What I Want To Learn

I’ve gained a lot from my experiences, studies, and relationships, but there are still a few more skills I would like to pick up:

• Human psychology – how do people interact with each other? Why do they feel what they feel? How can we relate to people better? Having some idea of how the psyche works in different situations can give me a better insight into people and society, helping us help each other more.

• Creative and holistic therapies – I’m particularly interested in art, music, and dance therapy. I personally use writing as a form of therapy and I feel there’s a lot of value to healing through creativity.

• Community organising – How do you get the people in your community together to speak up for their rights, or even just be good neighbours? How do you logistically hold a gathering or a meeting? I know people (including myself) who are very passionate about issues, but have trouble getting others on board. Some skills on that would be useful.

• Persuasion – I personally find this a little bit icky, as I’ve developed connotations of exploitation and manipulation with that word. However, I do see another side – communicating your views better while linking it up to the values and principles of your listeners. It’s less about tricking people and more about fitting puzzle pieces of understanding together.

• The practical side of administrating a venture, especially financials – I am very much a big-picture, vision person. I can do admin work if directed, but some things still stymie me. I’ve read books on starting and running ventures, but some sections – especially anything to do with money or business plans – are confusing! Hands-on personal guidance through these sections would be VERY helpful.

• Moving your idea into action – this links to the one above. I have tons of ideas, but am often not sure how to get them in action. Aside from the logistics, I’ll also like to know how to get over the hump of getting started, and developing greater self-motivation.

• Performance skills – I would love to gain more training in circus (particularly acrobatics and aerials), performance art, street theater, dance, and choreography. I have quite a number of ideas, but I’d like to learn how to transform those ideas into a creative act.

• Events, stage, and festivals logistics – I’d like to learn the logistics of running an event or festival that’s smaller-scale, artistic, socially conscious, and has strong involvement from the people. More grassroots than corporate. However, learning any sort of event skills is useful really!

• Guidance counselling – While I informally give advice and support to young people online, I would like to strengthen my skills so that I can support them better and more extensively. I have been thinking of going into career or guidance counselling, particularly with teenagers and their personal coping skills.

• Practical skills – Aside from all those soft skills, I’d like to know more about non-skeezy networking, financial planning, organising, languages, cooking, and anything else interesting or related.

I’m pretty open to suggestion and love learning anyway. I’m sure there are other things that I’d like to or need to learn that I haven’t identified yet!