EREPS - Lifelong Learning Programme
English

By Anja Beverwijk, EREPS Communication Officer

It’s my personal motto to learn something new every day. Lifelong learning may not be a fancy title, but in my opinion, it should be a weekly task for every professional that takes her or his work seriously. The constant expansion of skills and skill-sets, be it small or large, is necessary as life changes.

As demands of costumers change, we need to both professionally and personally. An aerobics teacher from the 80’s would be lousy at his job in 2019, with its wearables, online assistance, modern training equipment. Lifelong learning is about further expanding our skill-set in response to a changing environment and new developments.

Continuous education helps to ensure safe practice and is mainly there to improve or broaden knowledge and skills. At EREPS we offer our members the Lifelong Learning Programme (LLP), designed to support our members wishing to progress and thrive within our sector.

But lifelong learning isn’t all about attending courses, visiting industry events or taking e-classes, and not even about reading books, blogs and articles. It’s also about the practices a professional carries out daily in order to continue to increase its knowledge. This means asking for help when something is not understood, observing and talking to more experienced employees at the gym, personally trying out new ways of doing things, to name a few.

We encourage you to embrace a culture of “investing in yourself”. To check out the courses, trainings and online articles, but to also think beyond those options. To expose yourself to new things daily. They may not all work, but it will be helpful nonetheless.

I keep one story about failure in my mind at all times, it’s about Thomas Edison. He made about 90 prototypes of ‘the thing’ that would eventually lead to the light bulb. When asked if he was never frustrated with the process and was disheartened by all this failure, he replied: “I haven’t failed, I have gained. I know now 90 methods in which one can’t make a light. I did not know that before.”

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