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Leading by Learning and Applying What You Learned

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Who has taught you the best lessons? What have you learned that has become part of the value of your life and who was it who taught you?

Some people in your life had lots of opportunity to teach you. They had time. They had proximity. Maybe they even had authority. They were people involved with you closely: your parents, your grand parents, siblings, elementary school teachers, high school teachers, college professors, best friends, lovers, adversaries, organizational leaders, pastors, priests, gurus, yoga teachers, improv coaches, music conductors, choir leaders, policy officers, military officers, coaches, cooks, fraternity and sorority members, doctors, therapists, nurses, dental hygienists, dentists, chiropractors, delivery staff, food service workers, co-workers, bosses, mentors...if you dive deep enough for long enough the list is extensive. For all of us. Ponder that list.

Ponder those lessons.

Know it. Do it. Teach it.

What did you learn? What have you learned so completely, so thoroughly, so deeply that you know it, do it, and even teach it? (For, there are so many ways to teach. It need not be your job title.)

The best satires of your life can be told, over and over again -- with more detail, with different lessons, with seasoned meanings. We can keep learning something long after we think we have it all figured out -- even long after we think that we have mastered something, it peels away deeper layers and reveals new connections.

We're never really finished learning. And what we think we've learned is never really finished teaching.

What have you learned today?

-- doug smith


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