Consider one of Aesop’s Fables, “The Tortoise and the Hare.” The winner, the tortoise, was steady and consistent. This story has a lot of significance to me because I spent many months in the hospital at age 19. When I got out of the hospital most of my friends had graduated from college. I thought of how hard it would be for me to “catch up with them.”
Remembering this story of the Tortoise and the Hare, I began to attend college one class at a time and took ten years to graduate. But what I learned while there was most helpful. As I took an accounting class, I was able to apply it that very day with my clients I was currently working with as a full-time employee in a small accounting firm. I had to study to pass the test, but when I had a question of how accounting applied to a specific client, I asked my professor and then applied that answer to real-life situations. This kind of education has stayed with me all these years and been very beneficial to me, more beneficial than if I had just hurried through school and acquired knowledge simply to pass a test.
As for my friends who went four years to college and graduated, they missed out on a lot of things that I was able to participate in by being slow and steady in acquiring knowledge. They didn’t have the computer back in 1970, nor many other advanced technologies, but since I took my time getting through school, I got in on the cutting edge of the technology and learned how to apply it both in real-world applications and at school. The timing for me was great, though I didn’t think so at the time. Each night I came home from work and had to turn right around and go to college for the entire evening… I was very tired. But when I learned some incredible information that helped me in my work with clients the very next day, I was rewarded.
From this I learned two things:
- You need to learn how to learn.
- Learning doesn’t stop when you graduate from college; it needs to continue for the rest of your life
My ten years of college really helped me to set a pattern of learning that I have continued to this day. And this is something I try to pass on to my clients, especially when it comes to financial education. As Money Mastery Principle 5 teaches, ” and Principle 6, “The Rules Are Always Changing.” Adopt an attitude of continual learning and you will have the option other people don’t of creating wealth on ANY income! Learn more at moneymastery.com.
