Tuesday, April 16, 2013

I am a huge advocate of learning. I've learned more from reading books and blogs than I learned in the seven years of business school and law school. Learning new ways to do business and even new ways to think about life are absolutely essential to growth. That being said, there's one thing just as important as learning, and that is un-learning. There are certain things we were better at when we were kids than we are now as adults. As kids, we were better at taking risks, rolling with the punches, going out on a limb, and trying new things. If you can learn to be a kid again, you will position yourself to excel beyond your wildest dreams. Here are some steps you can take to find the kid in you.

1. Embrace Change: As adults we buck change and we embrace the status quo. As kids, we easily adapted to change. By taking on a new hobbies or sports our schedules changed constantly. There were days we woke up with exciting plans for the day only to have a total shift when a best friend called to invite us over to play. To find the kid in you, try rolling with the punches every once in a while. Instead of complaining or sulking because things don't go your way, embrace the change and enjoy the wild adventure that change offers to your life.

2. Trust: One thing that gets beaten out of us as we grow older is our ability to blindly trust people. As kids, our parents constantly reminded us not to trust strangers, because as kids we did blindly trust whomever we met. Of course, there are risks to just trusting someone for the sake of trusting them, we've all learned our lesson at some point on this. However, more often than not, if you simply just take someone at face value, believe what they say, and trust them, things turn out better than you thought.

3. Believe Anything Is Possible: I remember that at a very young age, I believed it was possible that I could make myself fly. It's that same type of belief in ones own self that has propelled the greatest accomplishments of all time, like walking on the moon, climbing the top of Mount Everest, air travel, and starting companies like Google. If you 100% believed you could do anything in the world you wanted, what could you do?

Today, instead of learning something new, try un-learning something old. If you could simply learn to embrace change, trust, and believe anything is possible, the world is your oyster.