16 Things I Wish They Had Taught Me in School

What do you wish someone had told you in school or you had just learned earlier in life?

Henrick Edberg shared his insights on the Positivity Blog, about a decade after graduation. It is an excellent example of taking stock of progress made to date and start planning for your next phase. Edberg wrote . . .

I do not think about the past or regret things much these days. However, sometimes I wish that I had known some of the things I have learned over the last few years a bit earlier. That there had been a self-improvement class in school. Moreover, in some ways there probably was.

Because some of these 16 things in this article a teacher spoke about in class. However, I forgot about them or did not pay attention to them.

Some of it would not have stuck in my mind and or just been too far outside my reality at the time for me to accept and use.

However, I still think that taking a few hours from all those German language classes and use them for some personal development classes would have been a smart idea. For just an hour a week in high school. It would be useful for many students and on a larger scale quite helpful for society in general.

So here are 16 things I wish they had taught me in school (or I would like to have known about earlier).

1. The 80/20 rule.

This is one of the best ways to make better use of your time. The 80/20 rule – also known as The Pareto Principle – says that 80 percent of the value you will receive will come from 20 percent of your activities.

So, a lot of what you do is not as useful or even necessary to do as you may think.

You can drop – or vastly decrease the time you spend on – a whole bunch of things.

Moreover, if you do that you will have more time and energy to spend on those things that bring your value, happiness, fulfilment and so on.

2. Parkinson’s Law.

You can do things quicker than you think. This law says that a task will expand in time and seeming complexity depending on the time you set aside for it. For instance, if you tell yourself that you will solve within a week, then the problem will seem to grow more difficult, and you will spend increased time trying to produce a solution.

So, focus your time on finding solutions. Then give yourself an hour (instead of the entire day) or the day (instead of the whole week) to solve the problem. This will force your mind to focus on solutions and action.

The result may not be exactly as perfect as if you had spent a week on the task, but as mentioned in the earlier point, 80 percent of the value will come from 20 percent of the activities. Alternatively, you may wind up with a better result because you have not overcomplicated or over polished things. This will help you to get things done faster, to improve your ability to focus and give you more free time where you can focus on what’s in front of you instead of having some looming task creating stress in the back of your mind.

3. Batching.

Boring or routine tasks can create a lot of procrastination and low-level anxiety. One effective way to get these things done quickly is to batch them. This means that you do them all in a row. You will be able to do them quickly because there is less start-up time compared to if you spread them out. Moreover, when you are batching, you become fully engaged in the tasks and more focused.

A batch of things to do in an hour today may look like this: Clean your desk/answer today’s emails / do the dishes / make three calls / write a grocery shopping list for tomorrow.

4. First, give value. Then, get value. Not the other way around.

This is a bit of a counter-intuitive thing. There is often an idea that someone should give us something or do something for us before we give back. The problem is just that many people think that way. Moreover, so far, less than possible is given either way.

If you want to increase the value you receive (money, love, kindness, opportunities etc.) you have to increase the value you give. Because over time you get what you give. Getting something for nothing would be nice. However, that seldom happens.

5. Be proactive. Not reactive.

This one ties into the last point. If everyone is reactive then little will get done. You could sit and wait and hope for someone else to do something. Moreover, that happens often, but it can take much time before it happens.

A more useful and beneficial way is to be proactive, to merely be the one to take the first practical action and get the ball rolling. This not only saves you much waiting but is also more pleasurable since you feel like you have the power over your life. Instead of feeling like a bunch of random outside forces runs you.

6. Mistakes and failures are okay.

When you are young, you try things and fail until you learn. As you grow a bit older, you learn from – for example – school to not make mistakes. Moreover, you try less and fewer things.

This may cause you to stop being proactive and to fall into a habit of being reactive, of waiting for someone else to do something. I mean, what if you tried something and failed? Would people laugh at you?

They would. However, when you experience that you soon realize that it is seldom the end of the world. Moreover, a lot of the time people do not care that much. They have their challenges and lives to worry about.

Moreover, success in life often comes from not giving up despite mistakes and failure. It comes from being persistent.

When you first learn to ride your bike, you may fall over and over. Bruise a knee and cry a bit. However, you get up, brush yourself off and get on the saddle again. Moreover, eventually, you learn how to ride a bike. If you can reconnect to your 5-year-old self and do things that way – instead of giving up after a try/failure or two as grown-ups often do -you would probably experience a lot more exciting things, learn valuable lessons and have quite a bit more success.

7. Do not beat yourself up.

Why do people give up after just a few mistakes or failures? Well, I think one big reason is that they beat themselves up way too much. However, it is a pointless habit. It only creates more and unnecessary pain inside you and wastes your precious time. It is best to try to drop this habit as much as you can.

8. Assume rapport.

Meeting new people is fun. However, it can also induce nervousness. We all want to make an excellent first impression and not get stuck in an awkward conversation.

The best way to do this that I have found so far is to assume rapport. This means that you 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.

This works surprisingly well. You can read more about it in How to Have Less Awkward Conversations: Assuming Rapport.

9. Use your reticular activation system to your advantage.

I learned about the organs and the inner workings of the body in class, but nobody told me about the reticular activation system. So that is a shame because this is one of the most powerful things you can learn about. What this focus system, this R.A.S, in your mind does is to allow you to see in your surroundings what you focus your thoughts on. It always helps you to find what you are looking for.

So, it would be best if you focused on what you want, not on what you do not wish to. Also, keep that focus steady.

Setting goals and reviewing them often is one way to keep your focus on what is important and to help you take action that will move your closer to toward where you want to go. Another way is to use external reminders such as pieces of paper where you can, for instance, write down a few things from this post like “Give value” or “Assume rapport.” Moreover, then you can put those pieces of paper on your fridge, bathroom mirror etc.

10. Your attitude changes your reality.

We have all heard that you should keep a positive attitude or that “you need to change your attitude!”. That is a beautiful piece of advice I suppose, but without any more reasons to do it is quite easy to brush such suggestions off and continue using your old attitude.

However, the thing that I have discovered in the last few years is that if you change your attitude, you change your reality. When you, for instance, use a positive attitude instead of a negative one you start to see things and viewpoints that were invisible to you before. You may think to yourself “why haven’t I thought about things this way before?”.

When you change your attitude, you change what you focus on. Moreover, all things in your world can now be seen in a different light.

This is of course remarkably like the earlier tip, but I wanted to give this one some space. Because changing your attitude can create an insane change in your world. It might not look like it if you think about it though. Pessimism might seem like realism. However, that is mostly because your R.A.S is tuned into seeing all the negative things you want to see. So that makes you “right” a lot of the time. Also, that is what you want. On the other hand, there are more fun things than being right all the time.

If you try changing your attitude for real – instead of analyzing such a concept in your mind – you will be surprised.

You may want to read more about this topic in Take the Positivity Challenge!

11. Gratitude is an effortless way to make yourself feel happy.

Sure, I was told that I should be grateful. Perhaps because it was the right thing to do or just something, I should do. However, if someone had said that feeling thankful for things for a minute or two is a terrific way to turn a negative mood into a happy one, I would have practised gratitude more. It is also a valuable tool for keeping your attitude up and focusing on the right things. Moreover, to make other people happy. Which tends to make you even happier, since emotions are contagious.

12. Do not compare yourself to others.

The ego wants to compare. It wants to find reasons for you to feel good about yourself (“I’ve got a new bike!”). However, by doing that it also becomes ridiculously hard to not compare yourself to others who have more than you (“Oh no, Bill has bought an even nicer bike!”). Moreover, so, you do not feel so good about yourself once again. If you compare yourself to others, you let the world around control how you feel about yourself. It always becomes a rollercoaster of emotions.

A more useful way is to compare yourself to yourself. To look at how far you have come, what you have done and how you have grown. It may not sound like that much fun, but eventually, it brings a lot more inner stillness, personal power, and positive feelings.

13. 80-90% of what you fear will never happen come into reality.

This is a big one. Most things you fear will happen never happen. They are just monsters in your mind. Moreover, if they happen, then they will most often not be as painful or sad as you expected. Worrying is most often just a waste of time.

This is, of course, easy to say. However, if you remind yourself of how little of what you feared throughout your life that has happened you can start to release more of that worry from your thoughts.

14. Do not take things too seriously.

It is quite easy to get wrapped up in things. However, most of the things you worry about never come into reality. Moreover, what may seem like a big problem right now you may not even remember in three years.

Taking yourself, your thoughts and your emotions too seriously often seems to lead to more unnecessary suffering. So relax a little more and lighten up a bit. It can do wonders for your mood and as an extension of that; your life.

15. Write everything down.

If your memory is anything like mine, then it is like a leaking bucket. Many of your good or great ideas may be lost forever if you do not make a habit of writing things down. This is also a smart way to keep your focus on what you want. Read more about it in Why You Should Write Things Down.

16. There are opportunities in about every experience.

In any experience, there are always things that you can learn from it and things within the knowledge that can help you to grow. Adverse experiences, mistakes and failure can sometimes be even better than a success because it teaches you something new, something that another victory could never show you.

Whenever you have a negative experience ask yourself: where is the opportunity in this? What is good about this situation? One negative experience can – with time – help you create many incredibly positive experiences.

Originally published on the Positivity Blog