Habits, Part 3: Growth and Learning
Progress is the habit that keeps everything else alive.
Welcome to Part 3 of the Bold Habits series. In Part 1, we talked about physical energy because, without it, nothing else works. In Part 2, we talked about planning your day, because energy without direction gets wasted.
Today, we turn to growth and learning. Growth comes next for a reason.
The Habit I Never Planned to Build
If you had told me growing up that reading would become one of the most important habits of my adult life, I would have laughed.
I hated reading as a kid. I made it through high school with Cliff’s Notes and did everything I could to avoid opening a book unless I absolutely had to. If I had free time, I wanted to be outside or play sports. Sitting still with a book felt like punishment, not progress.
College changed that, at least a little. I realized quickly that if I wanted to do well in certain classes, especially literature, I couldn’t fake it anymore. UNC forced me to take subjects I never would have chosen on my own, and for the first time, I saw reading as more than an academic requirement. It became a way to understand how people think, how ideas form, and how perspective shapes outcomes.
Still, once I graduated and entered the real world, reading didn’t suddenly become a habit. What did stick was listening.
Looking back, that habit started much earlier than I realized. When I was young, my mom moved from teaching into a sales training role at a financial services company. That meant “books on tape,” cassette tapes by people like Wayne Dyer, Norman Vincent Peale, and Zig Ziglar, brought home from work and played in the car.
At the time, I didn’t think much of it. I just liked riding with my mom. I was a mama’s boy, while my brother was usually with my dad, fixing something around the house. Years later, I realized what was really happening. She was modeling growth. She was showing me, without ever saying it directly, that learning didn’t stop when school ended. Knowing her the way I do now, I’m pretty sure she knew exactly what she was doing.
Early in my career, that seed showed up through audiobooks. Cassette tapes gave way to compact discs, and voices like Tony Robbins filled my car during long drives. His ideas on mindset and personal responsibility landed at the right time. I didn’t just consume them for motivation. I started to notice something deeper. Exposure to better thinking was changing how I made decisions.
Actual reading came later. Much later.
About ten years ago, I finally started picking up physical books consistently. At first, it was slow. A couple of books a year. Then a few more. Momentum built quietly. Today, I read around thirty books a year, even while working full-time, prioritizing my family, and taking care of my health.
People often ask where the time comes from. The honest answer is the margins. A few minutes here. Ten minutes there. Waiting in line. Early mornings. Evenings when the default option would have been turning on the TV and zoning out. Those small pockets add up.
That habit has paid off in ways I couldn’t have predicted. Not just financially, but mentally and emotionally. Reading has sharpened my thinking about money, leadership, health, relationships, and what actually creates a fulfilling life. Almost everything I read falls into the personal growth and nonfiction categories. Not because fiction lacks value, but because when I’m not living my life, I’m trying to get better at living it.
The funny thing is, most of the “new” ideas in today’s bestsellers aren’t new at all. They’re refinements of principles written decades, even centuries ago. Ideas that have survived because they work. There’s something grounding about realizing that success leaves clues, and those clues have been available for generations.
I didn’t grow up a reader. I didn’t plan to become one. But learning, like most habits, compounds. A little curiosity each day turns into clarity. Progress builds confidence. And confidence makes growth feel possible.
That’s when a principle I return to often started to crystallize for me: constant and never-ending improvement.
Not massive change. Not overnight transformation. Just getting a little better each day.
It sounds simple. It is. But simple doesn’t mean easy.
When Growth Slips Away
Most people don’t decide to stop growing. Growth just quietly slips down the priority list. Life gets busy. Comfort creeps in. Learning becomes optional instead of essential.
When that happens, stagnation sets in.
You can feel it. Work feels heavier. Motivation drops. Even success starts to feel flat. No amount of money fixes that feeling.
Because progress equals happiness.
When you’re learning, life feels alive. When you’re improving, even slowly, momentum builds. When growth stops, everything starts to feel harder than it should.
That’s the quiet power of learning. It doesn’t shout. It accumulates. And over time, it changes the direction of your life.
Growth is what keeps you moving forward instead of getting stuck where you are. It’s what prevents momentum from stalling once the initial motivation wears off. Without growth, even good habits flatten. With it, everything else compounds.
Over the last decade, the periods when I’ve been most intentional about growth and learning have also been the periods when my life and financial progress accelerated the most. Investing in yourself yields returns that show up everywhere.
What Growth Looks Like in Real Life
Growth isn’t abstract. It shows up in everyday decisions, just like energy and planning do.
Reading is one example. Ten pages a day doesn’t sound impressive. But ten pages a day add up to thousands of pages a year. Over time, it reshapes how you think, how you make decisions, and how you recognize opportunity.
Experience matters just as much.
Some of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned didn’t come from books. They came from mistakes. In construction. In real estate. In leadership. Early on, I tried to move past mistakes as quickly as possible. Later, I realized that approach wasted the lesson.
Now, when something doesn’t go the way I hoped, I slow down long enough to extract the learning. What happened? Why did it happen? What will I do differently next time?
Mistakes are tuition. Painful, yes. But only wasted if you don’t learn.
People matter too. For a long time, I believed I had to figure everything out on my own. That belief didn’t make me stronger. It made me slower. Seeking out mentors, peers, and teachers changed that. Sometimes it’s formal. Other times it’s one conversation or one thoughtful question at the right moment.
Humility accelerates growth.
How Growth Actually Compounds
Growth rarely announces itself. There’s no finish line, no dramatic before-and-after moment you can point to in real time.
Most days, growth looks ordinary. You read a few pages. You pause after a mistake instead of rushing past it. You ask a better question than you would have last year. Nothing about those moments feels transformative in isolation.
But over time, they stack.
Just like money, growth compounds quietly. The power isn’t in one big effort. It’s in showing up consistently when the progress feels unremarkable. A small investment made repeatedly becomes meaningful not because of intensity, but because of time.
That’s why growth is such a powerful habit. It works in the background of your life, expanding your capacity little by little. You don’t just get smarter or more skilled. You become more adaptable. More patient. More capable of handling complexity without burning out.
And when growth is present, stagnation never has the chance to settle in.
Growth Fuels Wealth
Financially, this principle is obvious. Steady contributions. Long-term thinking. Patience.
Personally, it’s no different. Growth keeps you adaptable. It sharpens judgment. It expands what you’re capable of handling. Money can create freedom, but growth determines how well you use it.
Without growth, freedom turns into drift. With growth, freedom turns into choice. Growth isn’t just about personal gain. It’s preparation.
When you’re growing, you have more to give. More patience. More perspective. More generosity. When growth stalls, life becomes about conserving energy instead of sharing it.
Be Bold
You don’t need to overhaul your life. Choose one small growth habit you can sustain. Maybe it’s ten pages of reading a day. Maybe it’s writing down one lesson from a recent mistake. Maybe it’s asking one thoughtful question of someone further down the path.
Pick one. Stick with it. Small reps compound.
And the better you become, the more good you’re capable of putting into the world.
New to BOLD Wealth?
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I love how you frame learning as something that sneaks up on you through margins and consistency, not intensity. “Exposure to better thinking was changing how I made decisions” really landed for me. I see you living this every day.
I went to grad school later in life.....my mentor told me...not only do you need to do this for you but it teaches your boys lifelong learning. They still talk about me in grad school and that it was never too late for me to learn.....my mentor was right. You're on to something!