Be selfish to learn to become successful.

Become selfish to learn

Being selfish is considered a negative trait but when it comes to learning, it is positive as when you're selfish about learning new ideas, skills and gaining knowledge then it is a helpful and fruitful asset.

The intention behind why you are trying to learn a certain thing is the most important. Being selfish is wrong when you have negative and consistent self-centered intention to learn. But if you first think selfishly to avoid distraction and concentrate better so that later on you will do good to people with the help of what you learnt then it is not wrong at all. 

Similarly if a one thinks selfishly and first and foremost tries to be healthy and happy adapting healthy habits then only he/she can keep others around him/her happy and can take care of them also inspire them to become healthy.

In one of my past jobs where I joined as fresher, I always use to try to learn from professionals, people who use to visit our office and even ones told my boss

"Sir, I am informing you that I will take advantage of your work experience and be selfish about learning from you" And he replied to me "everyone one should be".

And the more and more I started to learn, more rapidly I achieved growth, was able to share more knowledge with trainees who joined the company and help in their work too and we all worked as a team providing productivity and strength to each other professionally and also contributing the company to grow and when I decided to resign from that job to grow further in my career; my position was of manager, so learning selfishly really helped me to grow in that company reach to a higher position from being a fresher and 

that too in short time span. My colleagues had more work experience then me but as I was focusing on learning from them too appreciating what all knowledge they had to provide me I also achieved promotion and reached to a better profile during that time span being in that company.

But I think one should be cautious though about what to learn and who to learn from, as learning things which are not right and that too from people have some vested interest with wrong objective can be damaging for you and others as well.

For example, if a person wants to selfishly learn about making money through participation in lottery winning contests and keep taking advice from people who may be are not genuine and are just bragging giving you false information or by reading or watching fake social media posts about such lottery contests, then the person can end up being bankrupt and because of which his/her family will suffer too.

On the other side, if a person selfishly tries to learn skills to make good beneficial products which can be useful for people, learn from mentors who

have great work experience and wisdom in the same field by reading their books, attending there seminars and by personally meeting them then he/she may turn out being a successful entrepreneur and also helpful to society by providing helpful products which may deliver improvement to the lives of others.

One must keep aside his/her ego or negative attitude to learn something selfishly to grow in life so that he/she can become a source of inspiration for others and can also serve others professionally and personally as well.

I have a childhood friend, she is my bestie and from a few days I am noticing that she is using difficult vocabulary words while chatting with me on text and while talking on call too, which really sounds formal and bookish sometimes. I have to search the meaning of the word first and then reply to her and that is really annoying sometimes.

I believe we should use simple common language while talking to others especially if talking informally and that's what we have learnt in our academic years while being in school and college about informal and formal communication (well that’s what I remember).

So last night I was thinking about how it feels when someone who is your buddy suddenly starts talking using heavy bookish language as if they are giving an interview while chatting with you on WhatsApp and let me tell you I wasn't having any good feelings about it.

Then I thought that it is actually good for me if she talks that way with me as I will also learn new words from her talking like that (which I think is totally wrong talking informally through) and my vocabulary will become better. So I selfishly intended to learn from her way of communication and plus to that with this intention my negative annoying feeling which I was having earlier just vanished in a second.

If I had the ego about learning from my childhood friend and being jealous or judgmental thinking that "oh now she is showing her vocabulary skills" then I would have not been able to learn new words which are benefiting me too, not just her. And both our knowledge 

is growing and I am grateful for that. What can be better than learning new skills and gaining knowledge from a person who is a great friend to you and a source of positivity, love and inspiration? I realized the moment I changed my thought and started learning from her I felt more thankful to have her in my life and felt happy about improving my vocab too without reading any formal books.

Well there are few ways I become aware of through which we can learn and improve ourselves (apart from academic learning) and those are as follows:-

Learn from observing others.

Look at people what they are doing, from observing them you will major and minor details and also what is right and wrong. When watch a cricket match and if a team wins we get to learn that what did they well that they won the match and also we learn that what the other team should’ve done to win the match. Same way when we can learn from people we live with and also people outside that how they perform a task so well home such as a 

newspaper man that how he is so punctual at delivering newspapers to each house every day or the gardener who works with complete passion and care in the garden taking care of the plants and helping them to flourish well and making the garden look like a paradise. So we can learn from everyone about what is right to do and how it is done by observing them and sometimes maybe what not to do by observing there mistakes.

Learn from practicing new and existing skills.

When we keep practicing a skill then we get new ideas about how to do it better or we may get idea about something new to start. For example, a housewife happily taking care of her house and family and also cooking best tasty food for her family also being appreciated by her family and guests for cooking such delicious food may get an idea of becoming a business women selling food online. That’s how we mostly get flavorsome food delivered to us at our houses or offices nowadays as it all started with practicing skills and noticing productive skills and new ideas.

Learn from podcasts, articles online, animated educating videos and videos of other successful people lives.

Well these are the best digital way to learn. I am always thankful that we have internet and we can find information at a click and learn from it. And by learning from such platform lets us explore the outer world and benefit from other successful people’s wisdom and life experiences.

Learn from nature.

Nature is the beast teacher. We can learn from plants and from each season of weather. God is the best creator and guide and teacher. The only thing we have to do is to be mindful, aware and feel deeply.

Learn from babies and kids.

We can always learn from kids as they have the best imagination and belief power. And also from their questions as every question makes us think and it may look stupid at times but really those questions can solve many problem in the world if solved and answered thoughtfully. Learn from innocent babies to smile genuinely lighting up other people’s world and teaching us being so true and pure and only understanding the language of affection.