One of the self-made millionaires in my study was very close to illiterate. He struggled reading and writing the English language. Yet, he was able to accumulate $20 million during his lifetime. How?
He hired professionals who were expert in reading and writing English.
The purpose of primary education (elementary school) is to teach kids the fundamentals: reading, writing and arithmetic. Some kids are very good readers, some are bad. Some are good at writing, others not so good. And some pick up math faster than others.
We all have strengths and weaknesses. Primary school helps identify those strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately, when the school system identifies a weakness in a student, they then deploy significant resources to help strengthen those weaknesses. That’s how the U.S. education system works – it focuses on strengthening weaknesses and pays very little attention to strengths. And this is the Achilles Heel of the education system.
The path towards success and accumulating wealth is through your strengths.
A strength is anything that comes easy to you. Every individual is born with certain strengths. It’s genetics. We are genetically hardwired with certain strengths. The real purpose of primary education should not be in strengthening our weaknesses but in identifying and exploiting our strengths. Since primary schools don’t do that, the responsibility shifts to you.
The secret to escaping poverty and accumulating enormous wealth, for the self-made millionaires in my Rich Habits study, was in finding one or two strengths and then devoting their lives to leveraging those strengths. They figured out what they were good at, which is typically anything that came easy to them, and then they chose some career path or some business enterprise that allowed them to focus on their strengths.
The path towards success is not eliminating your weaknesses. Ignore your weaknesses. Strengthening your weaknesses only leads to mediocrity. Your innate strengths are your superpowers. Those who focus on their strengths, find success, happiness and wealth. Your innate strengths are life’s way of telling you: “this is what you you were born to do.”
About Thomas C. Corley
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