5 in 5 Part 3, Learn new skills

Research shows that learning new skills can also improve your mental wellbeing by:

• boosting self-confidence and raising self-esteem
• helping you to build a sense of purpose
• helping you to connect with others

Even if you feel like you do not have enough time, or you may not need to learn new things, there are lots of different ways to bring learning into your life.

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Transcript

Carl Fessenden: 1:19

Welcome to the drunken worm podcast. Each week, I will be bringing you dynamic content that will educate and inspire. This podcast was created to talk to mental health professionals about addiction recovery and their own personal stories that can help inspire us to become better people, and live healthier lives. Welcome to the show everybody. My name is Carl, the host and the creator of the drunken Warren podcast. And you are listening to the five in five, where we are bringing you five episodes in five days. And today's episode is part three, where we're going to talk about learning new skills to help our mental well being. Research shows that learning new skills can also help improve our mental well being by boosting confidence, raising self esteem, helping you to build a new sense of purpose, and helping you connect with others. Even if you feel like you do not have the time, or you need to learn new things. There are lots of different ways to bring learning into your life. And that's what we're going to talk about today. I hope everybody is doing well. Happy Saturday. And I hope that you guys are going to have a fantastic weekend. And this is a great episode for us to start off on for this weekend is learning something new. So let me ask you a question. What do you now already know how to do proficiently? Well, and when I say proficiently, meaning that you could describe how to do a process to another person, and teach somebody a new skill. Okay, you have an idea in your mind. Perfect. Now, I want you to think about learning a skill that you don't know anything about. I want you to think about learning that skill, so that you can perfect it and teach somebody else that skill. This is a great way for us to approach bringing our mind into the conversation and bringing our brain cells into the conversation as well. Because we're going to get all those things firing inside of our brains. Now I know a lot of us don't have a lot of time on our hands, you know, I'm super busy. And I still try to make time throughout the week to learn something new. I'm constantly going on to see caps website, I'm going on to Nadex website, I am looking at different webinars I can take to try to absorb something new that I didn't already know. Or to brush up on a skill that I've learned in the past, but feel that I need to be more proficient in. So think of something that you will want to learn how to do. Maybe it's learning how to cook. Or maybe it's learning how to cook something new, maybe a new cuisine, that would be so much fun learning how to do a new cuisine. So what would you do, what I would do is I would probably go onto YouTube, and try to find some videos or go on to Google and look up some recipes. Now, if I'm teaching myself a new cuisine, I am cheating already. Because I worked as a chef for many years in different restaurants all over the Bay Area, also on a cruise ship in Hawaii. So, you know, for me learning a new cuisine is probably going to be a lot easier than for most people. But challenge ourselves. This is what this weekend is all about. I want you guys to go out and challenge yourself to learn something new, to learn a new skill to start a new hobby. Maybe once you get back to work on Monday, or maybe if you're working this weekend, and you're listening to the podcast, maybe it's trying to take on a new responsibility at work, or learning a system or process at work that you already didn't know how to do. So you know, you could work with a junior staff member or improve your presentation skills, if you're in the clinical world, tried to sitting in on a group that you haven't sat in on before so that you can start to understand what that group talk topic is about. And what they're doing in the group. Maybe it's a cognitive behavioral therapy group, or maybe it's a dialectical behavioral therapy group. Or maybe it's just a education group or a didactic group, you know, so many different ways that we can approach clinical aspects in our lives. So take on something new. What about doing a DIY project? Or what about fixing something that's broken in the house? We had a shower here that was dripping. And so I went online, and I watched a video and it was a little intense on how to fix A dripping showerhead. Because you got to take the the nozzles at the bottom off, because that's usually probably where the water is leaking from, and then it's going up through either the showerhead, or the or the thing at the bottom where the water comes out to fill your bathtub up. But you have to check the the seals around the, the the nozzles, because inside of all the mechanisms are, so there's a rubber seal, and a lot of times those seals will get worn out, and then water is going to start to leak through those, or there'll be so deteriorated, that they're gone. And I didn't know that until I started researching how to fix this dripping showerhead in the shower. What about signing up for a college course. I love this idea. I love learning, we were taught in the Marine Corps, that knowledge is power. And that is something that I will hold until the day that I die. That knowledge is power, we need to constantly be challenging our brain and challenging ourselves with new skills and tasks, so that we can stay on top of our professions. And that we can become proficient at what we're doing. That's going to give you confidence, and ultimately competency in what you're doing. And if you guys are unfamiliar with those two words, confidence, the saying that, you know, yeah, I can go ahead and do that. But if you have competency in something, then that means you know what, I can go ahead and do it. And I can show you how to do it. Because I know the process so well that I can train you or show you the process. Right not just do the process, but have enough confidence and competence to show somebody the process. So what about signing up for a local college course, you could try learning a new language, or maybe a practical skill such as plumbing, damn, maybe I should go take a plumbing course at the local college. So that I'll know how to fix things, or an electricians course. Or it may be learning a new language. I think that that's really cool. You know, I'm in the process and not through college, but through through my friend. You know, I'm learning American Sign Language. And, you know, I'm it's not a course that I'm taking. But it's really wanting me to take a course when I go back to school this next semester. So these are things that we can start doing, we can start getting our mind active, we can start learning new things, and I get really excited when I take on a new task. I love learning. What about trying a new hobby that you haven't done before, such as writing a blog, or learning a new sport or learning to paint or you know, anything. It could be anything. But the fact is that our brain is going to continue to function at a higher level. If we continue to challenge it. As our we move on and age, it's so important to challenge our brain it's so important to read. It's so important to do crosswords, it's so important to do puzzles, because we are challenging our brain in our world right now is so locked in on devices that we become stupid when it comes to things sometimes, right? We depend so much on devices. And yes, I did tell you go look something up on YouTube. But follow through with that with the task. Follow through with what you're watching so you can put it into practice you can get your hands dirty. And that's going to make our connections in the brain so much better. I hope you guys have enjoyed this episode and all the information that I just talked about will be posted in the show notes below. And I hope you guys have a great Saturday