Can This Be The Best Way To Learn?

This does not necessarily apply to academic educators only but more towards people who teach, generally. If you are not teaching, you'd better start as soon as possible because it will be beneficial for your own development.

You see, education is not necessarily confined to schools or colleges. They can be everywhere. When you shown your dad (or your kid) how to use the computer, that's a form of teaching.

It's astonishing the number of people who are not good at passing their knowledge to another when it comes to lessons about life. And that happens to be the most important 'education'.

Some even find that teaching is frustrating.

Look -- There are various ways you can learn about success -- theoretically learning from books, audios, seminars, courses, etc. Then there are learning methods like observational learning and experiential learning by PRACTICING IT.

All of these are great -- but I believe, the most powerful way of learning is when you have the ability to teach what you know to someone. If you can do that, you can bet that you definitely know what you know. It's a selfish reason but when you teach, you are actually contributing towards your own success. But in truth, it's not a 'selfish' reason because you're helping others.

Don't lose control of your emotions when you are teaching someone because different people learn at different paces. Your 'student' may need more time to learn something that you took 10 minutes to learn. It'll defeat the purpose of teaching if you cannot control your patience. Besides, patience is also another emotion you must control to become successful. (Maybe I'll write about this on other time in the future.)

Remember, how good you are as a teacher depends on how much you can teach your student in the shortest time possible and he understands it.

Can't find 'students'?

You've got to be kidding me. Are you sure that whatever you know or learned do not of interest to anyone else? If that's the truth, dude, you better start learning something else. (smile)

And if you still can't find students, use the internet. It's in front of you! It's so easy to get started. If you haven't realize it yet, sharing is a form of teaching. For whatever topic you want to teach, there are forums out there -- and they always welcome your input. It's a good way to teach because the discussion will be continued and often enough, others will join. If you're into success and self improvement, you can use my forum to start at successandlife.com/forum.

Teaching can also be as simple as giving an answer. Thousands of people are seeking answers in websites like Yahoo Answer.

So really -- there's no excuse for you not to start teaching others. And if you start doing that, the retention of the knowledge you've taught will be higher.

But here's the big kicker -- you can get paid if you know how to teach well enough. Whatever method you're passing your knowledge, like in a book or by coaching, it can be very rewarding. So this should be another strong motivator for you to start brushing up your teaching skills. (smile)


Copyright (c) 2009 Patric Chan