7 Ways to Widen Your Horizons & Broaden Your Knowledge

Clichés are cliches because they are true and there is no cliché more accurate than the phrase ‘every day is a school day.

Human beings are genetically predisposed to assimilate and learn new information and then put into practice that information moving forward. If you feel as if you are in a phase in your life whereby you feel stuck and lack options, then this article is for you.

Continue reading to learn of seven fantastic ways to widen your horizons and broaden your knowledge to enrich your life. 

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  Expand Your Social Circle

When you were in high school, you were naturally thrown into a world where there was a vast array of different characters, personalities, points of view, and cultures, and this veritable melting pot of different kinds of people informed your perspective and worldview.

However, as an adult, it can sometimes be easy to fall into the trap of only conversing, communicating, and socializing with people in a small group, either work colleagues who have turned into friends, or local neighbors and friends you have had for years.

Striving to expand your social circle, therefore, will mean that you are once again naturally exposed to different points of view and new perspectives, which will then serve to broaden your horizons. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to start meeting new people and allowing new influences and sources of inspiration into your life, including the following:

• Start saying ‘yes’ to new invitations
• Strive to break free from your comfort zone
• Fake confidence at a party even when you don’t feel that way
• Make connections with friends of friends who you ‘click’ with
• Start conversations rather than responding to questions
• Seek out individuals with the same interests as you
• Surround yourself with positive people
• Establish a sense of pride and self-value
• Join online communities on social networking sites

• Plan an International Adventure

The current economic climate of the country and the unfortunate fact that the vast majority of American citizens have substantially less spare cash means that planning a luxurious vacation may well be more difficult than it has been in the past. 

However, if there is a country that you have always wanted to visit, and even if you are currently unable to fund the trip, there is so much enjoyment, excitement, and motivation to be found in planning and researching. 

For example, if you are touring Cambodia and Vietnam, invest in some updated tour guidebooks, some highlighters, a new notebook, and together with the internet, plan out a route, research places to stay, and start to learn about local culture and customs. 

There is a myriad of benefits to traveling and it is often said that regular vacations, whether across states or to another continent entirely, are a fantastic way of boosting your levels of emotional health and wellbeing, as well as giving you a new perspective on life. 

Aside from widening your knowledge, vacations can reduce your risk of suffering stress-induced breakdowns, can lower your blood pressure, can reduce the risk of experiencing a heart attack, boost your reserves of energy and motivation, and make you feel generally happier and more content. 

• Advance Your Degree Education

Education can be gained from a variety of different sources, but there truly is no substitute for enrolling in a challenging yet incredibly rewarding degree program from an established university. 

When wanting to widen your horizons and broaden and expand your knowledge, then researching local or online universities for a degree program will either help propel you to the next level in your professional career or else simply immerse yourself in a subject that you love.

Furthermore, if you feel as if your current job role is no longer challenging you and pushing the boundaries of your ability, then if you already have a bachelor’s undergraduate degree, embarking upon a master’s postgraduate degree is the next logical step to moving your personal and professional life forward. 

For example, if you are right now working in the healthcare industry, either as an administrator or lower-level healthcare assistant, then a respected MBA in Health Care Administration will serve to advance your career considerably. 

An MBA in Health Care Administration can lead to a host of next-level career pathways, including pharmaceutical project manager, health insurance operations director, public health policy analyst, and healthcare marketing and sales manager. 

• Watch More Documentaries

Another incredibly effective and simple way to find new interests and passions in your personal life is to stop watching so many Netflix box sets and start watching much more documentaries instead.

From historical documentaries and political commentaries to nature and environmental programs, there is an endless array of new content and information you will garner. What is more, learning more about the world around you and what and who has gone before you may well instill a sense of ethics and a new element of morality into how you live your day-to-day life. 

Documentaries are the ideal way to strengthen your knowledge in subject matters which interest you and what is more, such programs are usually far more reliable than sources from the internet as they are usually well-researched. 

• Deal with Suppressed Issues

Frankly, living in the modern world can often be more than a little hard, and millions of people around the world develop mental health issues, as well as hard knocks on their levels of emotional health and well-being. 

Benefits of booking a therapy session with a qualified, professional, and registered therapist include the following, to name just the main ones:

• Stopping any repressed emotions restricting you in the future
• A way to reboot your brain
• Teaching you ways to guide your children through their issues as they grow
• Physical symptoms can also become less of an issue
• A way of seeing things through other people’s points of view

Often, a person can have emotional obstructions in their mind that they are unaware of, and talking to a life coach or therapist is one of the best ways to discover the mental blocks in your mind which are holding you back in life.

Furthermore, even though you may well be fortunate enough to be surrounded by supportive, understanding, and positive people who would more than willing to sit down and talk to you on an emotional level, talking to a stranger can be considerably easier. 

• Follow Your Instincts

Another sure-fire way of adding excitement to your life and a way to learn more about yourself in the process is to stop listening to what other people think is the best thing to do in a situation and start listening to your instincts. 

Following the path which your intuition is trying to tell you will guide you through life in a more sensory way and you may well be surprised to learn that intuition is a psychological process that occurs in your brain. 

What is more, there are plenty of ways to actively sharpen and improve your intuition:

• Be more creative
• Start paying more attention to your dreams (and nightmares)
• Look after your physical health
• Engage in brain training exercises
• Spend time outdoors and surround yourself with nature
• Start encouraging feelings of empathy in yourself for others

Even if people around you either think your decision is a bad one, or else would never dream of making the moves that you feel are necessary to make you happier, you must instead focus on your own goals and learn to put yourself first for a change. 

• Design a Personal Vision Board

Finally, one measure to broaden your field of knowledge in different areas and widen your horizons for your long-term future is to design a personal vision board.

Essentially, a vision board is a way of manifesting your ambitions and dreams into reality and there is a wide plethora of notable celebrities, such as Ellen, Oprah Winfrey, and even Michelle Obama who have all publicly stated that it is indeed possible to manifest good things. 

The beauty of deciding to make a vision board is that there are certainly no hard and fast rules, as long as you listen to your intuition and concentrate on what it is you want to live and indeed how you want to spend your time on earth. 

Visually representing your goals and dreams is easy, using magazines, newspapers, brochures, flyers, and any other artwork to cut out and stick onto a pinboard or magnetic chart so you can see your goals in front of you. The time it takes to create this board can also be relaxing, so that’s another bonus to consider.