Our Need to Grow

1. Our Need to Grow

2. Who are the people in your life who are the happiest? • Those who are learning, growing, changing • They challenge themselves • Use learning to create • Makes life exciting and interesting • “The unexamined life is not worth living.” -- Socrates

3. How does learning and creating make you feel? • We have a longing to learn and create • We are born with it • Look at children: they love to draw and paint • Desire to learn and create comes from God • “I’m bored” can point to a desire to learn something more

4. On Loose-Leaf • Write an inventory of 40 of you your intellectual, physical, and social competencies. Then answer these questions • Could you add even more capabilities to the list? • What does this list tell you about your ability to learn? • Which of these competencies will be most important to you through life?

5. Learning requires • Climb out of ruts • What is a rut? • Say yes to our unique potential • The right setting • Become a new self

6. Learning a lifelong quest • Learning in School and the School of Life • Taking Risks • Our own responsibility • Growth in knowledge, skills and insight • Thinking outside the box

7. On loose-leaf • Write a one page description of a lesson you have learned in the school of life.

8. What Learning Does for Us • Offers us Choices • Overcomes Fears • Can learn what you don’t know • Gives Competence • To fulfill dreams, accomplish goals • Cope with Change • New Friends, Job, School, Home, Family

9. What do I have to Learn? • Good Habits • Listen, read, self discipline • Set Goals • Career or skill • Take Opportunities • Say yes to what is offered • School, job, activities, internships, service • Be Open • To people • New ideas • Inner self

10. WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO? • BE FLEXIBLE: CHANGE THINKING, ACCEPT QUESTIONS, THINK OUTSIDE YOUR BOX • DON’T SETTLE: SAY YES BEYONG FAMILY, FRIENDS • BE PREPARED FOR NEW IDEAS, LONELINESS, NEW FRIENDSHIPS

11. CREATIVITY A GIFT TO YOURSELF • WHAT IS INSIDE YOU? • WHAT ARE YOUR DREAMS? • BRING SOMETHING INTO BEING • MAKE A BETTER WORLD • LET WORLD SEE YOUR DREAMS, IDEAS IN REALITY

12. HOW TO’S OF CREATIVITY • PREPARE: GET KNOWLEDGE NEEDED TO ACCOMPLISH YOUR IDEA • WORK 24/7: LET YOUR PROJECT SET THE PACE, BE MOVED BY YOUR MUSE • USE LEISURE TO REGROUP, STEP BACK AND REFLECT • “AHA” EXPERIENCE: WHEN YOU REALLY “GET IT” • TRY IT OUT: SEE HOW IT WORKS SO FAR

13. Tips to Foster Creativity • Give your intuition and imagination room to function • Have a creative space • Interact with innovative people • Ask questions • Break out of ruts

14. Set and keep deadlines for yourself • Focus your attention and dig deeply • See problems and conflicts as opportunities • Above all…CARE

15. Time for Renewal • Essential • Leisure time that is not filled up with work or other duties • Can recreate us • Recreation-if we don’t care for ourselves we will not be able to care for others • What are productive ways we can spend our leisure time?

16. Power of Emptiness • It is what makes us useful • Not necessarily inactive • Sabbath: a day of rest for God and us • It is a god like practice to contemplate the wonders of creation

17. Paschal Mystery • Life, death and resurrection of Christ • Learning and creating require us to lose ourselves in order to find fulfilling life • Shows us that we find life by losing it • Shows us that we can learn from all things, even the difficult and painful ones • Lessons learned in the school of life can be painful, but meaningful

18. Review • Learning • Creating • Sabbath • Rut • Paschal Mystery • What does Paul say about learning? • What is your learning style? Why is it important to know? • “The unexamined life is not worth living.” • Stuck in a Rut • What does learning do for us? • What do we need to do?

19. Full of potential • Different settings for learning • Responsible for learning • “Wonders with nothing” • Young creative people • Steps in creating • Tips to foster creativity • Leisure time • What did Jesus do? God do? What is the purpose