Image was from Canva
Learning can be hard or easy depending on how you make your mind perceive it (what you are learning). Like the title, learning is a journey and there are steps you take to learn completely what you desire to learn.
We learn almost everyday, from our daily activities, talking to friends, at our work place, at school, in a movie, at home, from our parents. Even being a youth or an adult, we learnt to be grown ups without any guide to read or follow. Learning doesn't necessarily have to be by books or by a guardian. Learning happens in so many ways.
Also, there are many things we learn and learn from, it could be about science, art, religion, finance, music, sports, a particular skill.
Cooking was one of the things I learnt effortlessly while I was growing up. Cooking for me, does not stress me at all especially when I have all the ingredients and utensils needed to prepare a meal. I am the only boy among three children: I have two elder sisters who took up the cooking role very early from my mom to relieve her of the many work she does as a mother. I was not so concerned about cooking, I just run errands. At a certain age, I guess around the age of 15, my mom was so intentional about me learning how to cook.
So, I started with the easy and quick ones like white rice, corconsion rice, spag and sauce, jollof spag. The, I moved to making of swallow like semo, amala and pounded yam. If I am busy and it's time to cook, my mom would ask my sibling to help me while I join her in the kitchen to take lectures. I got tired of it at a point because I learnt fast and it was becoming boring since there was almost nothing new to learn.
Unknown to me, I already loved cooking so much but I found out in the university. I normally buy foodstuffs when resuming a new semester so I prefer to cook myself than order food. And up till date, I still love cooking and it is less stressful doing it which is not so common among guys.
I usually don't find learning hard when I am so much interested in what I want to learn or achieve. But, there was a time I wanted to upgrade my skill as a graphics designer so my dad got me pc and I got CorelDraw software on it but I had no one to show me teach me. All the people I thought would help me couldn't get the hang of it anymore since they learnt it when they were still very young. I found a pastor's child who claimed to know how to use the software. I gave him a try and he was quite good at it, so I learnt from him.
I still wanted to know more and do more with this CorelDraw so I began to search for CorelDraw tutorials on Youtube. I would spend the whole night sitting in front of my pc trying to replicate whatever I had watched. Sincerely, it was hard but I stayed with it for weeks and months. Gradually, I got better over time, way better than how I imagined myself. Now, I am trying out Photoshop too.
The reason I was able to learn well was because I was so intentional about getting better at that time: I also stayed commitment every week and I was able to learn well.