We live in a country where we are fortunate that education is prized and prioritized. We send our kids to school every day, push them to do their homework and make good grades, and we help them decide ‘what they want to be when they grow up’ so we can help them choose a good college or university to get into.
As a result, we foster a culture of people who go on to make great strides in the world. Opening successful businesses, becoming respected engineers, food scientist, live mannequins, lawyers, armpit sniffers, artists, and pretty much whatever else one might dream up as a way to earn a living and support a family.
But is that the only goal? To settle into a career and make money?
Intelligence + Character - That is the Goal of True Education
Martin Luther King Jr. said that, and I’ve lived long enough to know, those two things only come with self-education. The kind of education that we take the initiative to learn on our own, without being pushed or influenced by our family or friends, because we want to be better tomorrow, than we are today. Because we want more than just a career or money, we want true happiness, purpose, meaning and fulfillment in what we do.
Intelligence and character really begin to develop when we go beyond where we went to school, beyond what kind of degree we obtained, beyond the status quo, and seek more.
More knowledge, more growth, more progress… we seek to make ourselves better business owners, better husbands and wives, better parents, better leaders, better humans, and we don’t ever settle for just good enough.
Successful living comes by being a contributing member of humanity, whether that’s locally or globally. It comes from hard work, commitment to personal growth, choosing to learn and progress beyond what’s considered the ‘standard’. It comes from expecting the best from ourselves, and from those around us.
Intelligence and character… if you possess those two things, I can almost guarantee you are winning in this game called life, no matter what you’re doing, what kind of business you run, what kind of career you work in, what part of the world you live in.
Not only that, but I can almost guarantee you are helping others win too, whether you realize it or not. Just by being you.
And isn’t that when real fulfillment comes? When you lift someone else up, and lower yourself as a stepping stone in helping your fellow man find their version of success? Those are the moments we are created for, and those are the things true education prepares us for. The beauty of it is that there’s no better time to learn something new than right now.