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It’s time to learn how to learn to constantly reinvent ourselves

According to a recent report, now that we are living on this side of the most recent pandemic, more and more companies are hiring staff not because of what they know or have studied, but because of the ability of those people to learn to learn and, more specifically, constantly learning to reinvent themselves to be a meaningful part of the new future.

In other words, bulky resumes and long lists of degrees and diplomas no longer impress companies when it comes to job hunting (and, in fact, they are hardly useful for getting ahead in life anymore.)

That does not mean that we should not learn. Quite the contrary, it means that we must always continue to learn, no matter how much we have already learned or how much we think we already know. In a time of constant change and deep uncertainty, learning to learn is an essential skill. And learning to transform yourself is valuable.

Let me share this example. One of the biggest problems that many people have with learning a second language (say, someone who speaks Spanish and wants to learn English) is that in English classes they teach the English language, but rarely (that is, almost never) teach you to learn English.

When I have the privilege and opportunity to teach English to adult immigrants, I always tell them the same thing: I don't teach them English, I teach them to teach themselves English. And once they learn to learn English, they can do the same with any other language. (In fact, the final exam in my English class is in Greek. And everyone passes it.)

At a crucial moment in the history of humanity in which what used to give meaning to life no longer does, when everything changes all the time and those changes are profound and irreversible, when not even with current technology we can solve the problems. most basic problems we face, and when space has already been commercialized, contaminated, and militarized, what we once knew is of little use.

But how do we learn to learn? And how do we reinvent ourselves? The short version of the answer is this: we must connect with our best future version and bring it to the present.

And, as the Stoics taught in ancient times, to achieve that goal we must connect with ourselves (our true self), with others (so that they are no longer merely "others") and with the Universe or Divinity (which, for the Stoics, it was the same). In other words, the future only exists beyond the techno-narcissistic confinement in which we now live.

At the same time, we must add another element, which, it is worth emphasizing, the Stoics already knew: There is no lasting change without daily changes and those daily changes only happen in an ecology of practices and in a context in which we are guided and protected. during that process. 

Learning to learn to transform ourselves is to learn how to transform ourselves together.

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