One of the things that dissatisfaction causes us to realize is that there are aspects of our lives that need to be reclaimed. But in order to, to go out and reclaim those aspects of our lives, in order to go out and reclaim aspects of ourselves that need to be reclaimed, there is one essential ingredient. And that ingredient, that ingredient is enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is the secret to the fountain of youth.
Okay? Sometimes you see people, they're like 85 years old, but they've still got this great sparkle in their eyes. They've still got this great energy, they're still like fully alive. And sometimes you see someone who's 25 years old and they don't have that sparkle in their eyes. Their eyes, their eyes seem almost dead, just like glazed over. And they don't have that energy and that enthusiasm for life. If we want to reclaim our lives, if we want to eradicate dissatisfaction in our lives, the first thing we have to do is we have to stoke enthusiasm in our lives. We have to, to work out how do we spark enthusiasm? Because dissatisfaction is an obstacle to enthusiasm. And enthusiasm is the secret to the fountain of youth. Enthusiasm is the secret to living life to the fullest. And so the first thing I want to take a look at when it comes to reclaiming our lives or reclaiming part of ourselves is how do we spark that enthusiasm?
How do we get that enthusiasm back into our lives? There are many ways to do it. I'm going to talk to you about one in the session, and that is love of learning. Uh, when we are very young, we, we are curious. We love learning. You know, children essentially only have one question in their arsenal when they're, when they're very little, why, you know, something happens, why? And and then you, you explain that and why. And then it, and then again, why and, and why and why. And it drives you crazy, right? As a parent drives you insane, absolutely insane. All this. Why, why, why? And eventually the answer is like, because just is. What's the reason there? There's no reason. It's just, it is what it is and it's bedtime. So take yourself off to bed. Why
As children, we have this natural curiosity. We have this fantastic curiosity, but it, it does get beat out of us in lots of different ways, primarily through our education system. It doesn't foster that curiosity in ways that it used to. Classical education used to foster that, used to draw that out of us. Modern education is much more rigid. It's much more about imposing certain specific types of learning upon us, rather than allowing us to explore our curiosity wherever it might take us. And so one of the things that drains our enthusiasm for life is that we lose our love of learning. If you look at anyone who is successful at anything, you usually discover that they have an insatiable love of learning. They're continuous learners. They just keep learning and learning and learning. Um, and that very often is one of the key drivers to their success.
We're where are you at with your love of learning? Did you love going to school? Maybe you did, maybe you didn't. That doesn't matter. Essentially at this point, what matters is how do we repark your love of learning? Because if we can, if we can repark your love of learning, we will repark your enthusiasm, not just for learning, but for life. How do we do this? Well, everyone does it in different ways. You can do it however you wish to do it. I, I love books. I love books. I love audio books. I love podcasts. I love YouTube videos. I love learning. I love just learning new things about a wide variety of topics. But my favorite way to learn is a great conversation. A very favorite way to learn is one-on-one, sitting down with a person or a small group of people and having a great conversation about a topic. I'm not really very good in social situations. I get a bit, get a bit anxious in, in social situations, but over the years I've had to be in obviously many, many, many social situations. And so I, you know, I learned ways to cope. I learned ways to manage that anxiety, manage those situations. And, and one of the ways I've done that is with questions.
And I have, uh, and I have some favorite questions. Uh, my favorite question for two decades in social situations was to ask people, what are you reading at the moment? What are you reading at the moment? Many of the greatest conversations of my life have come from that single question, just by asking somebody, what are you reading at the moment? And they say, well, I'm reading this. Tell me about that. And they start to talk about it and ask a question. And, and you get deep into this topic. There's a lot of people that don't read anymore. You know, we're on the go a lot more. We, um, we value different things. And, and so there's a lot of people who don't read books. And so I have a new version of this question. And the new version of this question is, what is your favorite podcast?
And if you ask someone who loves podcasts, if you ask them this question, they light up. I mean, they, they're just, the whole, the composure, the way they hold themselves, the, the light in their eyes, it just goes on and they tell you about their favorite podcast. And it's, it's always, it's always a fascinating conversation. But then you, you meet someone, you get into a conversation and maybe you wanna go a little bit deeper. The other question that many of the greatest conversations of my life has come from by asking a person, what is it that you know more about than any other topic in the world? Everybody has something. Everybody is an expert at something. Everybody has a body of knowledge around one topic that is 10 times, 50 times, a hundred times greater than what they know about any other topic. And if you can work out what that topic is for a person, guaranteed, you will have a fascinating conversation and guaranteed you will learn more in an hour. Then you could learn in a hundred hours researching that topic, reading about that topic. And so a lot of great conversations in my life have come simply from asking people, what is it that you know more about than anything else in the world?
What's the goal? Repac our enthusiasm. How do we repac our enthusiasm? By reconnecting, reclaiming our love of learning. There may be many things you wish to reclaim in your life. There may be aspects of yourself that you feel like you need to reclaim. Whatever it is. First step is to reclaim your enthusiasm for life. Reclaim your enthusiasm for life. And what I've discovered from all these years working with millions of people. One of the fastest ways to reclaim your enthusiasm for life is to reclaim your love of learning, to reclaim your love of learning.
Matthew Kelly
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