Have you ever thought about life lessons that are critical in your journey as a successful entrepreneur? Here are 25 ideas that would give us a solid foundation to build our success upon:
- The importance of hard work and dedication
- How to set and achieve goals
- The value of delayed gratification
- How to deal with failure
- The power of positive thinking
- The importance of good decision-making skills
- How to manage money wisely
- The importance of good communication skills
- The importance of respect for others
- The importance of teamwork
- How to be a leader
- How to be a good follower
- The importance of self-discipline
- The importance of good time management skills
- The importance of taking responsibility for your actions
- The importance of being honest
- The importance of having a positive attitude
- The importance of being kind and compassionate
- The importance of having integrity
- The importance of being reliable
- The importance of being open-minded
- The importance of being adaptable
- The importance of being assertive
- The importance of being patient
- The importance of being grateful
Traditional vs Entrepreneur – Which Path Did You Choose?
There are multiple paths that students can take after high school instead of just the one traditional path. Schools should focus on providing students with different options and opportunities so they can find the path that is best suited for them.
The idea that college is the right path for every student has been tarnished by rising student loan debt and under-employment rates among new college graduates. Even so, this concept is still widely accepted.
What I’m trying to say is that there are many different ways to live your life and the one you choose may not be the one that your teachers and parents encouraged you to follow. You have to make that decision for yourself.
We should reframe what a “good” career looks like to include more than just a high salary. College might not be the right path for everyone and success should also be measured by personal fulfillment and the ability to pursue something worthwhile outside of the office.
I think that a career is only “good” if it helps you to live the kind of life that you want to live. Everyone’s idea of the perfect life is different, but if we only ever talk about how much money a job pays, we miss out on the chance to discuss what kind of life we want to lead.
Are You Learning From Your Mistakes?
Anyone who is successful will tell you that the key is not to avoid making mistakes, but to learn from them. School does not prepare you for real life. From what I remember of high school, classes were about memorizing facts and repeating them on tests. That does not sound like what you experience every day in your career. People who are successful will tell you that the key is not to avoid making mistakes, but to learn from them.
To be successful in the real world, you need a different set of skills than what you learned in school. It’ll take some time to learn these new skills, but it’s better than clinging to old ideas.
No one in the real world cares about your GPA. I’ve never heard a customer ask about my report card as a condition of hiring my company. If you’re still a student, stop focusing so much on hitting a certain number and pay more attention to the incredible amount of knowledge and information you currently have access to instead.
High school teachers and parents can help teach good time management skills to high school students and hold them responsible for failing to manage their time effectively. This includes teaching students about prioritizing activities and making difficult choices about what is most important.
High school is a great time to start teaching students about self-care. Teachers and parents can encourage students to listen to their bodies to avoid burnout, take regular time to relax, and learn how to manage stress in healthy ways. This will help them avoid having an emotional breakdown and taking a couple days off. Many adults could stand to learn that lesson too.
It’s important to teach kids about the healthcare system early on. High school is a good time to start talking to them about how to find healthcare providers, why you should choose a particular doctor, and even how to make appointments for themselves. It’s also important to explain to them how to pay for doctor visits, so they’re not caught off guard by co-pays and deductibles.
Explain the importance of getting enough sleep, drinking lots of water, and being active. New programs that have been put into place have decreased the problem somewhat, but many of these programs focus on eliminating foods from teens’ diets instead of teaching them healthy habits such as eating foods in moderation and exercising regularly. The best way to teach teens healthy habits is to model healthy habits. Teach them that it’s okay to indulge every now and then, but that pizza and soda every day is not ideal. Explain the importance of getting enough sleep, drinking lots of water, and being active.
What Have You Learned From Your Failures?
Failing isn’t something that should be avoided because it can lead to punishment.
Failure is an important part of moving forward. Entrepreneurs will tell you that it is necessary to fail in order to learn and improve future efforts. Beating yourself up over your mistakes will not help you to improve, but learning from them will.
If you spend time dwelling on your mistakes, you’re wasting time you could’ve spent learning from them. It’s okay to make mistakes – they can provide valuable lessons. Instead of beating yourself up, try to accept your failures, grieve, and then move on.
Procrastination does have its benefits, but only if you know how to manage it well. Many teachers throughout my life have placed an importance on avoiding procrastination, which made me question why it is such a bad thing to do when so many people do it.
I don’t think procrastination is as bad as my teachers said it was. I think it’s more important to learn how you work best and what conditions you need to get things done. In my opinion, this is more important than following some default rule.
The Pareto Principle – The 80 / 20 Rule
The Pareto Principle, also known as the “80/20” rule, is a critical concept for promoting success in both personal and professional endeavors that was never mentioned by any of my teachers. If you haven’t heard of this principle before, take the time to learn it and apply it to different aspects of your life. You’ll be amazed at what you’re able to accomplish by eliminating different “80 percents” from your life.
There is no dichotomy between being a productive person or a slacker – productivity is a skill that can be acquired through practice, like any other ability. If you wish to be more productive, you need to pinpoint the methods and environment that help you work productively, and keep repeating these until they become second nature.
Set deadlines and stick to them. Tasks often seem more difficult the closer their deadlines are. Schoolteachers usually enforce deadlines for assignments, but they don’t teach students how to set deadlines for themselves. If you want to accomplish more in the same amount of time, learn how to set and stick to deadlines.
I don’t know about your experiences in school, but many of mine involved finding ways to get around doing assignments that seemed pointless. And I had few teachers who actively tried to stop us from finding these shortcuts. This sets up the expectation that anything in life can be achieved without hard work, which obviously isn’t the case. The sooner you accept that there’s no substitute for just doing the work, the sooner you’ll be able to make progress towards your goals.
It may not sound like a big deal, but high school students should be taught how to change a light bulb. Other simple household tasks they should learn include how to hang a picture, how to turn off the electric breakers, and how to unclog a drain.
Oil changes can be expensive, which is why it’s important for teens to learn how to complete a basic oil change and change a tire as part of their driver’s education. Just watching someone else do it isn’t enough – they need to get under the car and get dirty to really learn how to do it.
Math class is a great place to teach teens about the basics of buying a car, such as depreciation costs, interest on a loan, and even the cost of gas based on a car’s standard MPG.
Credit cards can be a useful tool if used wisely, but it’s important to discuss the risks and benefits with students before they turn 18. Credit cards aren’t free money and if bills aren’t paid, collectors can add more stress to their lives.
The average teen doesn’t have saving for retirement or a rainy day at the top of their list, but it should be. Some high schools offer classes where teens invest in a virtual stock market, but the investing should go beyond that. Teach teens about mutual funds, 401ks, and the benefits of just having some money put away for emergencies. Rather than blowing any extra money they have, they can learn how to use that money to benefit them in the future.
Stop trying to be perfect and settle for being good enough. As a student, an A+ is the best you can hope for. As a business owner, aiming for perfection can be disastrous.
It is better to find your “good enough” point than to push needlessly towards perfection. This is because it could take years of development to reach perfection, and by then your customers may have already been satisfied with a product that was in B- condition.
Your Attitude Will Make All of the Difference
Your attitude can change your reality. You can take steps to change your attitude, though you may not receive instruction on how to do this in many classrooms.
If you want to start thinking more positively, look for opportunities to be grateful and remind yourself that things could always be worse. Eventually, you’ll be more successful and happier.
A business that isn’t profitable is simply a hobby. This is an important lesson that you won’t learn in high school. If you’re running a business, you should check in on your profits frequently and take actions to increase them if you find that your business isn’t profitable.
Teaching resilience to children can help them be successful in the future. Therefore, it is important to let them experience failure and rejection in a safe environment, such as high school. This way, they can learn how to develop the skills necessary to overcome these obstacles.
Whether you’re buying a car or discussing the salary for a new job, it’s important to have strong negotiation skills. Negotiating doesn’t just mean making a demand and expecting everyone to agree to it. It’s about looking at both sides and coming up with a rational solution. Teachers can help students develop negotiation skills by allowing for some negotiating in the classroom, such as determining the consequences of a rule violation or choosing a due date for a large project.
What lessons do you wish you had learned in school that would have helped you along your journey as a successful entrepreneur? Let us know in the comments
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