Finding Your Path
This CASHFLOW Quadrant book is important because it is about finding your path in life. As you know, most people are programmed early in life to “Go to school and get a job.” School is about finding a job in the E or S quadrant. It is not about finding your life’s path.
I realize there are people who know exactly what they are going to do early in life. They grow up knowing they are going to be a doctor, lawyer, musician, golfer or actor. We have all heard about child prodigies, kids with exceptional talents. Yet you may notice, these are professions, not necessarily a life’s path.
So How Does One Find Their Path in Life?
My answer is: I wish I knew. If I could wave my magic wand and your life’s path would magically appear, I would.
Since I do not have a magic wand nor can I tell you what to do, the best thing I can do is tell you what I did. And what I did was trust my intuition, my heart, and my guts. For example, in 1973, returning from the war, when my poor dad suggested I go back to school, get my higher degrees, and work for the government, my brain went numb, my heart went heavy and my gut said, “No way.”
When he suggested I get my old job back with Standard Oil or fly for the airlines, again my mind, heart, and gut said no. I knew I was through sailing and flying, although they were great professions and the pay was pretty good.
In 1973 at the age of 26, I was growing up. I had followed my parent’s advice and gone to school, received my college degree, and had two professions: a license to be a ship’s officer and a license to fly. The problem was, they were professions and the dreams of a child.
At the age of 26, I was old enough to know that education is a process. For example, when I wanted to be a ship’s officer, I went to a school that turned out ships’ officers. And when I wanted to learn to fly, I went to Navy flight school, a two-year process that turns non-pilots into pilots. I was cautious about my next educational process. I wanted to know what I was going to become before I started my next educational process.
Traditional schools had been good to me. I had achieved my childhood professions. Reaching adulthood was confusing because there were no signs saying, “This is the way.” I knew what I didn’t want to do, but I did not know what I wanted to do.
It would have been simple if all I wanted was a new profession. If I had wanted to be a medical doctor, I would have gone to medical school. If I had wanted to be a lawyer, I would have gone to law school. But I knew there was more to life than just going to school to gain another professional credential.
I did not realize it at the time, but at 26 years of age, I was now looking for my path in life, not my next profession.
A 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. A 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 diagram on the flip chart:
With the diagram complete, the instructor turned and said, “To develop into a whole 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 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 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 PhD were held in reverence. At the age of 26, I knew I would never return to that world.
Editor’s Note: In 2009, Robert
