I love watching the Travel Channel. My favorite has always been Samantha Brown's Passport to Europe. I like watching these travel shows because I can travel anywhere I want to in the comfort my seat. I get to see the other side of the world, countries rich with culture and beautiful landscapes and interesting people. I do, like any other viewer, would think “I am going to add that to the-places-I-want-to-and-see-someday on my Bucket List.” For now, I am contented in learning about the countries and the cultures and the breathtaking sceneries I watch in awe. I sit, enthralled, my interest piqued and learn new things about this wonderful world of ours. Different from where I am now, how I live my life and the culture I know and am immersed to. After watching the show, I feel I know more about the country, culture and ways of the people more. I am happy knowing this. Most of the time, I relate this to where I am at work. At work, we may, at times — or most of the time, not get the kind of knowledge, or training or things we want to learn that may or may not be in the scope of our job. However, we find ourselves craving to know more about. Especially if it relates to our job and that knowing this knowledge or getting this training will further enhance our work performance and make us better at what we do. Through the years that I have been in the training and development industry, I have learned that most of the time, training budgets are if not completely slashed out in the overall company budget, sometimes, it is lessened. When training budgets are limited, it is hard to get around to getting yourself the ideal training that you need to do your job. It has happened to me and I am sure that it has happened to you as well in companies you are working for or have worked for. What do you do? When this happened to me, I did not panic. After all, I cannot expect the company to provide me with every tool or training that I would need to improve myself, right? Ideally, companies should provide this but with the shifting changes in the economy, companies have to downsize the budget somewhere. If it is the training budget that gets downsized then you are on your own in getting yourself educated. What do I do if the company does not have the training I am interested in and know that this will help me in my job? I go and look for it – outside. If there is a seminar or training program I am interested in provided by a training company, I enroll myself and attend it. My advice, though is you have to make sure it will benefit you and you can really apply the takeaways back in the workplace. It will be worth your money if it does. I would make sure I have a budget for this of course. If I do find myself without enough budget for a training, I head to the bookstore and look for training and development books. No budget for training or books? I do the next best thing – I Google! I Google articles, free resources – there are a lot of them out there just begging to be researched, read, absorbed and applied! I call this chair learning and I love it! It is my own version of the travel channel. Sure, it does not take me to exotic places, but it does expose me to a new whole world of learning. It gets me updated in my current profession. It reviews me on the things I already know, it teaches me things I did not know and best of all, it helps me think of new ways or approaches that assists me to be better at what I do at work. Like when I watch my travel channel, I sit, enthralled, my interest piqued and learn new things. I challenge you to do this: Educate yourself without leaving your seat. Make this a practice and you will see that the benefits are endless and a whole new sea of knowledge and possibilities are out there just waiting for you. So sit back, relax and enjoy the journey.