K
Kickstart your Knowledge
Are you where you want to be on your journey in life? If not, how do you get onto the path you want to be on? Do you even know where you want to be? Or do you just drift along like seaweed with the tide, ebbing and flowing, ebbing and flowing, taking each day as it comes, hoping that nothing major will rise up and knock the stuffing out of you, leaving you winded and slightly confused?
Life is a journey! From the minute we are born it starts. Some people argue it starts from the time we are conceived
I’ll go with the journey starting the second we take our first independent breath. Now at that time in our lives we are totally dependent on our parents, but mostly our mothers and it is up to her to map out the early years of our life’s journey and we just coast along, oblivious of the fact that it is our journey. We grow, learn and absorb so much in the “imprint” years (from birth to seven years) copying behaviours and attitudes of those around us, like sponges absorbing it all, totally unaware of what we are doing. And for the most part we want to learn and copy those around us and we are encouraged so much to do so. We start school and are taught the basics: reading, writing, maths, and social interaction. Then we hit the “modelling” years (seven to fourteen) where we develop “heroes”, people we look up to and want to copy, to be just like them, sometimes we idolise cartoon heroes like Superman or Wonder woman. We hang onto everything they teach/tell us and accept it pretty much as gospel. It’s at this stage that if we discover a really good role model that we can model (copy), that we will develop really good skills to bring us forward to adulthood, get a bad one and we can end up modelling the wrong skills. It is at this stage also that our logical brain starts to develop as well. The “socialisation” years (fourteen to twenty-one) are where we become aware of the opposite sex and also the changes in our own bodies and where we develop and hone our values and beliefs around relationships. It is also the stage when most of
us start to make decisions about our future. The “business persona” period (twenty-one to thirty-five) is the time we usually get our first proper job and develop our careers.
All of these stages we go through, mostly unaware of the fact that we are passing through a stage. At each of them we continually learn, firstly to sit, stand, walk talk, then the next stage to read, write, use logic, pick and choose role models, the third stage, we learn how to behave towards someone we care for who is not family, but evokes strong feeling in us, and we learn to make decisions and plans about our future. The fourth we make adult decisions, be it to get a job or start a business, most of us settle down, marry (or live with partners) and start a family during this stage and we learn how to cope with dealing with all of those issues and be responsible for the decisions we make. We plod along, usually content in our own little world, doing what we can within the confines of that world. How often do you expand your knowledge in that nice little bubble? Do you do attend further education courses, hobby courses, personal development courses? Do you use the internet to expand your knowledge or are you happy to just plod along? If something were to happen would you have the skills and knowledge to be able to firstly cope, then brush yourself off and get back into the swing of living instead of coping,
again? When I left school I did a secretarial course, I hadn’t a clue as what I wanted to do with my life and this was something to give me some more skills to be able to get office work if I wanted to. I had worked part-time from fourteen years old in a local shop through secondary school and when I started the secretarial course I changed to working part-time in a local pub and persuaded the manager to teach me the “behind the bar” work which at the time was “not for girls”. Down through the years I’ve changed jobs many, many, times, flitting from office work, to bar work to sales and any time I’ve had a prospective employer query my career choices and changes I’ve always been able to honestly say “There will come a time when the pensionable job will disappear and the “job for life” will no longer exist, when that time comes over 90% of the population will not be able to cope, I don’t intend to be among them. Even in these recessionary times (mid 1980s) I am not out of work for more than two weeks, because I have many different skills and am employable in many fields, and this shows, that I am 1) forward thinking, 2)adaptable, 3)prepared 4)pro-active. I change careers to stay up-to-date in each of the areas I work in” On most occasions I got offered the job.
I have friends who think further education of any kind is for “seriously sad” people who don’t “have a life“. The way they see it, they work Monday through to Friday, and relax and unwind and spend time socialising with their families and friends at the weekend. There is no time to further their education, to expand their knowledge. Even in the
evenings their attitude is that they’ve worked hard all day and they are simply unwinding in front of the television before going to bed to repeat the process the next day. These people complain when they’ve been passed over for promotion, or are told they will be in the list that will be made redundant in the near future. I have other friends who see further education as something you do to grow as a person, for whatever reason: to increase career choices, to become a better person, to unwind after a hard day’s work with like-minded individuals. The second group of people are the group that see that they have the choice to take control of their lives. They are not just passengers on bus driving along life’s highway, they are driving the bus!
Do you know your EVE ratio? Most people don’t. One of the things that is discussed in one of the introductory videos is your EVE ratio. That is your Entertainment Versus Education ratio. (If you want to see the video I’ll leave a link at the bottom of this post).
The ‘average‘ person spends $100 on entertainment for every $1 they spend on education after they leave school, college or university. Do you know yours? These are the same people who cry “foul” when life throws them a curve ball that they weren’t expecting and they find themselves unemployable after a spate of redundancies because they have not up-skilled or increased their knowledge as they went through life, or their spouse/partner has left them because they refused to go to counselling to sort out their relationship issues, or their friends stop contacting them because they moan about how bad things are all the time. So do yourself a favour, kickstart your knowledge, not because you have to, but because you can see the possibilities and doors it opens for you. Not because some said you should, because you want to.
To see the video on EVE ratio copy and paste the following link into your browser and click on the EVE ration button.