What They Don’t Teach Your Children In School About Success And Wealth Creation

Recently, I spent close to three full days with Michael at the 2014 edition of the National Achievers Congress (NAC) organised by Success Resources.

NAC has been running for 22 years. I have this to say: NAC brings so much value in terms of putting the Best-in-Class speakers on their platform and offering tickets at such ridiculously low price that it is simply madness not to get tickets for yourself and your family members to attend. Especially your children.

This year’s star speaker was Nick Vujicic, the motivational speaker who was born without arms and legs.

So why bring your children to an event that is largely attended by budding entrepreneurs, corporate executives, insurance and property professionals and the likes? Indeed, Michael was among the youngest serious attendees. Here are my reasons for bringing my 15 year old to the conference. It was for him:

To learn about success and wealth creation principles that are not taught in his school
To be comfortable and confident in professional meetings
To be educated about alternative sources of generating wealth

Most of us are taught from a young age to study hard, get good grades, go to university and get a job with good pay and benefits.

Nothing unsound with that.

Except that many of us may not be aware that the majority of hugely successful and wealthy people know a lot more secrets to success than purely following this advice. In fact, some of them do not even follow this advice at all and yet became more successful than those who do!

Don’t get me wrong. I am not downplaying the value of formal and structure education. In fact, I spent close to twenty years of my full-time career in promoting formal education.

But I strongly believe that our children need to have access and exposure to learning that are not taught in school.

Attending an NAC conference will jump start your children’s education about success and making money that even many of their teachers are ignorant about. Even those who are aware (I have teacher friends who make more money from passive incomes than their teachers’ pay) simply do not have the time nor energy to impart their knowledge as these subject matters are not part of the school’s academic curriculum.

At the recent NAC, Michael and myself learned some recurring lessons about success and wealth creation that were shared by the various speakers. Here are some that we picked up:

Have an attitude of gratitude
Have self-acceptance and self-respect
Focus on your passion
Believe in yourself
Have faith
Happiness is the key to success
Take positive action
Never give up
Be generous in giving
To dream BIG and aim to change the world
Surround yourself with successful people, who share your passion and who believe in you

My take away from the speeches is that achieving great success is not rocket science. But first and foremost, it is a science.

Achieving success is largely dependent on systems; strategies; formulas and patterns. These systems are often simple and straight forward.

Even those in artistic pursues such as drawing, music, dances and theater will reveal that performance of these art forms are largely systematic in approach to solve problems. Andrew Matthews, one of the key speakers at NAC, shared that he is confident to train anyone in a very short period of time to draw.

Book signing with Andrew Matthews

With my autographed copy of “How Life Works”

With Publisher Julie Matthews

When we observe the world around us, it becomes obvious that we live in a universe that is kept in order as a result of systems and laws. Our planet exit in a system: the solar system. Nature functions successfully in an ecological system.

Success and making money is no exception.

Numerous systems exist today to enable one to earn multiple streams of passive income. One of the hottest current trends that was shared at NAC is Internet Marketing. One can learn simple steps to create passive niche incomes even when you sleep.

Hard work still applies though as these are not “get rich quick” scams. Yet, these are legitimate and alternative ways of wealth generation that our children can only learn outside school hours.

However, it occurred to me during the NAC that achieving success is not science and system alone.

I would use the metaphor of driving a car. The car itself with it various components is an engineering system that enable one to travel far distances effectively and efficiently and in comfort. However, without starting the engine and thereby engaging the starer gear, there is an absence of power to get the system to work and begin any journey.

In the same way, success and wealth generation systems requires power engagement. This is when I realized that achieving success is also a spiritual pursue.

When the speakers shared about the importance of faith, belief, making a decision to take action, programming our subconscious mind to think big, persevere; etc, these are fundamentally engagement of our spiritual resources.

Pastor David Yungi Cho, Senior Pastor of the largest Christian congregation in the world, refer to these as belonging to the “fourth dimension”.

One of the lessons that was taught at NAC was that we are what we believe ourselves to be. We must first see our achievements in our minds before we can experience them in our reality.

One of my favorite bible stories is found in the book of Numbers chapter thirteen.

In this story, the Israelites were at the threshold of entering the land of Canaan, God’s promised land to them. Their leader, Moses, sent out twelve men to spy the land and among them were Caleb and Joshua. Upon their return, the men reported that indeed the land was very fertile and rich in resources. However, ten of the men spoke fearfully of how huge their enemies were. Their fear was spread to the rest of the people like rampant cancer cells. Only Caleb and Joshua had the champion mindsets and believed that the enemies were theirs for the taking. They were bold enough to speak out against the popular opinions.

The fact of the matter was that God had already promised that He will deliver the enemies into the hands of the Israelites and they just needed to take the action of moving in to conquer. In fact, God was programming into their subconscious minds that victory was their through His promises.

Yet, the bible recorded for us how the Israelites saw themselves:

“We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.” Numbers 13:33, The Holy Bible

When we have self-limiting beliefs, our actions exhibit a lack of self-confidence and this is how others will perceive us.

Tragically, all of that generation of Israelites except Caleb and Joshua died without entering the promised land because of their fear. Only Caleb and Joshua had the faith to believe that their God was bigger than the giants of the land and took actions to conquer the land successfully. They became champions and giants of the Christian faith.

In closing, it was also note worthy to Michael and myself that most of the speakers were from families with below average income when they were young. In addition, at some points in their own professional lives, many of them had close to bankruptcy experiences. However, none of them allowed their modest backgrounds or their past failures to hinder them from achieving the overwhelming successes that they have achieved today.

Michael made a telling comment during the conference:

“Attending this conference made me feel that there is a “conspiracy” in my school. Here at the conference, all the millionaire speakers are telling us that we can succeed and become millionaires (in-spite of our grades). In school, our teachers are telling us we cannot succeed and become millionaires (because of our grades).”

I have sympathy for our teachers. They face tremendous pressure in facing multiple demands: performing non-teaching administrative duties, addressing parental expectations, meeting academic KPIs and managing challenging student behaviours. It takes a lot out of our teachers to be consistently positive with their various challenges.

As parents, let’s do our part to supplement our children with lessons that their school do not teach them.

See you and your children at National Achievers Congress 2015!