Do LRN to improve and empower

This post highlights the LRN deed of goodness.

LRN is the first deed listed in the credo. It is the deed that teaches us right from wrong and good from bad, which are fundamental in doing the other deeds properly and with goodness. It is the deed often omitted or downplayed in discussions of a quality life, and yet its rewards are essential to living better.

LRN toward yourself are actions to improve the goodness in yourself.  Improving yourself means growing, maturing, and becoming a better human being.  Each day provides opportunities for you to become more knowledgeable, more skillful, and wiser.  These can help you make better decisions in your life.

You should always improve who you are as a person every day.  There is no ceiling to personal growth and goodness.

The alternatives to growth range from maintenance and stagnation to decay and death.  Your life begins to fade when growth stops and atrophies.  None of these alternatives are part of an elevated life, and none of them give you the opportunity to grow true wealth in your life.

LRN toward others are actions to empower the goodness in others.  Empowering others means giving others the capability and tools to improve the goodness in themselves.

Seek out opportunities to empower the goodness in others through your true wealth.  Share your knowledge, your skills, and your wisdom.  Empowering others is one of the ways you give true worth.

There are many activities you can do to LRN inward and outward.

Learning through reading, studying, observing, being taught by others, and experiencing allows you to acquire knowledge and skills.

Practicing to improve yourself and doing activities to maintain and refine are also activities for growth.

Applying allows you to leverage your knowledge, skills, and wisdom to similar or unrelated areas in life.

Teaching allows you to empower others through your true wealth.  And most of the time, teaching itself becomes a learning opportunity for the teacher through the sharing and interaction with the students.

LRN is more than just happenstance learning.  It is proactive, more structured, and intentional.  It requires putting forth an effort.  It requires making sure you learn from your own experiences, including your mistakes and your successes. It requires you to continually seek out knowledge that can help improve yourself and help you be a better person and contributor to the world.

Many people initially think of LRN as formal learning in a classroom at a school.  This is only one type of learning.  LRN is not simply a formal education.  The world is your classroom.  Street smarts are equally as valuable as book smarts.  If an activity helps you improve the goodness in yourself, make better decisions, become wiser, and be a better person, it is all goodness.

To fully implement LRN, you must embrace the core value of open-mindedness.  Open-mindedness means you are open to considering and analyzing new ideas and information, able to process and evaluate viewpoints from all sides, and are willing to change your mind in light of new evidence.

Open-mindedness allows you to be:

1. open to admitting your weaknesses and identifying your real strengths,
2. open to improving yourself,
3. open to learning from your mistakes,
4. open to learning from others,
5. open to understanding multiple perspectives,
6. open to exploring deeper and wider,
7. open to new experiences that create true value,
8. open to focusing on goodness in everything you do, and
9. open to sharing your knowledge and empowering others.

The knowledge, skills, and wisdom you grow from LRN influences you to "do right" with your other deeds of goodness.  LRN provides you with the knowledge, skills, and wisdom to empower others the right way, enjoy life and uplift others the right way, value yourself and nurture others the right way, and realize yourself and inspire others the right way.