EASY WAY TO LEARN

I love life stories.

History and literature were my favorites in high school. I’m interested in people and their history. I have been, since my teenage years, when I started reading autobiographies of celebrities. It made me feel like I knew them personally. I also love to ask questions and learn about people; what they do and how they do it. When I was a kid, I would ask so many questions, my mum would scold me. It was only natural that I ended up a broadcaster and I enjoyed all my ten years of working in the media.

The habit remains. I still ask lots of questions, just to know and learn, and my husband sometimes nudges me discreetly when I switch into the interviewer’s mode with people. 

I have learnt so much from all the stories behind people’s glories, defeats and struggles. It has not only helped me to be a good counselor and life mentor, I have applied some of these lessons personally. Life stories, orally or written, present to us a lifetime of experiences and lessons in a few hours of reading. It may be in the form of a profile, memoir, diary or autobiography. 

Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer says, there are three ways to learn:

The Easy way - Learning from other’s mistakes;

The hard way - Learning from your mistakes;

The Tragic Way - Learning from neither;”

No wonder the bible is an encyclopedia of biographies. God wants us to learn the easy way, from bible heroes and villains. His laws and principles are better understood through the lives of these characters.

Some advise you read biographies of successful people only while some recommend you read the good, the bad and the ugly as long as your objectives are clear. You learn from the good how to be good and from the deficient, how not to fall from grace. You learn from people’s great exploits as well as their failings.

Former UK Prime Minister

Instead of learning life’s lessons the hard way, you could take an easier route by standing on the shoulders of those who have gone ahead.

Here are some values I have gleaned from reading other people's stories.

MARGARET THATCHER

"If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at anytime, and you would achieve nothing." 

"Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't."

"Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It's not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it's day you've had everything to do and you've done it."

"No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions, he had money as well." 

NELSON MANDELA

"There is no passion to be found playing small in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living."

"I have learnt that courage is not the absence of fear but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear."

"Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again." 

ANNE FRANK

"I think a lot. I don't say much." 

"No one has ever become poor by giving." 

MARTIN LUTHER KING JNR.

"The function of education is to teach one to think intensely and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education."

"Faith is taking the first step, even when you don't see the whole staircase."
JOYCE MEYER

"You can suffer the pain of change or suffer remaining the way you are."

"The only person you should try to be better than, is the person you were yesterday." 

We are a most blessed generation with the crowd of leaders we can learn from. Why not pick up a biography of someone you admire and want to pattern your life after. It's a less difficult way to grow into greatness.

Enjoy God’s Exceeding Grace