Chapter 3 | Expanding Your Knowledge Base - Part 2
(Part 2 out of 2)
A person who can’t devote thirty minutes a day to himself, should read the following parable:
X offers Y a suggestion: "I have a gold mine with so much gold in it, I don’t know what to do with it. Come dig and take some gold”.
Y: "I have no shovel".
X: "Buy yourself one".
Y: "Are you crazy? Do you know how much it costs?"
Dear friend, invest your money in books, lectures, and counseling - the best investment you can make is an investment in your personal education, don’t spare yourself when it comes to investing in your future!
Setting up your library
Establish your own library, it will change your life.
On a humorous note, I’ll say, almost every house of a wealthy family - has a library, isn’t that ironic?
Why do you think they have a library?
Doesn’t it intrigue you how in nearly every prestigious house we’ll find a library? Doesn’t that tell you something?
Here's a little secret: the size of a house doesn’t matter, you too can set up your own library.
Clear out one cabinet in your house and name it from now on - a library.
Your library should indicate you’re a serious student on issues such as: health, life, spirituality, culture, economy, wealth, productivity, sales, management, skills and values of all kinds.
Your library should be balanced, you can't read only positive things, you can’t get merely inspired - you need to learn too.
In addition to the topics mentioned above, here are a few more 'departments' your library should exhibit (or in other words – intellectual food):
History - we must all know some history: national history, international history, in order for us to understand that no matter how far back you go in history, the bottom line is you'll find out nothing has changed except the man himself.
History explains what we have to work with - seeds, soil, sun, rain, what people did with all that in the past and how some simply didn't do it right...
Remember the phrase: He who does not learn history – is doomed to repeat it.
Philosophy – it’s advisable to know more about philosophers and their thoughts.
This might not be an easy reading, but then you can’t read only the simple books.
Remember – Don’t read only what’s easy to you. Otherwise, how will you develop, change and grow?
Biographies and Autobiographies - books by / about successful people and those who failed, books by / about good and bad people.
You must have a book on Gandhi and you must have a book about Hitler - one, to know to what level of intelligence, harmony and wisdom can man reach, the other - to know where lies the low point of human degradation.
Accounting, law, and finance – We live in an era where it’s important to know from a young age, concepts such as contract, agreement, loan, debt, credit, interest, yield, etc. No one is asking you to be an expert in economics or become an attorney, but you should at least know the basics of these important issues.
Remember, ignorance can cost you more than education.
Three treasures you’d want to leave behind to your successors:
1. Your pictures: take plenty of pictures.
Have you ever looked at old family albums, say a decade or two ago?
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you had more photo albums and hundreds of pictures to help tell the story?
Remember - a picture is worth a thousand words.
Don’t be lazy. Take the pictures. A split second is all it takes to photograph an occasion, and that is the exact time it takes to lose it too.
Tell the story – leave behind, to your successors, a treasure of photographs.
2. Your library: the library you have gathered and created. The same library that taught you, guided you, helped you protect your ideals, helped you develop your life philosophy, helped you become rich, healthy and unique.
The library that helped you fight disease and poverty, that stores within it the books that nourished your mind and soul.
This library is one of the most beautiful gifts a man can receive – milestones that'll take a man from darkness to light.
Most probably, your books will be worth more than the couch you'll leave behind.
3. Your diary: ideas you've gathered along your life's path, notes you’ve written down, lyrics of a special song, any other event or significant occasion you’ve experienced and jotted down.
List every event that happened, in your diary, so you can go back and re-read it many times again, because repetition and practice are the keywords to skill and expertise; so you can learn from it again, let it train and coach you once more, let it inspire you one more time. Just like your favorite song, you don’t
hear it once and never again.
The diary is one of the proofs you were a diligent and serious student and a real treasure to those who’ll come after you.
Gather the knowledge persistently, share that knowledge and experience with others, and finally pass it on to your loved ones.
* A powerful life philosophy is established by gathering information from a wide variety of sources.
* Keywords: learning and gathering (If you search you find ...).
* Two available sources of information: your own experience and the experience of others.
* Treasures you’d want to leave to your successors: your photos, your library, and your diaries.