In These Economic Times, Do You Keep Your Options Open?

We are all slaves to the system.

We are pre-programmed to live and think a certain way. This way teaches us to be employees and work our way up the corporate ladder in exchange for a paycheck. It is engrained in our psyche from the earliest age that we must be an “employee” and not think for ourselves.

If you think back to our time in school, we were taught about the history of our country, how to find the value of x, and how to dissect a frog to learn about basic anatomy. All of this, and more, was packaged together as a system that, when questioned as to what it was all for, was designed so we could learn the material, prove we had at least a grade-scale-structured idea of what it meant, then go on to college, repeat the process at a higher level, graduate, and get a job in a field that interested us.

I am not knocking the education system COMPLETELY, but I can honestly say I have no recollection of anything I learned in my Geometry class, yet I spent an entire school year studying and forcing myself to apply it so I wouldn’t have to repeat the class.

What I AM doing is calling into question the lack of real-world and financial knowledge that is taught in comparison to the material that is forgotten as soon as we turn in our textbook at the end of the year.

Would our country be in the recession-laden shape it’s in today if we had been a generation that was educated on credit card debt, managing assets, and investment planning?

If our basic education system, nearly 20 years of our lives with grades K-12 and undergraduate college, is designed to teach us how to be employees, why are so many people on the unemployment line today?

You can analyze these questions several different ways, but the unfortunate truth is you won’t find an answer other than book smarts are taught, while street smarts are self-taught. We’re not supposed to question the system…we’re just supposed to follow it blindly.

It’s up to us as smart-minded individuals to look at our personal situations and ask one simple question: Are our options open?

The answer to this question can lead to a brand new life.

A closed-mind that does not allow new ideas to enter will keep you in the same place you are right now. A person’s inability to change and adapt to new things is one of the greatest detriments to our society today.

With the current ailments are world is facing, you must ask yourself, “What is my backup plan if my job gets taken from me tomorrow?”

It’s up to us as adults to self-educate ourselves and find alternative ways to support our families should something unexpected arise. If you were forced to carry the contents of your desk to your car in a white box because your position had been outsourced overseas, what would you do?

As Americans, we are in a country that allows us to exercise our basic freedoms. And a part of that freedom allows us to learn new ways to generate income without relying on a pencil-whipped paycheck that barely pays the bills, consumes our precious time, and forces us to scrimp and save our way to a POTENTIAL vacation.

We owe it to ourselves and our families to learn, and pass on, the real-world education that doesn’t get taught in schools. We are in a unique position as leaders in our own right to spread a message that can change the course of history. With what we’re currently going through, we’re gaining intuitive knowledge that can be passed down so history doesn’t repeat itself.

Rumor has it our kids will be affected by our current economic struggles. As an expecting father, that’s a scary thought. Why should the next generation have to suffer because of our mistakes?

Let’s not look at these rough economic times as an excuse. Instead, let’s play the role of leaders. Let’s keep our options open, keep our minds open by adopting change, discover alternative ways of generating income that don’t make you a slave to the system, and pass the knowledge and experience along to the next generation to prepare them for a better life.

This is not a time of struggle. It’s a time of opportunity. Do you have what it takes to seize it?