One of the fascinating question many people ask is “how come this man can rise to this success without college degree?” Yes this one billion dollar question is behind many billionaires who failed in the education system of their time and eventually enlightened the world with new perspective because of their rebellious stance of challenging what general people know.
This article is not just another piece of helping you become a billionaire rather it is an attempt to renew some of the simplest things that used to be paramount of success which we have forgotten. So to kickoff the discussion remember; books helps you get information but hardly knowledge
Less studies = More learning
Yes its true! I was using all the time when I am not studying to do something that motivates me more. But it does not mean that if I am not studying then I was not learning. Whatever I used to do was not only new but somehow connected. Or in other words,
You can say that just by skipping the books education didn’t get the chance to ruin my ability to think. I strongly believe that only way to ask new questions is by learning in a new way. How can you imagine a new destination if you are on a same old path.
With no strings attached I was free do anything and I did everything that I could.
Dig! Hard work pays!
Only two things can happen. If you giving your everything then you are a hit or a miss. But you will have a lesson either way. And most of the time these are the lessons that no books no college no university teach. So no regrets for not reading books.
When you are working hard you will either become so big that you will start eating others (not literally) and will grow on your experience. Or you will end up being a pig and thus others will eat you i.e. they won’t be able to ignore you and they will surely have to take your experience and expertise with them.
Remember one thing. Never expect that your hardwork will be rewarded the way you wanted. In my case I never got what I wanted in the beginning. Yes! I know the feeling of not getting what you expected. But sooner or later the time I thought I wasted helped in doing something very important later. Learning is never without fruition. You never know when you are going to need what you learnt. I am strong believer that you never learn something for no reason.
To give you an example, when I got my hands for the first time on personal computer exactly 13 years back I had no idea what left-click and right-click does. But I learned over time because of two reasons i.e. asking and doing. Its good to have someone who can answer your stupid questions like “should I delete it or uninstall it?” or even worse “should I press left mouse button or right mouse button first to copy/paste?” Yes these are my real life questions. But its not always the case that I had answers for my questions but that never kept me from going one step ahead i.e. doing. It never was without consequences and yes I had to take the torture physically and mentally but I never stopped. In 2000s I was a pre-engineering student. When everyone used to be busy in learning derivatives, integration etc I found interest in software life Dreamweaver, Photoshop etc. Completely irrelevant in that time but 13 years on, this day what I learnt is helping me on daily basis. In short, yes Steve Jobs is correct, “you can never connect the dots looking forward, you always connect the dots looking backward”.
Never cease experimenting. This is the only way to confirm what you think you know to make it a knowledge. And to know if it is actually what you wanted.
Honesty – Not just a policy but a philosophy!
My success is not mine alone. Having honest people around you is probably that best thing you can have. And this is only possible if you are an honest person yourself.
When you don’t have any shine and no money and nothing fancy to show people then only thing that attracts is honesty. And luckily this is one thing that dishonest people can never see therefore they will never come towards you begging and buttering to get close to you and then stabbing you in the back.
When people follow you for your idea and respect you for your honesty then you already have a best team with you.
Be honest with yourself. With the no evidence that I know something it was easy for me to believe that I don’t know many things as I was not carrying the burden of necessarily knowing what you are expected to know if you are certified for that “knowledge”. But that resulted in me being honest with myself and with everyone else around me. As I didn’t had the liberty to trick people in thinking that I know something just because I have a certificate, I had to learn it in real and in much more detail to convince them that I do know.
This ultimately helped me learn many things in a novel way and thus helped me understand the position of other stack holders.
Real wealth means ‘Not having enough’
Say it in any way you like. You don’t have enough and thus you have to put in your blood, sweat and tears. Or you say that you are never satisfied and thus perfection means still not enough and so striving for making your best even better. Its up to you how you like to take it i.e. you do things they way you are doing because:
- either it is the only way you have to do it
- or it is the way you do it.
Either way you will be walking towards the same destiny. So why not do it with a smile on your face. If you can’t things around you, change yourself. Be adaptable. If everything is out of control, you still have one thing to control i.e. yourself.
There are so many things in life that we WANT. And thus they fall in different category like money, relations, love, friends, respect and you can go all night listing down things. But how much is enough to get what we want? I would like to talk about few things starting with money.
Its never about money…
I wasn’t able to coin the definition of entrepreneurship that I thought is right and do justice to the rank of entrepreneurship until I read this from Harvard Business School professor Howard Stevenson:
“Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled.”
Still counting pennies? You are measuring it wrong dear. Wealth is not having deep pockets. Wealth is actually having deep courage to sacrifice and determination to overcome anything that comes your way. Wealth is whats inside you not whats with you.
Many people count qualification as money. Bigger the qualification bigger the prospects. Yes it is true but does it mean no qualification = no prospects? No! its not true.
Yes money is important but never necessary. How hard I tell this and how many time I say this its really hard for people to understand that money is not everything. The biggest blessing of being unqualified is that you never think this way and thus cannot be enslaved by it either. I am not saying that I don’t need money, but this is not everything I need.
You might be reading this article this very moment on a smartphone or a laptop or a personal computer with nice clear-text grade wide screen LCD monitor connected with high speed DSL or EDGE or Cable internet and knows greatly what facebook is and how to “google” something and you also know that youtube is a great source to learn almost everything.
If you are still thinking you don’t have enough in your life then its actually because you have more than enough 🙂
This website (PakAccountants) was founded on Pentium 3 grade PC that had a RAM too low (512 MB) that it used to hang and crash with all my unsaved work several times a day that I used to do on 14-inch cathode ray monitor that was too dim that I was unable to see anything on it in daylight and thus I had to keep my room very dark. I wanted to be an Engineer ended up being an accountant with no idea how websites are made. This is how I started. And I am not talking about stone age here. It was year 2008-2011. Even today I own a simple 15-inch laptop that I got a year back or so.
Its not about what you don’t have. Its about how you can use what you have. And this is the probably the purest way to thank GOD for all the blessings you have instead of complaining of what you don’t have.
Now its up to you to decide if you still need money.
No people = No distraction
One more benefit for not having enough is that you will be attracting less haters and similar kind of parasites that can only put negativity in your mind. Avoid these people at all cost. They will end eating you from inside. As I never went on to complete my qualification it automatically means almost no one to socialize with. Yeah it was with its downside but again its a matter of how you make your weakness your strength. With almost no social circle in place I had little to no distractions and I was able to concentrate with full force for several years. And that ultimately helped me discover similar minds and even those who used to study with me came back as friends.
Necessity is not just a mother but employer, mentor, examiner and every other “-ER” you can think
Another thing you don’t have enough when you don’t qualify completely is minimum requirements to apply for any job. With no certification you are already out and automatically you will not have the relevant experience and thus nobody hiring you. So you have no choice but to employ yourself. And its no easy thing. Taming yourself is the hardest job in the world.
But necessity makes it easy for you to settle with yourself. But everyone has a natural instinct to survive. And if you learn to harness this instinct it surely springs you to do some real creative things in your life. You have to find a way to survive. And once you get the basics done you move on to achieve more. This is only possible when you know that you have to do something to fill your tummy. And even if you fill it you still have to look for more as it will be empty again.
Self-actualization works on same principles. You always strive to grow and move forward. But it is only possible if you are not already wasted by the comforts and luxuries. There must be something that keep you hungry. The ones without qualification or graduation are hungry for many reasons and thus will do much more to achieve and in the process might do something so creative that rewrites the existing rules in the books. And this has happened so many times. History is full of such events when something has been discovered by accident. I am not preaching to count on luck. What I am saying is to even have accidents you have to DO something.
So… should I not qualify?
Qualification is value addition not the whole value itself. You got to find what you value the most. Qualification is no destination. Its a mean to destination. So if you are still disqualified then it is for your own reasons and not because of qualification.
thank for this posting…..