“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”, the sixty eight year old man told me. “Oh no!”, I wanted to cry back to him. “Don’t close off your spirit. Don’t choose to live without a “teachable spirit”!

It strikes me as a limiting and even sad choice – yet one I hear people making often.  In his case age was his justification for not growing or learning – but the excuses abound in what we can and do latch onto as an excuse for not being open to learning, changing or growing.

I don’t know about you, but I want to live with a teachable spirit. I want the spirit of a child – eager and willing, mouldable and hopeful. I want to be able to learn from my mistakes, be open to new wisdom and be willing to see new ways.

I want it because it strikes me as how we were born – with an eagerness, a drive, a wanting to become more than this moment. But as we grow up, caught in living and coping with life, living with a teachable spirit starts to become a choice. A choice that impacts every aspect of our lives.

Sometimes it’s a choice we make once and it seems to endure for months and years. Yet other times it’s a choice we seem to have to make over and over, some days easily, somedays not so easily… and some days when we don’t think we can make it.

I want to live with a teachable spirit for a thousand reasons… it makes life interesting, it makes hardships easier to endure, it makes me feel like I can bounce back and become more capable, it even keeps my inner critic quieter… On and on the benefits go.

Most of all I want to live with a teachable spirit because of what I don’t want – I don’t want to be bored with life and boring, to flat line and think this is it. This is what I know. This is what I do and there is nothing more.

Are you choosing to live with a teachable spirit? And if you are, how does it help your life?

Michelle x

Michelle Landy  – www.michellelandy.com   Facebook – Don’t Wait Another Year