Learning keeps us new and fresh. When we learn something new, it is like injecting a new life into our brains, causing us to adapt and evolve to the new stimulus in our environment.

When we stop learning, we are allowing a main function of our brain to die.

If we keep learning, we are extending the life of our atrophying brain.

It’s no question that over the course of one’s life, the body naturally begins to fall apart. We weren’t meant to live forever, but why is it that one might deteriorate sooner than others?

It would be over simplistic to say the differentiated characteristic is learning. There are many different types of variables that could cause one to extend or shorten their life. So it’s not only up to learning.

But learning does help everyone get better.

I’ve mentioned a few times that I’m reading through The Brain that Changes Itself, by Norman Doidge, M.D. It’s a fascinating compilation of “stories of personal triumph from the frontiers of brain science.” It’s wild to think that a book published in 2007 would be still on the frontiers of brain science, but I’m amazed as I read these incredible stories and discoveries about the brain’s ability to learn.

And learn it must.

“We must be learning if we are to feel fully alive, and when life, or love, becomes too predictable and it seems like there is little left to learn, we become restless—a protest, perhaps, of the plastic brain when it can no longer perform its essential task.”  – Norman Doidge, M.D.

There are just too many variables in our life that can cause us to be what we might call our “true” selves. What does that mean with every external stimulant occurring at break neck speed from the moment we enter into the world?

Everything around us is molding and shaping how we think, how we react, how we respond.

And learning is the only way out of our natural tendencies to fall into the rhythm and rut our brains naturally crave.

We crave a normal, easy, expectant life. I desire to know the exact time my kids wake up in the morning so I can make sure I have my controlled quiet time. And when they wake up early, something inside me cringes.

Everything around us is molding and shaping how we think, how we react, how we respond.

Why? Because I don’t like interruptions. I like my thing to be done my way.

But life isn’t that way.

My brain is the same way. Yours is too. After reading Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking, Fast and Slow, I’m amazed at how easy our brains make decisions that help us get out of the tension of having to make decisions. Did that make sense? Our brains actually don’t like the tension of indecision—we don’t like open loops in our brain. We must answer the questions.

And if the question is too hard, our brains have adapted a great way to save us from this tension. They change the question. 

Without knowing it, our brains will not answer the hard question, but we’ll think we have. Kahneman argues that we actually change the question in our brains so that we can answer them. Genius right? Don’t have an answer? Change the question to the answer you know.

We like how our brains process.

And we need this response. Before you start getting up in arms about a cynical view of the brain, the reality of our decisions and motivations has the ability to liberate us to be the men and women we truly desire to be. We desire to be more caring, empathetic, more unbiased, objective and cool in heated arguments. These are good desires. 

Knowing that our brains respond this way can cause you and I to have a number of responses, but here’s two that I can think of right now.

We like how our brains process.

One, we can ignore it—file it away within the endless drawers of information in our brains. “That’s nice.” We say. Then move on. Or, two, we can accept it and say, I’m going to learn.

Learning is the key to growing beyond the natural responses curated over time by the external stimuli in our environment from infancy to whatever age you are now. Learning will help you step into the fullness of life your heart desires to engage in.

So don’t stop. Keep on pressing in, keep on knowing that the very act of learning is what will give you the fullness of life you crave.

Because when we learn everyone gets better.

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