Fighting your ignorance

It's a bigger challenge to admit that we don’t know than you’d think. Generally, we operate on the mindset that we should be able to figure everything out and learn the things we don’t know. This works well for the things we absolutely have no clue, but for the things which we feel like we know a little of, it's totally disastrous.

In our ignorance, we feel like we can figure our way out of trouble by simply brainstorming ideas and coming up with solutions for problems we’ve been exposed to in the past.

There are so many persons confident in their skills of cooking, others in their communication skills, yet again others think they are good managers even when they’ve never been to a professional training school for that. Simply, based on their past experience, they feel comfortable about their skills. Ask any woman, she’ll probably tell you she’s a good cook, or any manager will tell you they think of themselves as good managers even when the results prove the contrary.

In a general sense we are lazy, when we know just a bit of something we tend to think we know a lot of that thing simply because of our experience. A particular area where this is really problematic is when it comes to our finances. There aren’t many persons taking a financial course to better their financial management skills, rather they assume they’ll just learn with experience and figure things out by themselves, while a simple 30 mins course could literally change their lives.

In the same way, parents don’t think they need to learn management skills when it comes to raising their kids, they just assume they’ll learn on the job and convince themselves they don’t have the time. Meanwhile, taking any management training would teach them some amazing skills on how to manage their kids, but they rather remain in their ignorance, hoping their experience will figure things out for them.

You don’t know as much as you need

I know it might seem like you’ve got things figured out because things keep working out for you and you don’t feel like you need more education on the subject. But you’ll save a lot of time and resources if you just took the pain to learn a little more about those different fields.

I know it feels and seems like you got things under control, but the power of education is the culmination of the experiences of countless persons. Yes, you know a lot, but your experience is still that of one lifetime. Imagine just how much more valuable will be the experience of countless lifetimes.

Let's take a simple example in cooking skills, sure your parents certainly taught you already how to make delicious meals. But going to a school is not just going to teach you from the experience of a single person but rather the culmination of experiences of countless cooks. Maybe cooking is quite basic, how about raising kids or managing people, there are so many difficulties, pitfalls, and obstacles when it comes to this. Will it be valuable to learn the tricks and tips countless parents already discovered through their errors and documented? It will spare you from making the same mistakes with your own children.

In the same way your finances, yes I know you are not broke at the moment, and it certainly seems like you’ve got everything under control. But think about it, your knowledge can never be more than the culminated education from financial experts who’ve worked all their lives to document the most optimal strategies to managing finances. These aren’t all the fields we are desperately uneducated and feel too lazy to address, you also have things like; physical exercise, communication, love, interpersonal relationships, meditation, decision-making, handling problems etc.

I can keep going on and on about all these, but I think you get the point. There are many of these fields which we have very little information about, and we just assume that we will figure things out by thinking about them, meanwhile we can go get educated on these subjects.

Conclusion

I can’t convince you to do otherwise by just these few words, our lazy brains won’t accept to take on extra work even when our lives depend on it sometimes. The point of this article is for you to understand that even though you think you have an extensive experience in certain fields, it would be best for you to get educated formally. Especially when the results so far aren’t positive.

If you have a hard time managing your finances, raising your skills, communicating, handling problems etc. don’t rely on your experience to teach you. Instead, actively seek to get educated by reading books, watching videos and learning from others. That will save you a lot of time.

Thanks for reading ☺️