The Importance of Self-Education

Imagine how lacking your life would be without access to the knowledge we have today. And If we were to stay complacent with what is given to us through standardized means such as western education, there would still be much to miss out on. The following describes the importance of self-education. 

Expands Potential 

You are absolutely limiting your capacity to grow in any regard if you go off of the cookie-cutter method towards education. You’re taught to get good grades in school, make it to university, college or a trade school, get a stable job as your primary source of income and then retire when you’re old.

But if you started to read books or take courses on personal finance or entrepreneurship, you could challenge that process. And in challenging that process, you can also challenge your potential and expand into profitable avenues of interest to you, or make smarter decisions in day-to-day life. This is the golden age of accessibility to information, so you can either take advantage of it, or let your life take advantage of you.

Teaches Skills

One majorly beneficial platform for self-education is through the internet. Not to confuse this with the misinformation spread through social media; there are a number of websites and software services available dedicated to teaching hard and soft skills. A soft skill is considered a personal attribute, like attentive listening, which contributes to your success of getting a job done. A hard skill is a specific skillset which can be demonstrated in a measured way, like computer coding. Both are necessary for success of any kind in life, but hard skills are particularly in demand in the workforce and have more potential to transform your life outside of that. 

If you work a salary-based job but want to pursue photography on the side, you can take courses on this and learn in your free time. Then, you can take it up as a hobby or as a means of increasing income. A great resource I’d like to mention is Skillshare: a platform designed specifically for learning both soft and hard-skills. They have thousands of courses such as photography, language learning and email marketing. Take advantage of your first month free here.

Offers a Different Perspective

There’s a saying by one of my favourite public speakers, Jim Rohn, that goes, “If you work on your job you can make a living, but if you work hard on yourself you can make a fortune.” In keeping with the theme of challenging the standard education process, you can lose the narrow-minded approach toward what is considered a good life. By reading books, listening to podcasts, or listening to YouTube videos on subjects ranging from health to personal finance, you will begin to realize there is more to life than memorizing information and clocking in and out at your day job. And that much of the useful information you learn through self-education was not taught to you in your earlier years. 

As always, the only way to make improvements upon learning new things is to utilize the information. You can read all you want on starting a side hustle, but unless and until you make a plan and begin working on something, that information is useless. The good sources of self-education stress this point.