How Lifelong Creative Learning Can Increase Your Brain Power, Confidence, and Prosperity

If given the opportunity to increase your intelligence, confidence, and finances, I imagine that you’d be interested.  The problem is that it’s hard to figure out how to do it, which is understandable:  considering how busy our daily lives are, when would you find time to make it happen?  And who would help you?  And where would you begin?

Thinking of my own eclectic career paths (yes, there have been several), I figured out early on that I needed to embrace the concept of lifelong creative learning in order to survive and keep myself economically valuable to employers.

I began my professional life in the radio industry, which I loved.  I journeyed across various cities, music formats, and companies (scroll to REINVENTION), and I was ultimately hired as the Vice President and General Manager of WAXQ-FM (Q104.3), a classic rock station in New York, where I had the exciting and challenging responsibility of building it into a dominant and very profitable brand.

After 20 years in broadcasting, I was approached to run a start-up company called School of Rock, which at the time was an eight-school chain of music education programs for kids.   The company’s principals needed someone to drive expansion, raise capital, and build a management team.  I became fascinated with the role that music and creative education played at School of Rock, which helped kids to improve their musical talent, develop teamwork skills, and gain confidence.  Along the way, my team built the company into the national leader in music education for aspiring rockers ages 7 to 17, with franchises in over 100 locations in the U.S. and Mexico, and over 8,000 students.

When I got started at School of Rock, I needed to adapt to the responsibilities and demands of the role.  I improved my digital and social media skills and learned about the latest and most innovative online marketing tools.  Carving out the time to develop and grow professionally took an enormous amount of focus and motivation, including the need to do extensive research and studying.  While the process was rigorous, the payoff was huge:  I gained new awareness, experience, and expertise that added to my value as a professional and also bolstered my self-esteem.

The personal and professional benefits that are delivered by this kind of lifelong creative learning are validated by a research project done by the Matrix Knowledge Group, an international consulting company with offices in London, Brussels, and Washington, DC.  Their 2010 study, Lifelong Learning and Well-being:  An Analysis of the Relationship Between Adult Learning and Subjective Well-being, found that “undertaking part-time education… is associated with an increase in well-being, and that this improvement in subjective well-being is equivalent to an increase in annual household income.”  Speaking from my own experience, I can absolutely attest to Matrix’ conclusion.

I’ve taken my interest in and passion for creative education to a new, self-owned venture:  the creation of One River, a lifelong learning center in Englewood, New Jersey.

In addition to One River providing interesting and creative classes to young students (kindergarten through high school) via our School of Art and Design, One River is also attracting an adult student population with new digital design and technology education classes.  A six-course certificate program covering Graphic Design, Digital Photography, Online Marketing and Web Design is offered with the goal of helping adults to learn how to navigate the world of digital technology with confidence and optimism.  If you run a small business, having these skills can provide you with new services to sell.  If you work in the corporate world, these skills may help to increase your salary or provide flexibility to gain a new position.  On a personal level, these can simply be cool, exciting, and fun skills to have.

The book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith advocated the need for evolving the culture of a company in order to make the successful transition from a start-up to a growing, successful organization.  Goldsmith’s idea of evolution can be applied to individuals as well:  we need to take a personal growth inventory and make a commitment to ourselves and our future by evolving intellectually, creatively, and emotionally.

Lifelong creative learning can help anyone achieve these rewarding goals.