4 Ideas You Weren't Taught in School

          4 Ideas you weren’t taught in School.

                                                                           By Zane Smith

                This won’t be another attack on our academic system. This WILL be a crash course on painfully practical topics you and I weren’t offered in class. Through the past few decades the system has absorbed some streetwise curriculum that are, at times, even required. Life Management Skills, Sex Ed, Critical Thinking , etc… [Even with] the additions in curriculum, a star pupil will still feel like some gold mine of information was left out when he/she finally enters the grown-up arena.

                Here are four simple lessons that would have opened our eyes years sooner. This list is not the end all be all, I’m sure there are buckets of street-smarts we could all have benefited from.

Lesson 1

Free thinking

                Almost nothing you ever read or hear from another person will be entirely factual.

Opinions aside, nearly all information we spew at each other is dripping with bias and miscommunications. Sprinkle some emotional attachment on that, and you’ve got a good old fashion soap-box-sandwich.

                You read an article in the news stating a local political official is being accused of embezzlement and fraud. GASP! My precious tax dollars! Another entry just beside it says local high-dollar lawyers have been roaming around throwing important people’s names in the dirt with no evidence to back up the allegations. GREAT SCOT! THE POLITICAL GUY IS INOCCENT!

Get the point? This is where the saying “two sides to every story” spawns from. People may be telling you the truth, but leave out the parts they don’t like, and capitalize on the items they do, giving a lopsided spin. Not even your expensive text books or crusty grandmother are 100% real.

This might dismay you into believing there is just so much bullshit the truth is not worth digging for. But Lo! The facts are present! We usually just need to clean off the glup and grime of human interjection to harness them.

Keep an OPEN MIND , be a POSITIVE SKEPTIC , don’t believe all the niose.

Lesson 2

Mistakes are good

                Mistakes show you what doesn’t work so you can develop as a person. Live and learn.

                Getting an F on an important test sure doesn’t seem like a good thing. But the positivity comes from the way you respond to the mistake. Remain the same, or change your behavior to make sure the flub doesn’t recur. Those are essentially our options.

                A laser guided missile uses a computer to constantly calculate where its current trajectory will take it. If the predicted destination is off, it makes the slight adjustments to ensure success. The projectile runs this program loop thousands of times before it decimates the bullseye; victory. The human brain operates on the same principles: “Ouch, that stove is hot. In the future, I’ll refrain from setting my hand on a stove.” Pain>>Learn>>Grow.

Now if you’ll all turn to chapter 2, you’ll read that all failures are opportunities to grow. Next time there is a test, try cracking the book open for a couple of minutes the night before. Then maybe your F will turn to a C, and you would’ve gain a little bit o’ book learnin.

Lesson 3

Entrepreneurship          

                You don’t have to work for your money, you can make your money work for you. Working for somebody else is not your only option. You live in a country that is powered by, and promotes Free Enterprise. Business owners (and investors) are the wealthiest people in the world.

Tell me if this sounds familiar: get good grades in high school; go to a good university; get a good job; 401K your way to retirement at 65. Life succeeded! Right?

Wrong. I’m not saying this is a bad route to travel, but understand that people you see with million dollar homes and Ferraris didn’t get those things by following the formula above. Maybe 1% of them did, all of them CEOs at top corporations. But you know what those CEOs don’t have? Time to enjoy their mansions and supercars.

People fall into 4 sectors of money making, according to market guru Robert Kyosaki: Employment, Self-employment, Investing, and Big Business. The first two eat up your clock, the last two make you wealthy, if you play your cards right.

But we don’t hear this in school do we? We are asked “what do you want to be?”, when we should be hearing “how do you want to live?”

Lesson 4

Shit Gets Real  (Ladies, pardon the French)

                Life is not a T.V. show. Sometimes the girl gets away, the main character loses, or the ending isn’t happily ever after. This is OK because life goes on. It’s all good.

Most of us who have walked the Earth for more than 15 years already learn this intuitively, but in modern western civilization we can be coddled all throughout high school and college. We feel safe inside our warm cocoon of student-ness.

But eventually metamorphosis leaves the egg. The cosmos snaps back and shows it’s seemingly chaotic side. As a wise man once said: “in life, there is suffering”. This may seem very stoic and negative, however undeniable. There’s also a lot of happiness and rainbows, but that isn’t the problem, is it?

The point is to recognize the universe is not necessarily always on your side, and when it shows you this, you will probably not enjoy it. “Things don’t always work out”, “life isn’t fair”, “dog eat dog”, “box of chocolates”….the list goes on. But in the end it’s all good.

                This Lesson list is incomplete, I’m sure. I hope that what I did provide gave you some insight and practical knowledge for the days ahead. And if not: shit happens.

Yours Truly

Zane Smith