No single human has ever found a solution to any problem in life without employing the guidance of someone else at some point. As a teacher, there are so many valuable life lessons that you can learn and employ, relating to things like;
- Hard work
- Wisdom
- Humility
- Persistence, etc
These lessons, as listed and explained in the article, can help you put your life in order and help your students do the same.
1. There’s no substitute to hard work
As popularized by Dwayne Johnson, I really wanted this to come first on the list.
These days, you hear lots of people talk about working smart, and they like to think of it as a means to escape hard work. However, you have to work hard no matter how smart you are.
2. To be wise, you first have to be a fool
This is one of the all-time classics from Carl Jung, who said that the fool is the precursor to the savior. This mainly highlights humility for every student that seeks to learn and understand.
If you’ve chosen a certain career or educational path to follow, you have to be humble enough to accept to be guided so that at some point, you can be able to guide yourself.
3. Never stop learning
In this day and age, we have seen lots of skills rendered irrelevant due to the rapid pace at which the world is growing. This therefore means that you should keep learning something new every day in order to keep up with the world’s pace.
As Albert Einstein said, “Once you stop learning, you start dying”.
4. Take action
All your ideas and thoughts can never make sense until they’re backed by action. More often than not, I’ve realized that there are a lot of people these days that have seen huge opportunities slip through their fingers because they took long to act.
5. What you put in is what you get
Life works just like that. There’s no one that ever had academic success or extraordinary wealth out of wishful thinking or spending nights in church. Therefore, you just have to work as hard as you think you want to be successful, and everything will come back to you.
6. Be there for others
Empathy is one of the greatest gifts that any human being could ever possess, if they know exactly how to control it. If you do good for others, it will keep you mentally healthy, and they’ll probably return the favor when you need it.
However, don’t help people if helping them will bring their problems upon you.
7. Keep going
The journey by default, is hard and the going is tough. However, that’s all it takes to get to what you want. If you are tough enough to resist what the world throws at you, you’ll win in the end.
8. Be yourself at all time
There are so many times that you’ll find temptations and influence from people close to you, that will push you from your principles. However, never sell yourself just for a quick meal.
9. Stay open-minded
Being open-minded is so beneficial these days because there is opportunity almost everywhere – even in ways you don’t understand. Therefore, being rigid is only going to lead you to failure.
However, open-mindedness should not be confused will gullibility, because the latter can be an equivalent of suicide.
10. Have big goals
Due to the hardships in the world, so many people are afraid to dream and aspire big. This is partly because they’re afraid of failure. However, being ruled by fear will only limit your success.
11. Be careful who you hang out with
“Walk with four fools and you become the fifth”, is the classic rule of association. We are more prone to influence than we think we are, and that’s why we should hang around people who positively influence us.
12. Maintain a positive attitude
Life is filled with challenges right from the day you’re born till the day you die. However, maintaining a positive attitude will always allow you to look beyond the limited scope of your challenges – and that’s how you find opportunities.
13. Don’t dwell on your regrets
Over the course of your lifetime, you’ll make mistakes and do things you won’t be proud of. However, wallowing in self-pity while dwelling on those regrets will only make things a lot worse than they are.
14. Stand firm on your beliefs
Your beliefs play a great role to shape your perception of the world and values. However, there are going to be lots of things along the way that will shake your beliefs to the core. If your beliefs are worth fighting for, just don’t give them away.
Final thoughts;
The lessons above are just a small fraction of the immense lessons that we can always learn from other people and employ in our lives. I recommend that you keep your mind open and that way, you’ll always learn, even from circumstances where the lesson seems hidden.