Learning and Development: Career Series

Be More Elvis!

We are unique. If someone else sets your career direction, you might end up on a journey that’s not what you truly want.  Most of us would find it easier if someone set us on a path to follow, but we are much more likely to achieve our career goals if we set them ourselves.  You are your ‘Mastermind Specialist Subject’. Nobody else knows you better; your interests, strengths and areas for development cannot be replicated.

So, how do we take ownership of expanding our minds and opportunities? The answer is to be curious, ask questions and challenge yourself with “could I do that?”

Elton John, Prince, Sting and Elvis all have one thing in common, they taught themselves to play an instrument. Elton and Prince started their journey sitting at a piano and Sting and Elvis picked up a guitar. For each of them, taking this small step resulted in success beyond their wildest imagination. With so much information at our fingertips, we each have the power to choose a different path by building our knowledge and opening doors to new experiences.

In 1768, the ‘Encyclopaedia Britannica’ was first published. Those of us who are old enough may remember having a series of giant books creaking on the bookcase and learning to look things up in the index! In 1981, the first digital version was published and slowly the information available at our fingertips has grown beyond comprehension.

Each day, on Earth we generate 500 million tweets, 294 billion emails, 4 million gigabytes of Facebook data, 65 billion WhatsApp messages and 720,000 hours of new content is added daily on YouTube. Unsurprisingly, so much data can be overwhelming and, as we know, too much of a good thing can in fact have the opposite effect.

We would love for you to share anything you enjoy reading or listening to using the chat/suggestion forum in the resource area. Jamie Oliver wrote a cookbook ‘The Ministry of Food’ and, in the introduction, he asked everyone who had purchased the book to pledge teaching one recipe to others to encourage sharing, learning and growing skills in the kitchen.  We would love for you to make a pledge to share your learnings with your colleagues; every day is a school day as they say!

You can access the Grow Your Own Mind resources here.

Questions?

If you have any questions about any of our L&D programmes, please get in touch with the L&D team at societylearningdevelopment@midcounties.coop