What They Don’t Teach You In School

Dr. Thomas J. Stanley, author of The Millionaire Mind, has dedicated much of his life to studying what makes millionaires successful. His research has revealed some very unique insight into the mindset of the wealthy.

For example, he found that millionaires contributed their success to having strong social skills, having good mentors, developing persistence, having a supportive spouse, and working in a career that they love to be the biggest factors of success.

Having a high GPA in school was listed as one of the least contributing factors of their success. So while it may open some doors, education is not what enables you to arrive at your final destination.

As said by motivational speaker, Jim Rohn:

“A formal education will make you a living. Self-education will make you rich.”

With that said, we must question the true value of college. Is it really worth it? Well, I’ll leave that question for later.

For now, I’d like to explore areas where are schools have failed us. Yes, there are indeed some very simple factors that contribute strongly to your success. Unfortunately, they’re not being taught in the schools.

The first one is the concept of failure.

In school, kid’s learn that “failure” is a negative term. However, it is nothing of the sort. There has never been a single successful person who hasn’t failed numerous times on their journey to success.

In fact, the most successful people in life are those who have failed the most.

Edison ‘failed’ more than ten thousand times before he succeeded in creating the light bulb. As said by Thomas Edison: “I have not failed 10,000 times. I have successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.”

Here is my favorite failure story….

In 1832 he lost his job and was defeated for state legislature. In 1833 he failed in business. In 1835 his sweetheart died. In 1836 he had a nervous breakdown. In 1838 he was defeated for Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1843 he was defeated for nomination for Congress. In 1848 he lost renomination. In 1849 he was rejected for land officer. In 1854 he was defeated for U.S. Senate. In 1856 he was defeated for nomination for Vice President. In 1858 he was again defeated for U.S. Senate. In 1860 he was elected President: Mr. Abraham Lincoln.

My motto is: fail as quickly as possible.

Our world is changing. We are living in a global economy. You are no longer only competing against people living in the United States. Because of the power of technology, we are now competing at a global level.

We are competing for jobs with those living in Japan, China, and India. These three countries are gaining incredible economic power and are developing an excellent education system.

You may be surprised to hear the many jobs that are currently being outsourced. It’s not just the factory jobs and the call centers. Not at all….

All sorts of computer programming jobs are being outsourced to India. The computer and technology field has literally been transformed by the extremely talented programmers in India.

Accounting is another major industry that is beginning to be outsourced.

Here’s a fact that may surprise you though. Not only are companies sending jobs abroad, but they are also seeing a 100 percent increase in productivity. The people in other countries are working 100 times harder for the opportunity to have a job that we take for granted.

People in China and India are starving for your job. And in our new global economy, they can have it.

Most of American students who graduate from college feel entitled to a job. In India there are millions of eager young students fighting for relatively few jobs. If we don’t continue to improve our skills, we’ll be sitting on the sidelines.

So, what’s the key to staying competitive?

You must learn to learn. The world is changing at an incredible pace. Almost everything you learn in college will be outdated in a minimum of 5 years. That is, of course, unless you major in history.

You must keep up with the changes taking place in your particular vocation to stay ahead of the curve.

Too many people believe that graduation is the end of their learning journey, when in reality it is only the beginning. We must be on a lifelong journey of learning, whether it be from books, seminars, night classes, or home study courses.

What else is missing from our schools?

Finance!!!!

About 65 percent of college students who graduated in the 2003-2004 school did so with lingering debts to pay off.

This doesn’t count the number of young people in debt due to credit cards and it certainly doesn’t help that they have these shiny plastic cards being sent to them almost weekly. How can they resist? Well, many don’t.

After they take the plunge, they are hit with high interest rates and hidden fees. The credit card companies know that young students are not educated in the world of personal finance and they have made them their number one target.

Our young people are not being taught how to invest and spend their money wisely. Success in life is often not in how much money you make, but rather how you spend your money.

This is what we must teach students. This is a cornerstone to living a successful life. However, instead students are learning who won the War of 1812 and how to conjugate verbs. All good things to learn I’m sure but not of much use in the real world.

Let’s teach them instead about investing in a Roth IRA account, a 401k, or the incredible value of compound interest.

Let’s teach our students the success principles that actually make a difference in the real world.

Let’s teach them to be leaders.

Schools, for the most part, teach us to be good followers. They teach us how to follow directions and color inside the lines. Private schools, however, are often developing leaders. They are developing the students who will lead all of those good followers. Private schools are teaching their kids about the importance of public speaking and how to be creative.

They don’t get a picture to color, they’re simply given a blank sheet of paper to let their minds wander on.

So, if you want to become a leader, you’re most likely going to have to develop those skills outside of the classroom. You certainly won’t learn them in a textbook.

However, you can learn one of the greatest leadership skills of all in an organization called Toastmasters. This is a club that can be found in cities across North America that teach people how to improve their public speaking and leadership skills.

And as you can probably imagine, public speaking is one of the most important qualities you must have as a leader. You must be able to motivate your employees, brief your superiors, and ultimately “sell yourself”.

If it were up to me, I would make public speaking a required class in schools across the nation. Unfortunately, they haven’t asked me for my opinion yet.

One of the greatet lessons missing from our schools is goal setting.

Only three percent of people commit their goals to paper. These are the same people who find the greatest success in life.

It has been said that just by writing your goal down you will triple your results. By assigning a timeframe to your goal, you will then quintuple your commitment to the goal and the likelihood of achieving it.

Without a goal and a plan, we will never achieve all that we truly want for our lives.

Every one of us has 168 hours a week to live our life to the fullest. However, if we examine our lives closely, most of us will find that we have 30-40 hours during the week that we are wasting with television, the computer, and a number of other distractions.

So many people go through life content with just being average. They go through life just trying to get by. They go to work, come home, cook dinner, take care of the kids, and then go to bed in exhaustion.

Too many of us are running a rat race. We don’t know how to slow down and enjoy the moment.

However, when we live with goals, life becomes an adventure. Our life develops focus, meaning, and purpose. Without set goals, we end up wherever life happens to take us, which is never at a destination of our choosing.

Goals guide and direct our lives. They give us focus. They give us hope. And in the end, goals help us to reach a new level in life.

So, let’s teach our kids to make big goals. Let’s teach our kids the greatest keys to success. And then, if we have time, let’s teach them who won the War of 1812.

The last thing that schools do not teach is how to figure out what you really want in life.

And to tell the truth, they could never teach you what career endeavor is best for you anyway. This is a personal journey that must be explored in the solitude of one’s mind.

However, our school years are the very best time to find out what we really want out of life. It is then that we have time to truly figure out what it is we want to do with our lives.

Unfortunately, far too many people never take the time to do this. If you have been in the workforce for any time at all, then you have met these types of people. They are the ones who spend the whole week just looking forward to the weekend. Maybe you’re even one of those people yourself.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with getting a job that pays the bills. The danger comes when you fall into a routine, when you don’t have a plan, passion, or goal to shoot for.

It is then that the future looks very bleak for you.

Let’s not get stuck waiting for the weekend. Let’s find what we truly love to do in life and make it our vocation.

As said by Steve Jobs,

“You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”

The most successful people in life are doing work which they like best. It is very hard to succeed at something you hate. On the other hand, it’s hard not to succeed when working at something you love.

Everyone has a definite purpose and a vision for their life that could enrich the lives of others. The key is tuning into that purpose.

There is some one thing that you can do better than anyone else in the world could do it. Search until you find out what this particular line of endeavor is, make it the object of your definite chief aim and commit your life to achieving it. In your search for the work for which you are best fitted, it will be well if you bear in mind the fact that you will most likely attain the greatest success by finding out what work you like best, for it is a well known fact that a person generally best succeeds in the particular line of endeavor into which he or she can throw their whole heart and soul.

A definite purpose is something that you must create for yourself. No one else will create it for you and it will not create itself. Therefore, let’s spend our school years exploring what we truly want out of life while we don’t have to worry about the bills, the job, the kids, and the weekend that never seems to come.

When we find work that we truly love to do, it is then that we can live a life full of passion and purpose.

I believe that Christian D. Larson said it best:

“When you work simply for yourself or for your own personal gain your mind will seldom rise above the limitations of the undeveloped personal life;

but when you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break bounds; your mind transcends limitations; your consciousness expands in every direction;

and you find yourself in a new world, a great world, a wonderful world; dormant powers, faculties and talents become alive,

and you discover yourself to be a larger man by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.”

– Christian D. Larson, Business Psychology, 1912

Education serves many wonderful purposes. I am a big believer in education. However, I’m smart enough to know that learning doesn’t stop at graduation.

I’m smart enough to know that today’s technology has provided us with unlimited learning opportunities. As inhabitors of the 21st century, we have a world of knowledge at our fingertips.

I still know that the most important lessons in life are not found in a textbook.

Although the knowledge you learn in school is important, it’s not anything you couldn’t learn in a book. The overall experience of college and the four-year commitment are of much greater value.

In the end, your success is still up to you.

And that, is what they don’t teach you in school…