There is an old saying that “schooldays are the happiest days of your life.”
Happy maybe, but was everything that was taught actually relevant to living in the real world?
There are many who believe that there are things they should teach in school, but simply don’t.
The problem is not with the academic subjects, which may or may not have some relevance to your present career, but rather life skills, The things you need to know to survive in our competitive society.
The members of our Life Daily team are a few years beyond their school years, and consequently are able to pass on some of the practical lessons life has taught them.
Take a few moments to browse through our list.
See if you agree that these are things that they should teach in school:
1. The Pareto Principle ( better known as the 80/20 Rule)
This rule states that 80 percent of the value you will receive will come from 20 percent of your activities.
This means that you can vastly decrease the time you spend on many things, so you will have more time and energy to spend on other things that really provide value, happiness, and fulfillment.
2. Parkinson’s Law
This law says that a task will expand in time to fill the the time you allocated for it. Focus your time on finding solutions. Give yourself an hour instead of a day, or a day instead of a week, to solve the problem. This will force you to focus on solutions and action.
3. Batching
A good way to get boring or routine tasks done quickly is to batch them. You will be able to do them quicker than if you spread them out. Batching makes you more fully engaged and focused on the tasks in hand.
A batch of things to do in an hour could be: Clean your desk / answer emails / do the dishes / make three calls / write a grocery list for tomorrow.
4. Be Proactive – Not Reactive
Don’t sit, wait, and hope for someone else to do something. Be proactive; be the one to take the first practical action and get the ball rolling. The benefit is that you feel like you have the power over your life, instead of by a bunch of random outside forces.
5. Don’t be afraid to fail or make a mistake
Success in life often comes from not giving up, despite mistakes and failure. It comes from being persistent. Think about when you first learned to ride your bike and fell off repeatedly. If you would not have persisted, you still would not be able to ride a bike.
6. Assume Rapport
Meeting new people can induce nervousness – but it can also be fun. We want to make a good first impression and not appear awkward.
The best way to do this is to assume rapport. You simply pretend that you are meeting one of your best friends. Then you start the interaction in that frame of mind instead of the nervous one.
7. Your attitude changes your reality
When you use a positive attitude instead of a negative one you start to see things and viewpoints that were invisible to you before.
When you change your attitude you change what you focus on. And all things now appear in a different light.
8. Gratitude is a good way to make yourself feel happy
Gratitude is a good tool for keeping your attitude up and focusing on the right things – and it makes other people happy. Which will make you even happier, since emotions are contagious.
9. Don’t compare yourself to others
If you compare yourself to others you let the world around control how you feel about yourself.
It’s more useful is to compare yourself to yourself. See how far you have come, what you’ve accomplished and how you have grown. In the long run it brings a lot more inner stillness, personal power and positive feelings.
10. Up to 90% of what you fear will happen – won’t!
Most things you fear will happen, never happen. They are just demons in your own mind. And if they happen then they are usually not as bad as you expected. Worrying is just a waste of time.
Just remind yourself of how little of what you feared throughout your life has actually happened
11. Don’t take things too seriously
What may seem like a big problem right now you may not even remember next year. Taking yourself too seriously just leads to more unnecessary suffering. So relax a little more and lighten up a bit.
12. Write everything down!
Not everyone is blessed with a retentive memory. Many of your good or great ideas may be lost forever if you don’t make a habit of writing things down. It’s also a good way to keep your focus on what you want.
Do you agree that these are the things they should teach in school?
What would you add to the list that would better equip schoolchildren for life?
You can share your thoughts and wisdom by using the comments feed provided below.
