Small Accomplishments: When you say, you learned it.

A new day starts, you pick up the newspaper and read the thought for the day... "Every morning is the first day of rest of your life." It says what is gone is gone, today is another chance to feel accomplished. And you are quick to appreciate it. What follows is a new status update, probably tagged #feeling motivated. You feel that you have learned something new today. But as the day passes, you find yourself often repeating these phrases...oh, i shouldn't have wasted my time yesterday... i could have done this if i had that... i should have not taken this course at all and probably end up feeling miserable thinking of what could have happened in the time that is past.

Did you just contradict what you learned or... wait, did you really learn it? You just read it and probably even thought about it. So what is it like to learn something? More often we learn the small lessons of life the hard way. Like realizing the value of something after losing it, alas... but there are better ways. We often do things in three steps... think, plan and execute. To just read something or to even appreciate it, is not to learn it. Learning needs some mindful action. It is when we practice something, that we can say that we have learned it. Here, it is important to understand that learning is not an immediate process, it takes time, it takes patience and sometimes even failures. Embrace yourself, give yourself a chance and do not expect to shoot the aim at one go. To learn is to first accept that you are not perfect. Suppose, you read that drinking 8 glasses of water everyday is good for health and you decide to drink 8 glasses of water everyday but end up drinking only 4. Well...bravo...give yourself a pat, and let the count increase to 8 with each passing day. You will not even realize and end up achieving it and believe me it is these small accomplishments that will make your day and prepare you for bigger things in life. So the next time you read something interesting and positive, go... take a step ahead and try to practice it because now you know you need to actually practice it when you say you learned it.