Education Pays...But Not Just In Cash

You've heard that ol' saying, "Education pays." As someone who is big on education (heck, I'm a teacher with two college degrees), I thoroughly believe that the more education you have, the better off you are.

But, when I say "education pays," I'm not talking about in a monetary sense. I'm talking about in a personal development sense.

Back in the "slave days" of early America (1700s), it was illegal to teach blacks how to read -- in fact, you could be executed if you did! If blacks knew how to read:

• They would start reading books
  
• Which would lead them to start getting ideas
• Which would lead them to start asking questions
• Which would lead them to start teaching other slaves how to read
  

Soon enough, you'd have a bunch of slaves revolting because they would learn that there is a better way of life that slavery couldn't offer.

Those who made the best changes for themselves were very educated. No, this didn't mean that they went to college. These people simply learned to read and kept reading...and reading...and reading until they decided that they could do much better in life.

In fact, your current state in life, whether good or bad, is mostly due to how much you educate yourself.

Think about someone who HATES to read -- except for maybe the newspaper and Yahoo! gossip. How far you think that person would get in life? Not very far!

Think about the person who LOVES to read. How far would this person get? Only as far as he or she wants.

You see, the person who is always learning knows what his or her options are in life. Should that person stay in a bad state of life, it wasn't because that person didn't know any options. But the person who chooses not to learn doesn't know what his or her options are in life.

And if you don't know what your options are, then you'd be living life by default. You would have no control over where your life goes. You'd be like a sailboat without motor, going  wherever the wind takes you.

I don't know how many times I've spoken to people about all the stuff they could do with their skills and to have them look at me in disbelief. They truly didn't know all of their options, and they didn't know because they didn't educate themselves!

Again, this is not about money. This is about personal development. The more you learn, the better off of a person you could be -- and often times, improving who you are could lead to more monetary gain.

Seek knowledge! Always read! Everyday, keep finding better ways to go about life. Know what your options in life are. The more stuff you feed your mind, the more opened doors you'd see.

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