I recently connected with an inspirational student from the current MIT EMBA cohort— a successful, 68-year-old dentist who decided he wanted to go back to school. He stepped out of his comfort zone in pursuit of learning and growth. 

His story makes me think a lot about my love for learning. This love originated in my childhood and is an integral part of how I live my life and make decisions for my future. If you know me, you know that I’m always putting myself in environments that foster learning and my continued development. 

But that’s my relationship with learning. Everyone has their own. Even if you don’t have a natural inclination towards learning, or you weren’t born with the same mindset, remember: 

Learners are made, not just born.

Yes, the act of learning itself is a learned behavior. “Here's How to Get Better at It.”

My lifelong love of learning.

I’ve always been a hard worker and overachiever. My mother aimed to provide me with different opportunities than the ones she had in India. She encouraged my curiosity and nurtured an environment where I could follow my creative and intellectual aspirations.  

Still, when I first came to America, I knew practically nothing about this country—whether it was basic geography or fundamental life skills, like how to open a bank account or build a credit score. So I began teaching myself and researching everything I could get my hands on. Honestly, I probably would have lived in a library if given the opportunity. 

Fast forward five years, to graduate school at UF, where I completed an accelerated one-year program for my Masters in Real Estate and Finance. And it was intense. I read more books and studied more hours in that year than in my entire life. 

By the time I graduated, the consolidated learning plan that required so much reading and writing put me in a mindset of, I don’t want to pick up another book for a very long time. How young and foolish—and wrong—I was! 

As I embarked on my entrepreneurial journey, I had no idea what I was getting into. I quickly realized that my learning and development was going to be constant. 

Learning is a lifelong process. 

Throughout my formal education, my mindset was centered on grades and GPAs. Instead of maximizing my time and truly learning, like most Indian students, I had tunnel vision for top scores and the highest GPA. My narrowed perspective didn’t help me leverage or optimize opportunities during undergrad and graduate school. 

The norms of society follow the narrative that you need a graduate or undergraduate degree, or you need a specific title to be deemed successful and educated. I left that mindset behind when I went to school out of my own eagerness to learn and switched from feeling obligated to actually wanting to learn, that’s when everything shifted. 

I was driven by my intellectual curiosity and desire to learn. 

I was no longer driven by grades, but by expanding my mind and maximizing my opportunities. 

This shift in mindset influenced not only how I approached learning, but also how I absorbed information. The mind analyzes and processes differently when you’re reading for development versus reading just for information—and that distinction is imperative to the learning process. 

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Everyone has their own education journey. 

I grew up in India, where school is a privilege. Not everyone can afford to attend secondary school, let alone college. Even in the United States, plenty of people, especially women of color, don’t have graduate degrees or any degree at all. 

If you think of education as a journey, then a graduate degree is a milestone. When I finally reached that major milestone of my education, it felt like my traditional education journey had come to an end. 

But one thing I’ve realized as an entrepreneur is that there is no finite end to your education journey. Even if you have multiple degrees (or not!), learning never stops just because we stop going to school. 

There’s a tendency to think learning takes place only in educational institutions, but I believe that learning occurs in every aspect of life.  

Our experiences, the books we read, the relationships we have, the hobbies we develop, the conversations we have, the mistakes we make—that’s all learning. It happens every day. 

I believe the purpose of life is growth. Every living organism grows—trees, plants, anything that’s living grows. As humans, we grow in many ways. We need to constantly grow our mind and intellectual capability. And that happens through learning. 

Learning stimulates growth. Growing stimulates life. 

Henry Ford once said, “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.”

Ask yourself: are you committed to learning? To growing?

Read more on HBR.com about how to “Make Learning a Lifelong Habit”