Autodidactism, also known as self-education, is vital because that is how you continue to grow and improve your well-being. We can describe self-education as teaching yourself without formal education by using the resources you have at hand.
The fun part is you get to decide what to educate yourself on and how to self-educate yourself. It’s on your terms, which is crucial because there is much more to learn outside of regular school and educational institutions to continue your growth journey.
Self-directed learning will help you have a more enjoyable life. You’ll learn how to improve your life and yourself daily. It’s an ongoing process, but it is well worth it as you self-learn to become the person you want to be. How can you better your life if you aren’t willing to do the work to grow? What’s the other alternative?
There are studies done on autodidacticism in educational technology research to improve the learning experience of autodidacts, which is fantastic. They do this by focusing on the diverse needs of self-learning individuals. Educational technology research also studies how technology can expand educational access and support self-regulated learning. They also examine it to guide educational approaches.
So, this must mean autodidacticism is essential for personal growth and well-being if research and effort are being put in to ensure autodidacts have access to well-rounded educational tools.
What effects does self-teaching have?
The effects of educating yourself for personal growth can’t be emphasized enough. A self-directed learning experience helps you to:
Be more discerning and make better decisions
You become a more well-rounded person
It’s empowering
Your confidence goes up
It’s harder for you to be taken advantage of
You learn skill sets that help you to improve your life
You have knowledge that you can help spread to others
I’m missing other effects of self-education, but this is a good start. You will feel better about yourself, and in turn, this will improve your well-being. Not only that but educating yourself also gives you something to do.
There is no excuse for being bored since there is always something you can do, learn, and improve on, anywhere from drawing, to scientific and technical training (to achieve scientific knowledge), all the way to finance.
What are the benefits of self-education?
1. You can learn more through self-directed learning.
As mentioned above, you get to decide what you want to learn, how you want to learn it, and at what pace. There isn’t a set curriculum like when pursuing a high school education—no one telling you what subject to learn, when you should do it, and how fast.
You can choose from countless subjects to explore and expand your mindset based on what you’re curious about or what you think will improve your well-being. There is no set way to learn a subject, so many resources are at our fingertips.
Having all these resources and using them in combination is very beneficial and immerses us in the subject through different means. We can use videos, books, or countless other resources.
2. Self-empowerment is happening as you cultivate your learning style.
How cool is it to see your progress as you learn? It’s awesome. It is empowering and builds confidence to know that you took the initiative to learn something. You see that you had that capability all along.
When you pick up an interest in something, continue to educate yourself, and not give up when it’s challenging, you develop self-motivation and problem-solving methods. On days when you may not feel like getting up extra early to learn, but you do anyways, you are developing self-discipline, which is self-empowering.
Also, since you are deciding what you want to learn, you are taking more charge of your intellectual being. You don’t necessarily have to learn subjects that, to you, are pointless, and this is also empowering.
3. You develop and continue to develop a growth mindset.
As you self-educate and become a self-directed learner, you will hone in and develop a desire to learn. You’ll become more curious and, therefore, develop a growth mindset. You likely won’t want to stop learning because you will understand the benefits of it as you see the progress.
With self-directed education, you will become more resilient when life hits you if you are willing to grow through the situation and work out the challenges. You will add more skills to your arsenal, giving you more ammo to get through the situation and future situations, even if they are mistakes you made. Mistakes are lessons that you can learn from.
Gaining and learning new skills to help you overcome uncertain times is part of a growth mindset. You could tweak your actions if they didn’t work the first or second time and try to avoid repeating the same mistake. Sometimes you will repeat it, but unfortunately, we need to learn what we need from it.
With a growth mindset, you won’t look at setbacks, changes, and uncertainty as the end of the road, at least not for too long. You’ll see them as lessons learned, even though they may not always be fun, but the challenge of working through them and accomplishing them can be.
You will also want to continually grow and better yourself, which is integral to the growth mindset. You’ll seek areas to improve and find ways to do just that.
What are some ways you can self-educate yourself?
There are all kinds of ways and so many resources to pull from when you want to learn something. Self-directed learners use:
- books
- videos
- online courses
- subscriptions
- audibles
- podcasts
- life experience
- and learning from others
If you picked up something and felt like you got nothing out of it, you did. One book I read went over my head, but there was one nugget I got out of it that has helped me today.
I’ve heard someone say; I don’t like to read. The good news is there are other options. They could find a podcast or listen to an audiobook. If you are blessed with the ability to read, try to read and find enjoyment in it. The more tools you have in your personal growth and self-learning arsenal, the better. Reading and listening have helped me tremendously.
Life experience is another great way to learn and is part of self-learning. When you make mistakes or are messing something up repeatedly, the idea is to try to learn from them so you don’t repeat them. If it didn’t work the 3rd, 4th, or 5th time, why are you still doing the same thing five years later? Learning from good experiences is just as beneficial. You can repeat the process to duplicate the same outcome when something goes right.
Dogs are an excellent example of this. When they want a treat, they repeat the same process to try and achieve the same outcome of having a treat. Like, sit. They know if they sit, they could get a treat. If they don’t get a treat because they did something wrong, with guidance, they will do what needs to be done correctly to get that treat.
When can you self-educate?
People will read noneducational books, watch TV, play video games, go to sports games, etc. And there is nothing wrong with that, but sometimes it’s out of balance. Ask yourself, how is this benefiting me if I spend most of my time doing these things? Then people complain that there isn’t enough time in a day for self-education and improvement.
You have time for what you make time for. Making time to educate yourself turns into something more fun and rewarding instead of work as you see your progress. Here are some examples of when you can fit in self-education:
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- You could put an audible on about finance or listen to the Bible when driving.
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- You can put on inspirational music or an audible when cooking or cleaning.
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- When bored, you could read or watch a topic of interest on a subject you wanted to learn about.
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- You could fit in your own research and learning during lunch breaks at work.
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- Reading an article will be beneficial instead of spending the time you typically use to browse Twitter. Or browse an inquiry learning forum about the topic you are interested in to see people’s ideas about it.
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- Sometimes, I’ll get up earlier than usual to make time for self-learning.
- Instead of going out every weekend, you could spend that time growing yourself. We’ll spend years going out every weekend, but we can’t take a couple of years off of going out all the time to improve our lives. Which, in turn, would make going out more enjoyable?
There is a Bible verse that I think about. In Ecclesiastes 11:6, it says:
6Sow your seed in the morning,
and at evening let your hands not be idle,
for you do not know which will succeed,
whether this or that,
or whether both will do equally well.
We have the energy and time to sow seeds. Learning and doing for our personal growth is a part of that. What you put your energy into is a choice. Resting is a part of this as well.
I’m not saying you should study all day, every day, but if most of your time is spent playing video games or watching TV, why not just try and flip it so much of your time is spent on self-determined learning and improving yourself for some time?
Then go from there, balance your time, and develop a learning system. If you don’t like self-learning at all, then you can always go back to playing video games most of the time, but at least you tried.
What are some ways that you can improve your autodidacticism skills so they are effective?
Autodidacticism skills will develop over time naturally with initial effort. If you allow your natural curiosity to drive you and don’t hold back, thinking you can’t do it, you will find what you need as you learn. Here are a few ways to develop your autodidacticism skills so they are effective:
1. Think about what the goal is that you want to reach.
Carve out time to think about your interests or things you want to learn. What are your goals in life? Even if you don’t think of anything immediately, that’s okay. It will get your brain spinning.
You could even research hobbies or ideas to come up with interests. Sometimes you’ll have a natural interest that will pop up like you want to learn how to manage your finances better or become an entrepreneur.
2. Start to come up with a game plan to achieve the goal and do it.
When you are interested in something, you can start researching online for beginner books on the subject. You can watch videos and pick up ques on ideas, books, subscriptions, or tools to look into. You will naturally go down a rabbit hole of information on the subject of interest, turning into a snowball of built-up knowledge over time.
You can tweak your game plan as you go. The important thing is you keep the ball rolling on your goal(s). If you need more time to learn, you may have to get up earlier or maybe even cut out other areas in your life that you could cut out for some time.
If you want to learn something to improve your life and well-being, you will make time for it. You will determine how important a subject is to make room for it and what to prioritize. Prioritizing will also depend on your end goals.
3. Use all kinds of different resources to learn from.
The more resources you learn from, the better. It gives you a more well-rounded view and perception of the subject. Ideas or information stick better the more you hear something over and over. The more resources you learn from, the more you start to pick up on shared ideas and begin to naturally learn to decipher the good ideas from the bad ones.
4. Keep motivating yourself and persevering even when things get tough.
The more you push through those challenging times, the more confident you will become at handling those challenging times. Your endurance will build up, and you will become more robust. When you start to lose motivation, which may happen, try to remember what your end goal is and why you started in the first place.
Each step you take will get you there. When you start to think you aren’t getting far, remember where you started and when you started. Sometimes we may forget we just started 3-6 months ago. You may not be exactly where you want to be, but remember how far you’ve come since the beginning.
5. Naturally, evolve good study habits to attain your goals.
At first, this may be a challenge, and it will take effort to get the ball rolling. Still, if you notice you need to study more, you could slowly increase your studying. Start building small habits first, then adjust and build upon those small habits.
The hope is you’ll want to study, and good study habits will naturally happen as you build upon small habits. That way, even when you don’t feel up to something, you’ll do it anyways because you are self-motivated enough to keep the flow going to meet the end goal, almost like the feeling of being motivated to play a really good video game to beat it.
6. Try learning different subjects to broaden your knowledge and skills.
Over time, you may pick up a few skills in areas or subjects you think would never have a chance to intermingle. Still, you’d be surprised at what goes well together and what can intermingle.
Learning different topics over time will give you a broader perspective of human knowledge overall. You will develop more of an open mind.
7. Self-education is a continuous process that should be embraced.
Self-directed learning continues throughout life. If we understand that, we won’t be so hard on ourselves to think that if we don’t learn something right away, we can’t do it. With that mindset, you will have a more challenging time wanting to explore other interests that extend your knowledge outside of your comfort zone.
Each step in the self-learning process of a subject will get us to where we need to go. It doesn’t happen overnight. There are many subjects and areas that will include life-long learning, so hopefully we learn to enjoy and embrace self-education.
What are some examples of self-teaching and its effects from your perspective?
I started studying the basics of money around seven years ago. I read several books on how to manage and grow it. I also listened and learned from others, whether mistakes or successes. Taking the time to include these learning methods in the self-learning process has helped my mindset about money grow tremendously. So far, I have learned about the following:
- Investing
- Giving
- Saving
- Spending
- The economy
- Debt
To name a few. Educating myself on this was a great decision. It changed my perception of money. It’s more than just about making money and spending every dime. I have been able to manage and grow money since I have been educating myself. It’s important to diversify what you do with your money. Learning this topic has been fun and continues to be fun. It’s like learning a game but on a bigger scale.
What Else?
I am also consistently self-educating myself on the Bible for my personal growth. Since it has changed my life drastically, I would not have known the effects it could have if I hadn’t taken the initiative to learn it.
The cool part is I started off reading the Bible, making myself do it, and now I want to learn it. I have the desire to study it. The knowledge I’ve gained about how to live life I would not have gained otherwise. I’ve learned about the following:
- Jesus
- Love
- Anger
- Anxiety
- Laziness
- Depression
- Money
- Human behavior
And other topics I still need to include. All of these have had a positive effect on my life. I have a better understanding of what love is. I know where laziness gets you. Knowing the consequences of an action, whether good or bad, will help you move in the right direction.
What about other self-taught people?
- Temple Grandin, who is a self-taught expert in the fields of animal behavior and autism, was born in 1947 and was diagnosed with autism. She used her unique perspective and experiences of having autism. She became an American author, speaker, and consultant, making considerable contributions in these areas, revolutionizing the livestock industry and inspiring those diagnosed with autism.
- Eric Barone is self-taught in game development with no formal education. He created a game called Stardew Valley all on his own, which is a lot of work. The work included the programming, the music, the design of the game, and the artwork. It took him four years to complete, but he did it. He showed what’s possible through self-directed learning.
- Eileen Grey is among some established self-taught architects with no advanced academic education. Eileen was prominent in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and significantly contributed to architecture.
So that's why autodidactism is fantastic for your personal growth and well-being.
Yes, that’s why self-education is fantastic. When you understand the power of self-directed learning, it’s addicting and fun. You’ll want others to know the power it has. The Bible in Proverbs 3:13-20 says:
13 Blessed are those who find wisdom,
those who gain understanding,
14 for she is more profitable than silver
and yields better returns than gold.
15 She is more precious than rubies;
nothing you desire can compare with her.
16 Long life is in her right hand;
in her left hand are riches and honor.
17 Her ways are pleasant ways,
and all her paths are peace.
18 She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her;
those who hold her fast will be blessed.
19 By wisdom the Lord laid the earth’s foundations,
by understanding he set the heavens in place;
20 by his knowledge the watery depths were divided,
and the clouds let drop the dew.
If you think you are incapable of self-education, that’s not true. It’s just a matter of willpower and effort. What are you willing to spend your time and energy on? Being smart and intelligent in an area is only a matter of educating yourself.
You’ll know the subjects you are willing to learn and push through if it’s for you. Suppose you are willing to go beyond your comfort zone and push through those challenges to learn a new subject. In that case, you will reach new heights in your life and well-being, mainly because it was self-taught.