Does college kill creativity?
I was in a restaurant having dinner with my team
and one of the waiters, a young guy,
he was kind of watching what we do,
and I felt that he was looking at us
and he wanted to talk to us but was a little bit afraid,
and after the dinner I asked for the bill,
after that's done he walked up to me
and said, Dan, I'm a big fan of you,
I follow you on YouTube, can I take a selfie?
And I say, of course, sure, and we took a selfie.
And he said, can I ask you a quick question?
And I said, sure.
And he said, I'm going to college right now
and I just found out it's not something
I wanted to do, and my parents wanted me to,
this is the path that I have to take,
they are very, very conservative and they believe
that you have to be successful in life,
you have to have a college degree,
you have to go to university.
And he was confused and he wasn't sure what to do,
and he was asking me, Dan, what advice would you give me?
And I said, well, what is it you want to do?
He was actually thinking about setting up
a little online shop, and selling merchandise online.
An e-commerce business.
And he was asking me what to do and things like that.
So, I gave him some advice
which then inspired me to make this particular video
because the thing about college,
first of all, because you go to college,
it doesn't guarantee you success in life.
And I'm not saying go to college
or don't go to college, it depends on what is it
you want to do.
If you wanna be a lawyer, doctor, engineer, accountant,
yes, you need to go to college
because you need that piece of paper
even to get a job, in order to even enter
that profession, right?
But if you wanna do other things, in 1983,
there was a psychologist called Howard Gardner,
and he talks about that human beings,
we actually have nine different types of intelligence.
Nine different types of intelligence.
So basically, we have musical, kinesthetic,
linguistic, mathematical, so you have many,
many different types of intelligence,
so what happens is, the biggest problem
with college is they only focus on one or two
types of intelligence.
So maybe, you are not book-smart, quote unquote, right?
You are not very good at memorizing things.
Because, how do you pass exams?
How do you get good grades in school?
What do you have to do?
You have to be very good at memorizing stuff.
Just a few days before the exam.
Where you locked yourself in a room,
and you try to memorize all the answers,
the multiple choice, and then you take the exam,
you do okay, and then two days later,
you completely forgot everything that you've learned.
You're not actually learning,
you're just trying to memorize those answers
that makes you get good grades.
You're not internalizing everything that you've learned.
Have you done this before?
I know you have.
I know I have, right?
So, that's one type of intelligence.
But, there's some people, they're just not very good
at that, but they're very good with music, right.
I am horrible with music.
Like, my musical intelligence is minus 10.
When I was a young kid, I had a piano,
we had a piano at my home in Hong Kong, right,
and my dad could play a little bit of piano,
so my dad thought, maybe me, I could also learn
to play the piano.
Develop the artistic, musical, and also in Asian culture
you look more sophisticated when you play the piano.
They go, oh, you know what?
Let's send my son, let's send Dan to learn piano, okay?
And here's what happens, okay.
We signed up for a class, which is about five,
10 minutes away from my home,
and I would join the lesson.
And the music teacher was teaching me
how to play the piano.
You ever played the keyboards?
Any techno?
No, I only play piano. Okay!
I was so bad.
The music teacher was so pissed.
After about a few lessons, he was so pissed.
He was using a ruler, right, at the time,
Hong Kong they could still hit the kids,
so they'd do that.
So I would play, I'd play so bad he would hit my hands,
oh, no, that's not how you do it!
And he would hit the hands.
No, that's not, you got it all wrong, right.
And I was playing the piano, I was playing,
and I was so bad I would doze off.
I would be playing, imagine, the teacher right next to me.
I'm playing and I'd be like this.
And he would hit my hands like, stop!
Pull up, pay attention!
Oh, okay, right.
I got fired from the school.
They have never fired anybody.
We were paying them!
Talked to my mom, no, your son,
he will never be able to play the piano.
We cannot have a student like this,
it is a waste of time.
But school, they try to put you in this box
that you have to behave a certain way
to be successful, instead of thinking, hey,
you know what?
What are you good at?
What are you naturally good at?
What are your strengths?
But school doesn't custom tailor their curriculum
and teaching based on your strengths, your personality,
your passion, and your interest.
That's the biggest problem.
So, that's why school is designed to create employees.
It is designed to be almost like an assembly line, right?
It's not designed for you to flourish,
to exercise, fully exercise your talents
or your creativity.
So, what I suggest all the young people
when I told the young gentleman
and it was the same advice I would give you, is this.
You can go to college, perfectly fine,
if that's what you want to do,
if that's what you want to learn,
but beyond that, you need to develop other skillsets
and explore other skillsets.
Maybe find out what other things you may be good at.
What are the other forms of intelligence
that maybe you are not even aware you are good at,
and do that.
A lot of my students, they come to me
because they wanna learn business skills.
They wanna learn what I call high income skills.
Skills not only could build your confidence,
skills are not taught in college.
They are skills
that could actually generate high income for you.
If you wanna know more, click the link here
and join me for a two hour master class
where I'm gonna teach you the number one skill
that I believe that you need to understand
and master, if you want to be successful in life
that is not taught in college.