Fighting for your Self Led Learning

Everyone knows of the cliche struggle that young-ish students have in going to traditional higher learning...institutions such as college or university.

What I want to write about today is simply the struggle that those of us that are currently setting our own personal learning journey. We learn, we push , we seek out sources of relevant information and inspiration based upon our own passions and goals.

Perhaps you have heard of young students eating ramen noodles for days just to afford the luxury of a traditional higher education. But what sacrifices does a "regular" person have who is simply seeking to grow and learn more in the midst of holding down jobs, self employment, business ownership and/or investments?

Warren Buffet and many of the business leaders and innovators of the last 10 years seem to all have a compulsion for great reading. Both Bill Gates and Warren Buffet speak highly of the time they spend reading and they guard that time ferociously.

That brings me to this thought. How hard are you fighting for  a safe quiet uncluttered space for you to read and think? Reading is not enough....you must also have safe quiet uncluttered space for you to think...for long periods of time. If you are a self led learner, carving our your own personal think tank is essential for you to accomplish this growth.

Your thinking space does not need to be in a building. It can easily be in a forest path, or alone in your backyard with your noise cancelling head phones on. White noise is actually very useful in allowing you to channel your thinking to whatever task or idea you set to pondering. You MUST block out distractions. You MUST reserve that  reading & thinking space in your life.

While social life is essential for well rounded happiness, one who wants to accomplish anything of beauty or courage, must be able to avoid unnecessary social interactions so that he/she can focus on their task.

Bill Gates, in the Netflix documentary, speaks about his "think weeks" where he goes out to a remote cabin, armed with loads of books and diet coke, where he can consume the books at his own pace and also have the mental time and space to process what he is reading.

Bill Gates stated that we all have to limit our minds to focus on a certain problem or issue. We need to harness our brain power to solve one thing that we focus on. I am not speaking of becoming a one dimensional narcissistic person. I am simply describing what Bill Gates emphasized, in that we must give our minds/brains an "assignment" and not allow that time to be squandered by a lack of focus. 

Focus is everything.

Peace, 

Carla.

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Are You doing Ok?

To My Fellow Humans,

It's been a while for me to just sit quietly and chat with those who happen to read my blog.

The earth has been transformed  since march of 2020 into a seriously new concoction.

Are you filled with hope? Has this past year been hard? Has someone you know become ill or lost their life?

You most likely are a perfect stranger to me. But we are all humans sharing this same earth we call home. 

We all live under the same God. He has not given up his throne. We must not give up on our home.

The greatest tragedy that this pandemic has caused ( magnified by the government's responses)

is the extreme isolation that many of us have experienced. Even those who have been able to continue to "work from home" have still been isolated from many experiences that most of us have taken for granted for decades.

Little things now mean so much more. A road trip to the beach (when local governments permit it)

becomes as grand as a trip of a lifetime. Going to church becomes a glorious privilege to be treasured more than gold.

As we, the human race, begin to shake off the grey clothing of "all things covid", we will regain our humanity. We have no better options. To go back and retreat further is not going to cut it.

Forcing the world into a global roving hybernation can only go on for so long. The humans must come out and greet the sun...play with their kids in the yard and speak openly in person with one another. Looking for fewer zoom meetings and conference calls and more meetings where I can see my friends and colleagues in person.

Yes, yes, I know that commercial real estate will need to morph and adapt to the "fear" of contagion that still afflicts the populace. But we must insist on regaining most, if not all, of the rights and freedoms that one year of a pandemic stole from us.

You must live. I must live. We must greet life again, with vigor and a smile.

Peace, my brothers and sisters, and courage.

carla.

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Hate Conspiracy Theories? You'll Hate this Post

Ok ok....I don't indulge my affection for conspiracy theories too often....but this wee post i simply must write down.

I just want to write simply today....no metaphors, no dilly dallying around the subject.

Ok, ...here goes.

I want to encourage you to keep your book collections in tact. Don't throw out your paper form books, hard cover or soft cover or leather bound.....doesn't matter what format, but they must be in physical form.

Why am I saying this? Because I feel like the push for everything to be digitized is not as innocent as it appears. If all our reading is supposed to be on e-readers or ipads or laptops or phones, we are giving the "net" all access to record and analyze everything we read. If "they" can monitor everything we read, then they certainly can attempt to control everything we read. "They" will try to influence our world view and every other viewpoint according to whatever "they" are trying to achieve. "They" want to control how you think and what you think about, by controlling what you have access to. They want to control the books you read. The more that you do your reading "online" the more control you are giving to "them" to influence and dominate your reading.

Good books always prepare us to wage war with "sub par" lifestyles and ways of thinking. Good books energize holy "rebellion" against ungodly lifestyles. 

The past year of 2020 and the first month and a half of 2021 has shown us how quickly computer companies can just "erase" a person's voice on mass media. If "they" don't like your message, they can remove your ability to write words that other humans will read. They will "cancel" the ability of  someone "they" don't like, to speak and write on public forums, on all kinds of mass media. "They" will try to muffle your voice print in whatever way they can. The more we depend on electronic media for all the things we read and learn from, the more access we give to "the powers that be" to monitor, influence and ultimately control what we read and learn from.

That is why I feel I must write now to encourage you not to throw away your paper format books.

Try to maintain a family or personal library, with literal hands on paper and ink books. "They" can't get your books if you keep them alive by saving them in your private libraries. Don't fall prey to political correctness by burning your books. Let your personal libraries live long into the future. Keep them under lock and key if you need to. Some of you need to put your most important books into safes that are protected from water and fire damage.

In North America we are not at risk in a physical sense, but our minds are definitely at risk.

We are allowing all things electronic to control the formation of our mindsets. We are allowing mass media, social and otherwise, to attempt to control our own narratives. We must and are able to retain our narratives, but it will take effort on our part to do so. We protect our minds by protecting our words. Books are a very important piece of the puzzle. Please don't empty your home of books. Even if the books are old and dusty or the pages are worn from over use. Books are priceless treasures.

We must reclaim leadership in the formation of our own mindset as well as the growth of our children's minds. We must restore our love and respect for "self led learning". We must restore "in person" learning on all levels. Some courses should not be recorded for livestreams, or uploads. Some classes should be "old school" in person with no electronic devices permitted in the class room. 

Real learning has a high price. It takes effort. It takes the ability to sit and listen to the perspective and viewpoints of people that you may not agree with and be able to stay civilized and calm. It's about agreeing to disagree and giving one another the right to be heard.

We must restore the skill of "respectful and heated debate". A good argument is the hallmark of a vital and healthy learning environment. Great debates form great democratic societies. When public debates are dulled down into politically correct shams, we all lose out, because we aren't letting one another freely speak.

Ya'll have probably already figured out over the years, that I believe in the Bible.  I believe strongly that copies of the Bible must be preserved for the generations to come. We must not allow these strange forces of "censorship" to try to remove words or portions from our precious historic Bibles. That is why I encourage you strongly to hold onto the paper format copies of the holy bible that you may currently possess. There is nothing, in and of itself, wrong with using an online version of the Bible. However, I feel that we must be aware that anything on the internet can be "edited" and tampered with. If the Bible's words start offending the "powers that be" in North America, what would stop "them" from trying to 'remove' the words that "offend" from all online versions of the Bible? That is why you absolutely NEED to keep a literal copy of the holy Bible in a safe place in your possession.

Try not to just access the Bible from a computerized entry point. Keep a hard copy in black and white, on any kind of paper it is on.... Paperback is fine, hard cover is fine, as is leather bound.

We need to preserve the original versions, the good old fashioned reliable versions such as the King James Version of the holy Bible.

Well, that's all for now. I have spoken my peace.

Kindly,

Carla.

P.S. When you protect your books, you protect your mind.

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