteen. The choice is up to you. Survive to run another day and grow old or thrive to keep going and stay young. What’s it gonna be?
