Image courtesy of canberkol

College

I am currently in college now and recently I harbour the thoughts of dropping out. I am considering to turn my focus to other things like creating a sideline income, entrepreneurship or just working in the society to get some income that will support my dream. This is a big decision to make and I know I am going to piss lots of people off around me especially my parents.

I have been talking around with people close to me about this and trying to seek their view on this situation. In Singapore, the normal route is to keep studying until you graduate from college and go out to the society and get a job. But for guys it means that we will graduate at around 25 or 26 years old due to the 2 years time in the army. It seems like a long time to me. Imagine that we are going to live till 100 years old, which is 1/4 of our life gone!

I am currently studying about banking and finance and it is a topic that I am interested in. I enrolled into college thinking that it would teach me what I needed to know so that I can become a successful investor. However after going through the lessons for 6 months time, I had gained little useful knowledge on how to invest as compared to self studying on the topic of investment. The topics in school are strictly guided by syllabus and I can say that 80% of those topics are not what I really need.

Conversation

I decided to have a talk with one of my friends in school and seek out his opinion on whether college is going to be useful to us. This turns out to be a rather interesting conversation.

(This is the conversation we roughly had)

Me: Do you think it is necessary for us to get a college degree?

Friend: Of course! We don’t really have a choice. We are in Singapore and everything depends on that piece of paper that we will receive after graduation.

Me: But it seems that most of the topics are not really useful to us as we are not going to make use of it (think calculus) when we are working.

Friend: True. But we are going to need that cert anyway and we are tied down to this no matter what.

Me: Hmmm… Ok. Take a look at the people who had succeeded after failures or dropping out from college. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs both drop out and went on to build successful businesses. Instead of getting a college degree, why not think about entrepreneurship?

Friend: Come on! Be realistic. They are the few who succeed out of the billions and do you think everybody is as lucky as them? If you are going to drop out of college, you will definitely going to regret it.

I stopped the conversation immediately because it doesn’t seems to turn out anywhere.

Lessons

From his conversation with me, I had picked up a few lessons.

1. Don’t be realistic

He immediately reminded me about the video I had watched on Will Smith. In the video, Will Smith mentioned don’t be realistic. Because being realistic means that you are going to put a limit on yourself. Being realistic is going to kill off your dream.

If you say be realistic to yourself every time you have a great idea, you are killing off your dream immediately and life is going to stay the same for you. Don’t ever be realistic. Dream and dream big and that is the first step to success.

2. Focus on things that empower you.

Every successful name that I had mentioned to my friend, he told me that;

• Their parents are rich.
• They are lucky.
• They are smart and etc.

I’m amazed by how he can generate so much excuses that disempower himself. If you are always searching for reasons on why others can succeed and why you can’t, how can you ever achieve their success? He is focusing in the wrong direction as he is thinking of why he can’t instead of why he can.

Be aware of your thoughts. If you have thoughts that disempower yourself, you are going to be frustrated because you don’t seem to have any control in the situation. Instead, focus on how you can achieve instead of why you can’t achieve.

3. You always have a choice.

There are always choices in every situation. If we say that there are no choices, we are imposing a limiting rule on ourselves. We close our mind immediately for other choices once we decided that there are no choices. I believe in this situation, my friend mentioned that there are no choices other than studying because this is how our society conditioned our thinking.

Even if you think that there are no choices in your situation, it is still your choice to think that way. Don’t ever decide that there are no choices in your situation because you are going to give your power away to someone else and in turn make yourself feel miserable.

Parting Words

Dropping out of college is a big decision for me to make and frankly speaking I am still undecided about it. I am going to give myself some time to think about this thoroughly though and I will keep you updated through my blog.

However I believed that I had picked up some good lessons from the conversation that I had with my friend. These lessons can be applied in our life and help make a difference. So what do you think about the 3 lessons and do you think is there any correlation between getting a degree and success in life? I would love to hear your opinions in the comment section below.

Vincent

Post from: Health Money Success

3 Important Lessons I had Learned From A Conversation

Related Articles

• 15 Ways To Deal With Stress (10)
• Biggest Mistake You Can Make To Stun Your Growth: Are You Being Choosy On Your Tasks? (8)
• The Power Of Information – How Information Can Make You Better Or Worse (7)
• How I Am Going To Get Rid Of Boredom And Start Growing (13)
• The Most Powerful Weapon That You Can Use To Drastically Improve Your Results In Life And Achieve Your Goals (9)

I took a quick look at my statistics and I decided to pick up my top 5 articles in 2008 to share with you guys. Here is it…

1. Learn How to Get The Most Sincere Smile

2. 11 Keys To Double Your Productivity

3. How To Unleash The Creative Genius Within You

4. Are You Reading Enough

5. 10 Things To Do If You Lose Your Job

These are the top 5 articles for 2008 and hope you enjoy it.

Cheers
Vincent
Personal Development Blogger

Post from: Health Money Success

Best Of Hit Your Goals at 2008

Related Articles

• 3 Important Lessons I had Learned From A Conversation (24)
• 15 Ways To Deal With Stress (10)
• If You Don’t Track The Numbers In Your Life Now, You Will Regret It Later (8)
• One Big Secret That You Can Use To Help Your Goals At The Speed Of Light (5)
• The Law Of Harvesting – One Of The Most Important Lessons I Have Learned (7)

So Little Time, So Many Things

The pace in the world is getting faster and faster and everyone seem to be running around frantically to get things done but things that need to be done seem to be multiplying yet 24 hours feel like a mere 24 minutes instead.

Introduction to Stress

During our ancestors time, they are really glad that they can feel stressful because when humans faced threats, our body defense will be kicked into high gear which is a “fight or flight” response. This is a very useful attribute because they are living with threats like tigers or lions around them and the “fight or flight” response definitely aid their survival.

During those days ,stress will kick in when one was faced with physical threats, but In  the modern days, the stress that help our ancestors to run away from tigers and lions seems to be happening much more often. Does it mean that we have more tigers and lions chasing us all around and the zoo in the world seems to lack enclosures for our predators?>” class=”mceWPmore mceItemNoResize” title=”More…” />

No, that isn’t the case. I would say the old triggers of stress (tigers and lions) are gone and here come the new triggers.

1. Filing your tax

2. Caring for the elderly or kids despite of your heavy work load.

3. Arguments

4. Deadlines

5. Bills

Some maybe see a bill with much more fear than seeing a tiger. All these are the new predators that will trigger our “fight or flight” response and we are facing a lot more of these situations than compared to facing a physical threat. This mean that our body is consistently in an overdrive mode and all these prolonged activation of the stress response will take a heavy toll on our body which may cause heart disease, chronic pain, high blood pressure and much more undesirable health conditions.

15 Ways To Deal With Stress

Here comes the 15 tips to help you deal with stress.

1.Mind your words - Change words such as “I have to” to “I choose to.” Put yourself back in control and remove negative words such as “have to” will help you to reduce the pressure and stress level. Even the worst tasks seem better when we choose to do it instead of being forced into doing it.

2. Learn to say no - Taking up too many tasks and try to make yourself slog through a list that even superman will say no to just isn’t worth it. Learn to say no to tasks that can be done better by others and decline assisting in other tasks when you are occupied by tasks that you have not completed yet.

3. Look at the bright side - Don’t keep dwelling on how bad things are going to be. Look at the bright side of life. Dwelling in negativity will only sap your energy and demoralize you. Focus on the good things you can think of your tasks, like recognition or the sense of achievement when you completed your task.

4. Breathe deeply - Take a minute off from your work, close your eyes and breathe deeply. Do a few counts of deep breathing and see your stress level reduced almost immediately.

5. Take a walk – Get out of your chair and take a walk in a nearby garden or somewhere close to nature. Forget about your work for a moment and enjoy the nature.

6. Set realistic goals – Set goals that are able to stretch you but not enough to burn you up. Setting goals should be able to challenge you, just make sure you don’t pile unnecessary stress on yourself with unrealistic goals.

7. Ask for help – Delegate, outsource or ask a fellow colleague for help. 2 brains are better than 1 and 3 brains are better than 2. If you are running a business, it doesn’t make sense if you are running everything yourself. Outsource the non core tasks to others that have the specialize skills to do it even better than you.

8. Celebrate – Celebrate your mini milestones that you reached. Once you completed an important task, take a break from it and do a mini celebration and have a small reward for yourself. You will be more refreshed and motivated to do your next task.

9. Focus – Don’t multi task and try to do multiple things at the same time. It is unnecessary burden and most probably multi tasking doesn’t help in producing quality tasks.

10. Have a toy - Stress balls are manufactured for a reason. Yes, reducing stress! Put them at your work desk and play with them when you need it. Playing with it help to reduce anxiety and it is an excellent outlet to let go of negative energy that you had stored up.

Image courtesy of programwitch

**I do not recommend this toy**

11. Sleep – Do not sacrifice sleep to churn out more work. What is worst than working with someone who is lacking in sleep and have a bad temper. Sacrificing sleep just aggravate your stress level. Get adequate shut eye and allow your body to work in optimal condition.

12. Exercise – Stop your work and do some exercises. It help to reduce your stress remarkably when you are exercising and it helps to move your focus off your work.

13. Don’t sweat the small stuff – Sometimes a little screw up is fine and we need do not need to be stressed over it. Just let it go and try to work it out.

14. Don’t be extreme – Don’t use words like “always” or “every time.”Extreme words will cause extreme reactions that do not help the situation and it just make the matter worst. “He screw it up every time” is an example of an extreme reaction. Slow down and think, did he really screw up every time? Probably no.

15. Laugh – Too stressed up in life? Catch a comedy and laugh your heart out. Can you look at the right and the left at the same time? That is the same as being stressful while laughing at the same time. So laugh more and allow your laughter to overcome stress.

When you are stressed up, just try to apply some of these tips to help bring down your stress level. Thanks for reading and have a good time relaxing!

Image courtesy of gabo2

Cheers

Vincent

Personal Development Blogger

**P.S** What are your triggers that lead to stress? Exams? Work? Bills? How you overcome them? Share with us in the comment section, it will be greatly appreciated.

If you like this article, please digg, stumble or bookmark it in de.li.cious. Want more convenience and have new articles like this to be send to your inbox for free? Subscribe to my RSS feed or Email updates

Hit Your Goals|Personal Development Blog

Post from: Health Money Success

15 Ways To Deal With Stress

Related Articles

• Biggest Mistake You Can Make To Stun Your Growth: Are You Being Choosy On Your Tasks? (8)
• 3 Important Lessons I had Learned From A Conversation (24)
• 6 Things That I Had Learnt From Playing Games (13)
• 7 Lessons We Can Learn From Michael Jordan (13)
• 15 Valuable Lessons We Can Learn From World Champions (13)