Different
Education
In 1973, in my last year
of active duty flying for the Marine
Corps when I was
stationed near home in Hawaii, I knew I wanted
to follow in my rich
dad’s footsteps. While in the Marines, I signed
up for real estate
courses and business courses on the weekends,
preparing to become an
entrepreneur in the B and I quadrants.
At the same time, upon a
friend’s recommendation of a friend,
I signed up for a
personal-development course, hoping to find out
who I really was. The personal-development course is non-traditional
education because I was
not taking it for credits or grades. I did not
know what I was going to
learn, as I did when I signed up for real
estate courses. All I
knew was that it was time to take courses to find
out about me.
In my first weekend
course, the instructor drew this simple
the diagram on the flip
chart:
SPIRITUAL
EMOTIONAL
MENTAL
PHYSICAL
With the diagram
complete, the instructor turned and said,
“To develop into a whole a human being, we need mental, physical,
emotional, and spiritual
education.”
Listening to her
explanation, it was clear to me that traditional schools were primarily about
developing students mentally. That is why so many students who do well in
school, do not do well in real life, especially in the world of money. As the
course progressed over the weekend, I discovered why I disliked
school. I realized that
I loved learning, but hated school.
Traditional education
was a great environment for the “A”
students, but it was not
the environment for me. Traditional education was crushing my spirit, trying to
motivate me with the emotion of fear: the fear of making mistakes, the fear of
failing, and the fear of not getting a job. They were programming me to be an
employee in the E or S quadrant. I realized that traditional education is not
the place for a person who wants to be an entrepreneur in the B and I
quadrants.
This may be why so many
entrepreneurs never finish school—
entrepreneurs like
Thomas Edison, founder of General Electric; Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor
Company; Steve Jobs, founder of Apple; Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft; Walt
Disney, founder of Disneyland; and Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook.
As the day went on and
the instructor went deeper and deeper into
these four types of
personal development, I realized I had spent most of my life in very harsh
educational environments. After four years at an all-male military academy and
five years as a Marine pilot, I was pretty strong mentally and physically. As a
Marine pilot, I was strong emotionally and spiritually, but all on the
macho-male development side.
I had no gentle side, no
female energy. After all, I was trained to
be a Marine Corps officer,
emotionally calm under pressure, prepared to kill, and spiritually prepared to
die for my country.
If you ever saw the
movie Top Gun starring Tom Cruise, you get
a glimpse into the
masculine world and bravado of military pilots. I
loved that world. I was
good in that world. It was a modern-day world of knights and warriors. It was
not a world for wimps.
In the seminar, I went
into my emotions and briefly touched my
spirit. I cried a lot
because I had a lot to cry about. I had done and
seen things no one
should ever be asked to do. During the seminar,
I hugged a man,
something I had never done before, not even with
my father. On Sunday
night, it was difficult leaving this self-development workshop. The seminar had
been a gentle, loving, honest environment.
Monday morning was a
shock to once again be surrounded by young
egotistical pilots,
dedicated to flying, killing, and dying for the country.
After that weekend
seminar, I knew it was time to change. I knew
developing myself
emotionally and spiritually to become a kinder,
gentler, and more
compassionate person would be the hardest thing
I could do. It went
against all my years at the military academy and
flight school.
I never returned to
traditional education again. I had no desire
to study for grades,
degrees, promotions, or credentials again. From
then on, if I did attend
a course or school, I went to learn, to become
a better person. I was
no longer in the paper chase of grades, degrees, and credentials.
Growing up in a family
of teachers, your grades, the high school
and college you
graduated from, and your advanced degrees were
everything. Like the
medals and ribbons on a Marine pilot’s chest,
advanced degrees and
brand-name schools were the status and the
stripes that educators
wore on their sleeves. In their minds, people
who did not finish high
school were the unwashed, the lost souls of
life. Those with
master’s degrees looked down on those with only
bachelor degrees. Those
with a Ph.D. were held in reverence. At the
age of 26, I knew I
would never return to that world.
Editor’s Note: In 2009, Robert received an honorary Ph.D. in
entrepreneurship from
prestigious San Ignacio de Loyola in
Lima, Peru. The few other
recipients of this award are political
leaders, such as the former President of Spain.
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