Blog | Personal Finance

I Don’t Know What I Want!

Your financial genius is waiting to bloom

Have you ever asked yourself, “What do I want to do in life?” And your answer comes back, “I don’t know”?

Or how about these questions:

“What do I want to learn next?” Don’t know.

“What big goal do I want to accomplish?” I don’t know.

Have you asked your teenager, “What do you want to do with your life?” only to hear, “I dunno.”

If this sounds familiar, rest assured you are not alone. The good news is, for the first time, I think I know why… so if you’re struggling with your financial goals, your investment progress or something as big as your life purpose, then please read on.

A Dumb-Us-Down System – According to Science

This information comes from JW Wilson who is the executive director of The Advanced Learning Institute. JW has been studying for years how people learn. What he’s found is shocking and may disturb you. The Advanced Learning Institute’s findings are based on scientific research and studies. (Please visit their website here for more information.)

The bottom line is this - our school system has been damaging kids for years and years. And almost all countries throughout the world use the same system. Here are some findings that may rock your world:

• 97% of school teachers are left temporal lobe dominant. This is the part of the brain that deals with reading, writing and math. Here’s the kicker - 93% of the students are NOT. They DO NOT learn that way. In other words, only 7% of all students actually learn the way that teachers are teaching.
• The first twelve years of a child’s life is when the majority of his or her brain develops. School focuses only on 5% of the entire brain - the left temporal lobe. The other 95% of the brain, because it is not being used or exercised, actually atrophies. It’s no different than if you let your right arm hang by your side for many years with no movement or exercise; your arm would atrophy.

So what and how specifically does this occur in our school system?

What the school system does is lock kids in a small classroom (a box, for lack of a better term) for eighteen years. It gives them little-to-no access to the real world. Think about it…for eight hours a day, and longer with after-school activities, you are with kids all of the same age with basically the same amount of knowledge and experience. And you’re with kids of your same age and experience for about eighteen years.

Plus, kids are told to be quiet and sit still. That is not how a human being is designed to learn. It has actually been documented in 1969 by a gentleman name Edgar Dale that the worst way to learn is via reading and lecture, the two main teaching tools of our school system.

The crime in all of this is that while those 93% of students are struggling to survive in this system, the parts of their brain where their real genius lies is being shut down every day. These kids come out of school believing they are stupid or slow and with no idea of what they want to do.

According to The Advanced Learning Institute, EVERY person has a genius. The real crime is that that genius gets shut down in school.

That genius atrophies.

It’s no wonder when you ask a sixteen year-old, “What do you want to do in life?” the child answers, “I don’t know.” Of course they don’t know because their individual genius – be it music, mechanics, sailing or cooking - has been ignored for most of his or her life.

After learning about this information, one of the Rich Dad Company team members committed to doing what he could to develop his own daughter’s genius. He shared with the rest of the team that he went home that day looking forward to some one-on-one time with his daughter. He said it was really sad because she comes home from school, after eight hours in the classroom, and is loaded down with three to four more hours of homework. It was not how he had planned to spend his time with her. It was a wake-up call for him.

Think about some of the greatest geniuses of our time who did not follow, or like, the “traditional” school system such as: Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Walt Disney, and John D. Rockefeller. Lucille Ball dropped out of high school, and the first female American-millionaire, C.J.

Walker, never finished grade school.

As Steve Jobs said about the school system…

 

“And they really almost got me.
They came close to really beating any curiosity out of me.”

By the way… in case you didn’t catch it, you probably went through this same school-system.

How Do You Find Your Genius Today?

Whether it’s your kid’s passion or your passion, how do you ignite that genius within you today? How do you discover what it is you want to do in life?

According to The Advanced Learning Institute, you, as a unique individual, will only select those things and information that have personal meaning to you. With this in mind, the first question to ask yourself and your kids is, “What are you interested in?”

I don’t know about you, but no one in school ever asked me what I was interested in. They only told me what I must read and study… so start gravitating towards things that interest you and actively pursue them. You may need to pursue many interests before discovering what it is that turns you on, that makes you want to jump out of bed in the morning.

For example, I always had this secret thought that I may have made it as a pro golfer. I wanted to find out, and last year I joined a women’s golf league. I practiced and played more than in the past five years combined. What did I discover? I discovered that I really enjoy the game of golf, but it doesn’t mean that much to me to devote all the hours of practice and play to be great at it.

JW commented that it took him starting six companies before he unleashed his passion in the science of learning.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is that unless you were lucky enough to escape the school system early on, chances are that the genius that lies within each and every one of us is waiting within you, and your kids, to come out and bloom. This may be your “Rising Time” to share your unique gift – your genius – with the world.

What are you going to do today to find the genius within you?

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