What's Your Classroom?

Why it's important to learn from life.

What’s the best classroom you’ve ever learned in? Maybe a teacher comes to mind, because he or she created an environment you loved. Maybe the tools or resources that helped make learning fun are the first thing you picture. Maybe it’s the classmates you had who made the room itself meaningful. Or, maybe it wasn’t even a classroom at all—maybe it was a workplace, a tractor, a construction site, or a gym. Regardless, we can all likely point to a certain place or time in our lives where we enjoyed learning and the lessons we learned there have been helpful, in some way or another, in our lives since.

My next question may be a bit more challenging. Have you created a classroom for yourself? I don’t mean a room with walls and a desk. No, I’m talking about an area of your life where you actively look for lessons to apply to the rest of your life. Now, you might say “but, Miriam, isn’t that every area of life?” And I wouldn’t necessarily disagree. I’ll be the first to champion the idea that lessons are always out there, we must only be willing to look for them. Yet, in order to become skilled at finding lessons everywhere, it can help to start by teaching ourselves how to learn.

So, what might this classroom look like and why does it matter? Let’s dive in.

What do you enjoy doing simply for the sake of doing it?

This could be a hobby, or a part of your work, or a competitive arena you enjoy. If you couldn’t tell from the last several weeks, my favorite classroom is the gym. I started going simply for the physical benefits and the fact I enjoyed lifting; now, I’ve realized it’s taught me some incredibly meaningful things about life and work and interacting with others. The key here is that you enjoy whatever it is. It’s pretty hard to enjoy learning somewhere you’re not happy to be (that’s not to say we don’t learn lessons from those places, but again, this is a deliberate effort to cultivate our ability to learn lessons and notice patterns which translate to life at large), so choose appropriately! You might be skeptical that your hobby will work, but I’m pretty bullish that just about anywhere can work. (If you think you’re the counterexample, I’d love to learn why. Shoot me a message!)

Start looking for patterns

This is the fun part. Once we’ve identified the place or the activity we want to make our classroom, we start looking for lessons; or, another way to think about it is to look for patterns. What are some principles that seem to be true about whatever activity you’re doing? To pull again from my powerlifting lessons: I’ve noticed my progress is improved when I take every session as seriously as if it’s the competition. I don’t skip sets, I don’t rush reps. Then, I started to think about what this might mean for my work: if I take every meeting, every customer, as seriously as if it’s the most important meeting and my biggest customer, I’m far more likely to see meaningful progress in my business with them. What might this look like for you? Maybe you’ve gotten into pickleball lately and that’s your classroom. What are the things you do to become a better pickleball player, or perhaps just a better teammate to the friends you play with? Maybe you’ve discovered you play better when you’re hydrated, so you put more effort into how you prepare yourself for the game by drinking enough water throughout the day. What might this mean for life in general (other than the fact most of us don’t drink enough water, period)? Well, an easy one is that preparation affects performance. How might that change how you approach taking an exam or showing up to the next job site?

If spotting patterns doesn’t come naturally to you, don’t be discouraged! In fact, that’s the point of creating our own classroom: in it, we get to practice looking for lessons. The good news is, it’s okay to be wrong! Maybe you notice something you think is a pattern and it doesn’t turn out to make sense somewhere else; no harm done. Not everything means something about everything else.

The last piece some of y’all may challenge me on… why does any of this even matter? It’s a fair question. Here’s my challenge back to you: if you know you could live a more intentional and meaningful life, why would you not choose to do so? The more lessons we can learn about life, the earlier on in our lives, the better friends, sisters, brothers, coworkers, and citizens we can be. What we focus on expands, and life expands when we focus on learning from it. So why not start looking for your life’s classroom?

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Journal Prompt of the Week

What first comes to mind when you start to think about your life’s classroom? Have you already learned some lessons in it?