Why Formal Education Does Not Guarantee Success

About 70% of people with professional jobs don’t love what they do.

That’s an insane number that pretty much explains why you meet angry drivers on the road.

Imagine going to a job you don’t love and being stuck in traffic for an hour. You get angry because you have to put up with an exhausting commute just to get to the office and meet your boss’s face.

You may say that’s not the case for everyone and a lot of people do love their jobs. So let’s go over a few typical cases.

I’m sure you’ve heard this one before: I love my job BUT …

There’s always a “but” after that statement.

I love my job BUT I don’t like my boss.

I love my job BUT I don’t like the commute.

I love my job BUT I don’t like my co-workers.

Whenever you put a “but” after something you’re admitting what you said before is not accurate.

It’s like saying I have money BUT I just can’t afford to buy anything.

Now, what does this have to do with formal education?

Well, it turns out that most of those people who don’t love their jobs have gone through many years of formal education.

And in some cases, pursuing that formal education has put them in debt for years to come.

You see, the issue with formal education is, it’s focused on getting people jobs.

Companies and governments want to create jobs and people want to take those jobs.

The only problem is, no one cares about the quality of those jobs and how happy people with jobs are.

When success is only defined by your job and its title, it becomes hard to know whether you’ve achieved success or not.

But what exactly is success?

To me, it’s happiness. If I’m happy, I consider myself successful. I don’t need a fat paycheck or a fancy title to feel happy. I’ve had both of those before and they have both failed to make me truly happy.

The current formal education system is broken because it fails to accept success means happiness.

It defines success by putting you in a structured environment with a sole purpose of teaching a curriculum.

It’s like a training camp for getting you ready to take on jobs. And once you have one, their work is done and they can go after the next batch.

The classrooms are there to prepare you for offices. You spend many hours there, you’re instructed by an authority and you don’t have much to say about how things work. Sounds like your job?

Now, how do we change this?

One way to do that is to become independent. Make your success and happiness a personal responsibility. Don’t let others do it for you.

Instead of looking for a job that fits with your passion, take something you enjoy doing and make a job out of it.

You need to own that responsibility or else you may end up being one of those angry drivers on their way to the office.

I hope this has inspired you to change something you don’t like and start realizing that you need to LOVE your job without a “but”. Now I’d love to hear about your experience.

I wrote this piece as part of a 90-day challenge I took on to get better at this type of writing. To learn more about me you can visit my website here.