The Art of Lifelong Learning: How Continuous Education Can Enrich Your Retirement
How can you enrich your retirement? Mary Muduuli is exploring the benefits and avenues for continuous learning during your golden years.
Your Golden Years
All living things exist and survive and thrive through accepting to learn and relearn in order to enjoy life, grow and prosper. There is no end to learning because information and knowledge is power. Even in retirement, we learn and relearn because as we make individual decisions and make choices about life (health, money, home, relationships), the world around us is also changing and we need to keep abreast, in order to grow and enjoy life to its fullest.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has taken the issues of learning and re-learning to a completely new level and in many ways this is useful. However, the more knowledge and information one can acquire the better, some things “SIRI” will never do, including expressing the “unique you”.
Avenues for lifelong learning
This subject relates to both formal, informal and inner or self- learning – taking lessons from your own mistakes or successes. For retirees, the re-engineered environment they live in today and the longevity dividends they are reaping all require that they position themselves for higher quality lifestyles and more contributions to solving society’s problems. In both cases, learning and re-learning technical and/life skills is a must.
Formal learning
Today, some people decide to retire when they are still strong and capable of continuing to offer services in line with their professions. However, they find themselves in need of additional technical skills, say a language or a certification in a related area, before they can do so successfully. There are those who put off a dream to achieve a certain qualification and can only manage to do this after retirement.
This new qualification may open new doors and opportunities for continued services to society. Others wish to go into self employment, start a small business but do not know how to manage the accounts and may require soft skills to operate the business. Many go into volunteer roles which require refinement of skills they already have, in order to fit the needs of clients or those to be served.
Informal lifelong learning
Retirement is a good time to informally enrich the golden age through reading books, scientific journals and magazines, listening to educational documentaries, listening to podcasts and interviews on current affairs and keeping oneself abreast with affairs around you and beyond. This is how we find out about innovations before they are commercialised. We may land on useful information for managing our own financial, health or social issues we may have been grappling with.
In my Book Of Hope, I write about threats to life. For example, Climate Change (CC) and disease are some of these threats.
There is so much to learn in order to contribute to the fight against CC, in terms of alternative sources of energy in order to mitigate impact and different ways to adapt.
New diseases from new viruses are circulating and learning how to protect ourselves makes living more enjoyable.
By the time you retire, your body has taken some beating and, therefore, learning and re-learning how to handle certain chores, especially for women, in order to protect yourself from body or joint pain is important. Scientists are working hard to help us live better and longer, so let’s embrace the knowledge they generate for our betterment.
Listening to music, watching movies and shows also have value, because these are not merely great entertainment, but often they draw from society’s real issues to formulate content, with an intention to teach us lessons. There are always lessons to pick for parenting, relationships and for ourselves as individuals regarding our character and lifestyles.
Self-learning and Re-learning: – They are mistakes we have repeated for years and somehow we fail to learn from them. But the truth is that most of the time, when we make a bad mistake or judgement in life we know it. We just have to be honest with ourselves and resolve to learn from our mistakes. We can also learn from those of others around us learn from their good and their bad episodes in life, even in our golden age.
Today, many people communicate through the phone and social media, despite its hazards, is the daily game. So retirees have to hook on, but cautiously, in order to move with the times. The internet is a minefield for finding solutions for day-to-day problems, maintaining fixtures and fixing gadgets around the home. So knowing how to navigate it and distinguishing what is fake has to be mastered. New recipes, yoga and other physical exercise programs are now available online and you can join in the comfort of your home.
Travel is another way to learn about the different countries, their history, cultures, music and art and the different ways people live, relate, cope and solve problems. These new experiences are wonderful opportunities for one to enjoy, learn and change or re-orient perspectives on life. We can find new friends, learn to make and enjoy new dishes, pick up different curios to decorate our homes or a piece of clothing to show off next summer.
Retirees have used professional and social networks and groups to enrich their lives and those of others. They build new social capital, engage in different activities, support different causes, and impact many lives through speaking, philanthropy etc. They learn different ways of giving back to society and also learn how to enjoy the golden years better.
In social clubs like gaming, hiking/walking/jogging, dancing, goumet cooking, etc, one can get entertained, have plenty of laughs and enrich body and mind
These days there are different ways to organize your finances and entire estate, in order to benefit better those you love and society.
Do you want to share your story and inspire our readers ? Know that every story is paving the way for a brighter, happier future.
