I am researching colleges with my 16 year old son. At nearly 48 years old, I am in awe of this process. How I wasted my high school and college years thinking school was a means to an end. Thinking “I have to get good grades. To get into a good college. To get a good job. To make money. To have that perfect life.”
Not once was I grateful for the opportunity. I mean, yes, I was thankful to my parents, but school was a given. I never thought about all the people who did not have the same opportunities that I had. I never thought how lucky I was to have access to LEARNING.
As I go through these college websites, and all these schools have to offer, I am in literal awe of education. I am pleasingly, and humbly astonished of all that I do not know. We are all just tiny people in a big miraculous world.
I spent much of my life being externally motivated by school. It was a means to an end. It was about grades, resumes and a job, more than learning. This is still the case for many school aged kids and it is a shame.
I am not young. So many of us adults are set in our ways, our thinking, our beliefs and we think we know everything that we need to know. We don’t have time to learn anything new, as our lives are on auto-pilot working and bringing up children. I was living like that in my 30’s, and I was not my best at that time.
I am approaching 50 years old like a freight train, yet I am proud to say that I am more curious and open to learning and exploration than I have ever been in my life. I am fearless in my desire to expand my mind, my knowledge, and my beliefs.
I know this attitude and approach to life will keep me young. I will always look to crack open that literal box that so easily and effortlessly creates our small minds. I am determined to utilize those trillions of neurons gifted to me, instead of staying within the safety of a choice few.
If you had told me back in high school that I would find quantum physics and neuroscience fascinating, I would have told you I did not have a mind for any type of science. That is another thing school does when you merely focus on grades, it limits your beliefs about yourself and your potential.
While developing my online program, I did a lot of research (that is what I love to do) and found out that there are two character traits most aligned with happiness and well-being. Those two traits are GRATITUDE and a LOVE OF LEARNING. I know, based on my own life experience, that’s a fact.