beginners the transformative joy of lifelong learning

Funny, uplifting, and delightfully informative, Beginners is about how small acts of reinvention, at any age, can make life seem magical. Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning. Along the way, he interviews dozens of experts about the fascinating psychology and science behind the benefits of becoming an adult beginner and shows how anyone can get better at beginning again-and, more important, why they should take those first awkward steps. Beginners is an ode to learning new things, to old dogs learning new tricks, to extricating ourselves from our comfortable, deeply grooved patterns so we can embrace those moments of looking like a clueless fool, and rediscovering the joy of discovery itself. Rapturously singing Spice Girls songs in an amateur choir, losing games of chess to eight-year-olds, and dodging scorpions at a surf camp in Costa Rica, Vanderbilt tackles five main skills but learns so much more. Why do so many of us stop learning new skills as adults? Are we afraid to be bad at something? Have we forgotten the sheer pleasure of beginning from the ground up? Inspired by his young daughter's insatiable curiosity, Tom Vanderbilt embarks on a yearlong quest of learning-purely for the sake of learning.

Beginners the transformative joy of lifelong learning