Schooling Can Leave Us With Limitations

School can incubate our passions to achieve. Like these valedictorians. But it can also instill self-limiting patterns of thinking and behavior.

Robert Kiyosaki recalls his early school years: "Today I don’t use much of what I learned after the fifth grade. But that’s not to say school didn’t leave its permanent mark on me. The fact is, I left school with several behavioral traits I hadn’t walked in with."

Writing in the book Einstein's Business: Engaging Soul, Imagination and Excellence in the Workplace, he continues: "Engraved in my mind was the belief that making a mistake, or 'screwing up,' got me ridiculed by my peers and often my teacher. School brainwashed me into believing that if a person wanted to be successful in life, he or she had to always be right. In other words, never be wrong.

"School taught me to avoid being wrong (making mistakes) at all costs. And if you did happen to make a mistake, at least be smart enough to cover it up. This is where all too many people are today—not allowing themselves to make mistakes and thus blocking their own progress."

This urge toward perfectionism can deeply affect us, he notes: "The symptoms of this 'disease' are feelings of boredom, failure, and dissatisfaction, although most of us never come to understand why we feel this way. After having it drilled into us for so many years, it's hard to imagine that being 'right' could cause such unhappiness."

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