Teach Yourself Something Unique

Teaching yourself is one thing that I have always been a believer in. Because I believe you are your own best teacher and learning by yourself is very important. Why? Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.
Our teachers play a key role in our early education. But another truth I have found out and I would like to share with every eager mind out there is that things you teach yourself or better still discover on your own makes you stand out rather than blend with everybody; it makes you entitled to knowledge that you are the pioneer of. In teaching yourself you will have to resort to doing researches by reading books and articles written by other people, but it was your conscious effort to teach yourself what is in the learning materials that will make your knowledge unique. Discovery makes you different. And through learning and searching for knowledge on our own regarding a particular subject, we are able figure out things for ourselves that has been hidden.
The sum of all that I would like you to understand is you are your own best teacher.

When you learn something through your own research, it gives you an edge or leverage over others who are not entitled to what you have taught yourself through your own efforts. Others who never created the opportunity for themselves to learn what you already know, believe me you are one step ahead of them with the knowledge that is self-acquired.

Teaching yourself means educating yourself. For you to be reading this that means a teacher that could be a parent or a guardian gave you this knowledge of reading in school or at home-which is the foundation that you need and have already gotten. But you can also endeavor to learn on your own rather than waiting for a teacher, tutor, lecturers or teaching assistants or whatever form of instructor available at your level of education.

The truth is some teachers love their jobs and others don’t. So the level of patience that your teacher will display in making you understand something new is not what you will dedicate to yourself.

So as much as our teachers play an essential part in laying the foundation for our formal education, it is only yourself who can learn things that will take you to the heights that are known to only you.

The possibility that someone else also must have had the opportunity of learning what you have taught yourself is likely but at the end of the day you both end up learning entirely different things from the same book.
You must have read the same book from the same source but your level of understandings will be very much different. Successful people are people doing the same things right that others are doing wrong. And it is that uniqueness in knowledge that makes the difference.

The impact that self-tutorials can make on your life is limitless. Maximizing your knowledge base can turn your life around in unique ways. And it is not teaching yourself that is important but living by what you taught yourself or acting upon your knowledge is what will make you different and successful. And every aspect of life deserves some level of screening process. So you should learn how to take useful

information from the lot that you have are exposed to and make the conscious effort of sieving whatever information you are exposed to and make deductions based on your own lifestyle and your temperament to get knowledge. Formal education more often than not is based on some set of rules that do not appeal to everybody. Hence, you have people dropping out of schools to teach themselves things that improved their lives that if they stayed in schools they could not learn from a teacher. Formal education is important but the mere fact that someone has passed through the hierarchy of the system, does not mean they are definitely going to have better lives than those who have not. That is very far from the truth. I had the opportunity of reading about famous, rich and successful people who were college or high school dropouts. I will name a few here for you to know how teaching yourself can be beneficial to your life as it was to these people.

1.Roman Abramovich, richest man in Russia and dropped out of to go into business. He got a law degree only through a correspondence program Moscow State College after he was a successful business man with no degree or whatsoever.

2.Abigail Adams, was a US first lady and she had no formal education at all. She was homeschooled.

3.Bryan Adams, a famous singer and songwriter drooped out of high school

4.Andre Agassi, tennis player ,winner of 8 Grand Slam titles. Quit school in the ninth grade and turned tennis pro at the age 16.

5.Dianna Agron,singer,dancer,actress said these and I quote ‘’I didn’t take the typical path and go to college after high school .Instead I saved up money from teaching dance classes and moved to LA’’

6.Christina Aquilera,singer ,songwriter never finished high school

7.Tom Anderson,co-founder of the social networking site Myspace did not graduate high school.

8.Anthony Andrews, actor. High school dropout

9.Jennifer Aniston,actress.Never attended college. These are her words and I quote, ‘’Getting a nose job was the best thing I ever did’’

10.Julian Assange. Wikileaks founder, software programmer. Studied mathematics at the University of Melbourne but dropped out because other students were doing research for Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency

11.John Jacob Astor, multimillionaire businessman. America’s first multimillionaire. High school drop out

These are people who had never really had what society will call enough formal education but through self-education made tremendous impact on their own lives and the lives of others that some people with degrees and doctorates would never be able to achieve. Teach yourself something unique today; because you are the only one who can teach yourself something unique.

And one more important thing is that when teaching yourself something, you go at your own pace rather than under the pressure of time that formal education is based upon. Hence you improve your life in so many ways. Financially self-education is cheaper compared to formal education. And in self-education the acquisition of practical knowledge is what must be your main aim. The people that you just read about at sometime had to be their own teachers, but they educated themselves in practical knowledge as compared to the theoretical ones that formal education is keen on instilling in students. Life is practical so educate yourself that way.

Teachers are very hardworking and patient individuals but they also get bored with their students sometimes. And students also get bored of teachers. But in teaching yourself, you are the decider of the environment of your studies and there is no way you will choose a boring atmosphere or an uncomfortable one for that matter to teach yourself anything. Self-education is fun.

I will outline some means by which you can educate yourself .There are many different approaches that you can take to learning a new subject.

1. Learning through Project: a great way to learn a new set of skills is to start a project. Projects that require abilities outside your own force you to learn. Taking on the challenge of writing a book forces you to improve your writing. Designing a website can push to learn the details of HTML,PHP or MySQL. Most projects that are beyond common endeavors require an expansion of skill. If no new learning was required, the goal would probably be incredibly boring. And also try as much as you can to choose a project that sits outside your current knowledge without becoming too difficult.

2. Read books: Reading is a great method to educate yourself. Books condense understandings so you can speed up the time it would take to learn by trial and error. Books can also give crucial background knowledge that may be skipped when more practical knowledge is sought. Reference books are a good idea to get even if you do not read them through. Reference books on a particular subject can be used to find specific facts when they are needed. There are book that aren’t how-to guides, but have background information on the subject of your self-study and they are important. Background reading also broadens your understanding of a subject so you can come up with new ideas and strategies.

3. Solve problems: The words of Albert Einstein.’’ Any man reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking’’.

In other words reading also has its limits. The only way information becomes knowledge is when it gets organized for practical matters. If you have read hundreds of business books but cannot run a business, that knowledge is wasted. Reading can gather ideas but only reality creates skills. Practice and apply what you are learning. You must combine reading with projects to acquire new skills to solve problems.