Ask somebody with extraordinary longevity how they’ve managed to do it, and they will almost always say something along the lines of: “I learn something new every day,” “I never stopped learning,” “I read a book a month,” “I watch the Discovery Channel every morning,” etcetera, etcetera. Being a lifelong learner does in fact correlate with living longer, but that’s not the only benefit. Here are 4 reasons why being a non-stop student of life is more important than you thought:

• Encourages confidence
  The more you know, the more competent you feel. For example, if a child is afraid of getting lost at the mall, it is because they don’t know how to navigate a mall or know how to ask for the help they need. As adults, we would never fear getting lost in a mall, because we grew up and learned everything there is to know about getting in and out of a mall, and then safely back home. If you have anxieties about flying, it’s because you don’t know very much about flying a plane. LEARNING about how to fly a plane will allow you to feel confident as a passenger. Similarly, learning any subject will give you confidence in that subject, and gradually expand your sense of self-confidence in general. 
   
• Encourages success
  Successful people are that way because they have a hunger for learning, and are therefore always climbing the ladder of knowledge. Learning is a form of growing, and as long as you are growing, you are succeeding, even when it doesn’t seem like it. 
   
• Builds personality
  This one is just common sense. If you’re a doctor and know everything there is to know about medicine, but don’t know anything about books or politics or history or puzzles or zoology, how developed could your personality really be? When you learn something new every day, it expands who you are as a person; you become the knowledge you’ve acquired. So, if you’re adding to that knowledge every day, your possibilities for growing and enhancing your personality are endless. 
   
• Expands your social network
  If you’re a doctor and all you know is medicine, it’s likely that all your friends will be the same type of person. If you’re a doctor who learned how to play poker and how to scuba dive and studied Shakespeare and took a night class on astronomy and an online course on art history and attended Trivia Night at the local library every Sunday for a year, just think of how many more types of people you would know and how many different types of people you could have a great conversation with! 
   

The fact that learning new things is so deliciously good for our minds and our lives is great news, because as long as we live we will never run out of things to learn. What subject do you wish you knew more about? What phenomenon do you wish you understood? What skill set do you admire in other people? Answer these questions and then get learning IMMEDIATELY.  New knowledge is food for your brain, so remember to feed it!