Things I wish they had taught me in school

My name is Eric Schames I am 33 years old, I try not to live with too much regret these days however I do wish I had learned earlier the things Ive most recently realised and there doesn’t seem to be a class in school for this but there should be, or perhaps the Eric Schames in school should have payed more attention.

Perhaps the young Eric Schames would not have absorbed the information or maybe it would have been too far outside my reality at the time for me to use it.

Non the less I still believe that taking a few hours from French and placing it into personal development classes would have helped me.

So here are 16 things that I Eric Schames wish they had taught me in school.

 

1. The 80/20 rule.

One of the best ways to make better use of your time. This is also known as The Pareto Principle and says that 80 percent of the value you will receive will come from 

20 percent of your activities.  This means that much of what you do is probably a waste of time.   If you decrease the time you spend on these activities you will have more time and energy to spend on those things that really brings your value, happiness and fulfilment.

2. Parkinson’s Law.

A task will expand in time and complexity depending on the time you set aside for it. For example if you say to yourself that you’ll come up with a solution within a week, the problem will seem to grow more difficult and you’ll spend more and more time trying to come up with a solution.Give yourself an hour or a day to solve a problem you had given yourself a week to solve and you will force your mind to find the solution.

The result may not be as perfect as if you had spent a week on the task, but as mentioned in the previous point, 80 percent of the value will come from 20 percent of your activities and you will have saved a lot of time. 

3. Batching.

Boring or routine tasks create procrastination and low-level anxiety.  To get these things done quickly it’s easier to perform them in batches. You will be able to do them quicker because there is less start-up time compared to if you spread them out.

When you are batching you become engaged in the tasks and focused on their completion. You can tick them off your list.

4. First, give value. Then, get value.  

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, a lot of people think that way because of this, far less than possible is given either way.

If you wish to enhance the value you receive love, kindness, opportunities etc. you have to increase the value you give. Because over time you will get what you give. 

It would be nice to get something for nothing. But that seldom happens.

5. Be proactive. Not reactive.

This one also ties to the previous point.  If everyone is reactive then very little will be achieved.  You can sit in wait and hope for someone else to do something 

but it can take a lot of time before it happens.

A more beneficial way is to be proactive, simply be the one to take the first practical action,  get the ball rolling, this not only saves you a lot of time in waiting, but is also more pleasurable.

6. Mistakes and failures are good.

The young Eric Schames would try things and fail, like riding a bike, but he would keep getting back on that bike. As I have grown older, I have learned not make mistakes and as a result end up trying fewer things.

Stopping being proactive as we get older has forced many of us into the habit of being reactive and waiting for someone else to do something.  I mean, what if you actually tried something and failed? Perhaps people would laugh at you?

Perhaps they would. But when you experience that you soon realize that it is seldom the end of the world. And a lot of the time people don’t care that much. They have their own challenges and lives to worry about.

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

7. Don’t beat yourself up.

Why do people give up after just few mistakes or failures? Well, I think one big reason is because they beat themselves up way too much. But it’s a kinda pointless 

habit. It only creates additional and unnecessary pain inside you and wastes your precious time. It’s best to try to drop this habit as much as you can.

8. Assume rapport.

The old Eric Schames loved to meet new people but found it nerve racking and in my desperation to make a good first impression I would get stuck in awkward conversations.

Then I learned a trick the best way to overcome this is to assume rapport.   What I mean is you simply pretend that you are meeting one of your best friends.  When you do this you start the interaction in that frame of mind instead of the nervous one.

This works surprisingly well. 

9. Use your reticular activation system to your advantage.

A young Eric Schames learned about the organs and the inner workings of the body in the classroom.  Teachers did not tell me about the reticular activation system. 

This is such a shame because this is a powerful thing.   This system allows you to see in your surroundings what you focus your thoughts on, pretty much always helping you to find what you are looking for.

So you really need to focus on what you want, not on what you don’t want and keep that focus steady.

Setting goals and reviewing them often is one way to keep your focus on what’s important and to help you take action that will move your closer to toward where you want to go. Another way is to use reminders like pieces of paper where you can.  Write down a few things from this post like “Give value” or “Assume rapport”. and then 

you can put those pieces of paper on your fridge, bathroom mirror etc.

10. Your attitude changes your reality.

Most of  us have been told to keep a positive attitude or “you need to change your attitude!”. That is great  advice but without any reasons to do it is very easy to just brush such suggestions off and continue using your old attitude.

I’ve discovered in the last few years is that if you change your attitude, you actually change your reality.  When you use a positive attitude instead of a negative one you start to see things that were invisible before and you start to wonder why you hadn’t thought of things in that way before.

 

When you change your attitude you will change your focus and all things in your world will be seen in a different light.  Changing your attitude can create a massive change in your world.   Pessimism might seem like realism. But that is mostly because your R.A.S is tuned into seeing all the negative things you want to see. 

And that makes you “right” a lot of the time. And perhaps that is what you want. On the other hand, there are more fun things than being right all the time.  Change your attitude for real instead of analysing the concept in your mind �" you’ll be surprised.

11. Gratitude is a simple way to make yourself feel happy.

Eric Schames you need to be grateful, say thankyou!! Sure, I was probably told that I should be grateful. Perhaps because it was the right thing to do.

If someone said that feeling grateful is a great way to turn a negative mood into a happy one I would probably have practised gratitude more.  It is also a good tool for keeping your attitude up and focusing on the right things. And to make other people happy. Which tends to make you even happier, since emotions are contagious.

12. Don’t compare yourself to others.

Eric Schames has an ego and egos wants to compare.  They want to find reasons for you to feel good about yourself  hey I have a new car, large home.  By doing that it also becomes very hard to not compare yourself to others who have more than you.  Bob has a bigger car, house.

And so you don’t 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 accomplished and how you have grown. It may not sound like much fun but in the long run it brings a lot more inner stillness,  power and positive feelings.

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

This is huge.  Most things you fear will happen never happen. They are just monsters in your closet “mind”. And if they happen then they will most often not be as painful or bad as you expected. Worrying is mostly just a waste of time.

While this may be easy to say if you remind yourself of how little of what you feared throughout your life that has actually happened you can start to release more of that worry from your thoughts.

14. Don’t take things too seriously.

It’s easy to get wrapped up in things, most of the things you worry about never come into being.  What seems like a big problem right now you may not even remember in three years.

Taking yourself, your thoughts and your emotions too seriously will often lead to more unnecessary suffering. So relax a little more and lighten up a bit. It can do wonders for your mood and your life.

15. Write everything down.

My mother used to always say “Eric Schames” your memory is like a sieve.  Many of your good or great ideas may be lost forever if you don’t take the habit of writing them down. This is also a good way to keep your focus on what you want. 

16. There are opportunities in just about every experience.

Every experience can be looked upon as a learning experience and help you to grow. Negative experiences, mistakes and failure can sometimes be even better than a success because it teaches you something totally new, something that another success could never teach you.

Whenever you have a “negative experience” always ask yourself: where is the opportunity in this?  What is good about this situation?  One negative experience can help 

you create many very positive experiences.