Character Development: Love Of Learning And Affirmations
In this episode of the Character Strengths Affirmation Series, we explore the strength of Love of Learning, which falls under the virtue of Wisdom. Love of Learning is the joy of deepening our understanding—rooted in the desire to expand our minds, uncover meaning, and grow through knowledge and experience. My hope is that this episode invites you to honor learning not as obligation, but as a lifelong source of curiosity, delight, and empowerment. Through discussion and affirmations, we will strengthen our capacity to approach each lesson with openness, to integrate wisdom into our daily lives, and to celebrate learning as a path to both personal growth and collective flourishing. Peace and Blessings, Hannah
Transcript
In a world that often focuses so much on what we lack,
It's easy to overlook the incredible internal strengths that each of us possess.
Grounded in ancient philosophy and modern science,
This series invites you to reconnect with the innate strengths that make you who you are,
Promoting balance and harmony in everyday life.
Whether you're looking to boost your confidence,
Overcome negative self-talk,
Deepen your relationships,
Or simply invite a greater sense of well-being,
My hope is that this series offers a practical and uplifting path to personal growth.
Alright,
Hello gorgeous people and welcome to our Character Strengths Affirmation Series.
In each session we explore one of the 24 character strengths identified by positive psychology,
All of which fall under the six key virtues of wisdom,
Courage,
Humanity,
Justice,
Temperance,
And transcendence.
These strengths help us live with depth,
Clarity,
And joy,
And they remind us of who we are at our best.
Right now we are exploring the virtue of wisdom,
Which the Values in Action Institute defines as the set of strengths that help us gather and apply knowledge in meaningful ways.
So far we have explored creativity,
Curiosity,
And good judgment.
Today we are moving into a strength that is personally dear to me,
Which is love of learning,
Love of learning.
The Values in Action Institute defines love of learning as the internal drive to acquire knowledge or deepen understanding.
The joy is in the process,
Not the outcome.
That's going to be the theme of today.
So in our last episode we discussed curiosity,
And you might be wondering,
Okay,
How is love of learning different from curiosity?
They are absolutely connected,
But they're not the same.
Curiosity is the initial spark.
It's the openness to new experiences driven by wonder and questions like,
What is this?
Love of learning,
On the other hand,
Takes that spark and fuels it into a sustained journey.
It's the desire to dig in,
To study,
And to gain a deeper understanding.
It asks,
How does this work?
Why does this matter?
How can I master it?
How might I change because of it?
Curiosity might make you pick up a book because the cover intrigues you or listen to a podcast because the topic sounds interesting to you.
Love of learning then keeps you turning pages,
Taking notes,
Reflecting,
And wanting to integrate what you've learned into your actual life.
Curiosity thrives on novelty.
Love of learning thrives on depth.
Curiosity opens the door.
Love of learning walks through it and curls up with a good book.
When we think about love of learning,
I want to be very clear that it doesn't necessitate that you loved school.
Many factors probably played into whether or not you had a positive experience in the educational system and felt like you could tap into your love of learning in that environment.
Love of learning could be many different things.
It could be how you refine a craft.
It could be how you seek out new skills at work.
It could be how you research a new interest.
It could be how you follow your curiosity down a rabbit hole just because you want to know more and all of a sudden you're like,
Oh,
This is something that now is a part of my identity and this needs to be something that I just know about.
I just need for that to be true.
We've all been there.
We've all been there.
It could be,
Y'all,
It could just be the ways in which you seek to understand yourself continually and seek to understand others continually in the form of personal and social development.
It's the strength that says,
I'm not done growing yet.
Personally,
The strength has helped me soften some old patterns,
Especially that of perfectionism.
I used to have a tendency to want to jump straight from curiosity to mastery.
I wanted knowledge and understanding but was really easily overwhelmed by the level of time and commitment that I knew I would want to devote to really understanding what it was that I was either trying to learn or develop in terms of a skill.
At the core of it,
I was really just disconnected from the joy of actually learning.
Really,
It was just that so much of my identity and my value system and my sense of worth all of a sudden got wrapped up and made conditional around whether or not I had this thing.
All of a sudden,
It was like,
That's a thing that I value and I don't have it and now I'm stressed.
Rather than baseline,
It just is.
It doesn't even have to be baseline.
I'm awesome.
It's no problem.
I'll just learn from this place of splendor.
It could just be like the moment is what it is and there's no need to be stressed about it.
How can I observe the tendency for my ego to get involved as she always does?
Just another reminder,
Folks.
I'm certainly not enlightened.
I don't have perfect balance when it comes to this stuff,
For sure.
Let me be a model of that.
I'm not perfect,
Turns out.
It's way more fun to figure it out along the way and to understand that when I let that go,
I'm not so bad and the moment isn't so bad.
Again,
This might be silly,
But when I go out into nature,
I can see a bird and I can know that that bird doesn't know everything.
That bird hasn't figured everything out.
That bird is maybe just as confused as I am and it's chilling.
It's just with itself in that moment.
If I can quiet the chatter that my prefrontal cortex has blessed us with,
Then I can really begin to appreciate the act of learning and the art of learning.
In the pursuit of knowledge,
May we remember that it's the unfolding itself that shapes us,
Offering the true gift not only of knowledge and understanding and this capacity to be an offering in a new way because of what we know,
But because of what it does to us,
The character development that we get through the process of learning that becomes a sort of embodied wisdom that we then get to offer to other people.
In sort of a meta way,
This whole series for me is a combination of my love of learning.
I just am very fascinated in virtue and morality and what it means to be a good person and how it comes down to balance and all these things.
I find it very interesting,
But it's also in the process of learning it.
Oof!
Yikes!
It's its own art of integration,
Constant integration.
Please know,
Again,
I am not fully there,
But I hope that wherever I am meets you where you are and offers a perspective on how things can be and how we can approach things.
All right,
So as with all of these strengths and virtues,
I'm operating on the Aristotle's Golden Mean and the understanding that virtue exists between two vices,
That of deficiency and that of excess.
We can overuse some of these strengths.
In terms of love of learning,
When it's underused,
We might become stagnant where we're resistant to new ideas or afraid to try something that's unfamiliar.
Sometimes this can show up as a sort of imposter syndrome where because we don't already feel super acclimated or we haven't integrated an aspect of something all the way into our own sense of identity already,
We can feel like this is unfamiliar and not for me.
Am I sure I'm meant to be here?
It's this like,
If I don't already know how to do it,
Maybe I'm not meant to.
Sometimes we convince ourselves that we're too old or behind or we're too busy.
We stop asking questions.
We stop seeking out challenges.
We stay in what's comfortable and we call it enough.
For some of us,
The barrier is that sort of self-doubt.
What if I'm not smart enough?
What if I can't keep up?
Others may struggle with shame around failure,
Believing we're only valuable when we already have the answers.
In either case,
We shut down the vital part of ourselves that really wants to explore and stretch and evolve.
When love of learning is overused,
It can tip into avoidance.
This is really interesting.
I've been thinking about this a lot and I.
.
.
This one is just at me.
I might as well just at me from the jump with this one.
Sometimes love of learning can be used as a way of delaying action or avoiding vulnerability.
We might just keep reading and researching and never move into action or integration.
We might sign up for every training or certification or course,
Believing that we just need more knowledge and then we'll be ready.
And we might even fall into a sort of intellectual hoarding,
Which is where we're always preparing but never embodying that which we're learning.
In those moments,
In those times,
Learning becomes a way to delay risk rather than a tool to enrich our lives.
Sometimes learning becomes a socially sanctioned way of hiding.
It's also worth noting that an overactive love of learning can lead to burnout if we don't pause to integrate what we're absorbing.
True wisdom isn't about how much we can accumulate.
It's about how deeply we can embody that which we have taken in.
It's the same reason that you'll often hear teachers say,
It's very simple.
It's very simple but very difficult.
We've all read the inspirational quotes.
If it was that easy,
If it was as easy as reading it on a page,
We'd all be enlightened.
It takes time to actually live it and that is part of,
That is its own form of learning.
It's learning through doing.
Let me tell you folks,
All this self-work,
All this personal development,
Sometimes it's work.
Sometimes it takes a lot of energy.
But you know what?
When we understand that if we really want to do that,
Like if our desire is truly to be better and to alchemize what we've experienced to give us a deeper understanding of the world and then to be able to offer that to the world,
Which,
You know,
What a gorgeous way to make meaning out of our lives.
What a beautiful divine opportunity.
Then we have to humble ourselves to the fact that we are also just human beings.
We are on a certain level,
Apes,
You know,
Like monkeys.
I don't know,
Like bonobo chimp-like things with a very developed prefrontal cortex,
Very developed,
Knows what it's doing,
Has lots of ideas.
But also we got to respect the biology,
You know.
We got to understand that we need rest and thank goodness,
Thank goodness we get to rest.
We have to rest.
You know,
Just as the body needs to take time between workouts to grow stronger,
The mind and the spirit need rest between lessons to grow wiser.
In honor of Love of Learning,
Let this be permission,
Let this be permission to take care of yourself and to ask yourself at any given time throughout the process of learning,
What do I need?
And this calls into question,
You know,
What does it mean to truly find balance?
Balance means being willing to be a student without being afraid to be seen as a beginner.
It means knowing when to dig deeper and when to close the book and reflect.
It means asking,
Is this helping me move forward or am I hiding behind it?
At its most aligned,
Love of Learning is both joyful and really brave.
It's the willingness to follow what fascinates us even if it challenges who we've been.
It's the strength that helps us stay teachable by our mentors,
By our friends,
By ourselves,
By experience and by life.
And maybe most importantly,
It's a reminder that you don't need to prove your worth through what you know.
You are already worthy.
It turns out that literally just by breathing,
You are feeding the trees.
That's enough.
You're doing great.
Thank you for your service.
Learning is simply one way your soul expresses its natural longing to grow.
And what an honor.
Before we begin,
We'll have ourselves a quick blessing.
May our Love of Learning be a sacred fire,
One that fuels devotion,
Nurtures patience,
And brings forth the light into each new lesson.
May we be guided not just by our questions,
But by the steady joy of understanding more deeply.
May we learn with humility and pause to let wisdom sink into our bones.
May our knowledge transform into compassion and our growth ripple outward to touch the world.
And may our learning be not merely about what we know,
But about who we are becoming.
I will read each statement twice,
Pausing in between to give you a chance to repeat them out loud to yourself,
And I do recommend saying them out loud.
The statements that are easy to embrace,
Savor them,
Appreciate them,
Stand like a mountain in their truth.
The statements that feel not so good,
That feel uncomfortable or foreign or like straight-up lies,
Go ahead and say them anyway.
This is where we are doing the work,
Rewiring those neural networks.
This is also where we gain insight into unhealed wounds,
Limiting beliefs,
And ingrained biases or judgments toward ourselves or toward a particular way of being.
It's great material for journaling or discussing with a counselor or trusted friend,
Maybe even someone doing the series with you.
Whether you're just waking up,
Walking your dog,
On your commute,
Or getting ready for bed,
I hope these affirmations serve your deepest,
Greatest,
Highest self.
Let's begin.
I love learning.
I love learning.
Learning fills me with joy and purpose.
Learning fills me with joy and purpose.
I am open to new ideas and experiences.
I am open to new ideas and experiences.
Every challenge is an opportunity to grow.
Every challenge is an opportunity to grow.
I allow myself time to process and integrate.
I allow myself time to process and integrate.
I follow through on my curiosity by seeking out understanding.
I follow through on my curiosity by seeking out understanding.
I release the need for perfection and enjoy the learning process.
I release the need for perfection and enjoy the learning process.
Gaining new skills gives me a sense of fulfillment.
Gaining new skills gives me a sense of fulfillment.
I honor the pace at which I learn best.
I honor the pace at which I learn best.
My mind is flexible and responsive.
My mind is flexible and responsive.
I honor my need to take breaks.
I honor my need to take breaks.
Every day,
I grow wiser through lived experience.
Every day,
I grow wiser through lived experience.
I allow myself to be a beginner.
I allow myself to be a beginner.
I trust that my love of learning will guide me where I need to go.
I trust that my love of learning will guide me where I need to go.
I trust that my love of learning will guide me where I need to go.
I share what I learn to uplift others.
I share what I learn to uplift others.
I share what I learn to uplift others.
I integrate knowledge into my being so that it may be wisdom.
I integrate knowledge into my being so that it may be wisdom.
I integrate knowledge into my being so that it may be wisdom.
As always,
Thank you so much for being here.
It takes all of the character strengths to work on them.
And take a moment for appreciation for yourself for showing up so that we can be better for the people that we love and better for ourselves,
Of course.
And better for the strangers that we meet and for the role that we play in the world.
Go forth with peace and many blessings and I will see you next time.
