We know Bill Gates as the college dropout but now a billionaire through Microsoft. For sure he’s been through a lot of ups and downs, mostly outside of school, but what’s important is that he’s been able to learn from them.
This list offers 11 important rules of life that one can never learn inside the four corners of the classroom. Bill Gates gave these rules as a speech at a High School on how to make one’s self feel good but still grasping the realities. Although some say that this is a myth and that it didn’t come directly from Mr. Gates, I’d take these lessons as inspiring and legitimates ones especially for the millennial who is undergoing some sort of crisis to understand more about life.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSaCxGTuBng]
Source: Jeanette Ellul Youtube
Bill Gates Rule # 1:
Life is not fair, get used to it.
Source: Gurl
Life is filled with unfairness and we live with those every day. We recognize them starting from the day we do not get the same toys like the other kids. But as adults, time comes that the reality is rubbed into us, and we become frustrated. Mr. Gates is brave enough to slap it into us that life is indeed not fair. To make fair for us, we make use of what we have and strive to make a lot fairer. That’s life, or so they say.
Bill Gates Rule # 2:
The world doesn’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself!
Another truth about life that we have to accept is that life is harsh. Until you earn the respect of being an important person, nobody is going to care about your self-esteem, and everyone will just care about their own personal interests. To be able to achieve that respect, go ahead and dream about doing great things. Once you get there, do not forget to look back and propagate that respect you have earned.
Bill Gates Rule # 3:
You will not make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
Source: Gurl
This is a sad truth especially for engineers, who earned a degree and not merely high school, who expect that the pay is high on their first job. It’s not really how it works. You have to understand that you need to start low and grow slow. Then become big. There’s no instant success or hard-earned money that is gotten overnight. It will take time before you get to achieve your dream.
Bill Gates Rule # 4:
If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss.
Bosses behave differently because they deal with real-life situations, unlike teachers who prepare the students for only the good things. The worst and the tough experiences will always come from a boss or seniority who hurries his or her employees to deadlines or making things done. At least be patient with them. Be kind enough to tolerate their behaviour and look where they are coming from. Do your part, too, by owning up to your mistake if there’s a need to.
Source: Giphy
Bill Gates Rule # 5:
Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it OPPORTUNITY.
If you feel like you’re at the bottom of the pack because you are ‘merely’ flipping burgers, look at how your grandparents see it: opportunity. You have your own pace towards success and flipping burgers is part of that process. It’s just temporary – focus on your goal and stop worrying about your dignity. As they say, “Success only comes to those who are willing to get their hands dirty.”
Bill Gates Rule # 6:
If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
Stop the blame game and own up to your mistakes. You become a lot better when you stop pointing fingers and take responsibility of your own mistakes.
Bill Gates Rule # 7:
Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parents’ generation, try “delousing” the closet in your own room.
This basically means that you have to start learning to take responsibility about your little things. You can’t always expect your parents to be there because they you already have your own life. Start serving yourself and learn to wipe your own butt. Become independent.
Bill Gates Rule # 8:
Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools they have abolished failing grades; they’ll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
When you are already out of school you will experience failures and successes – and that’s fine. You will get the best of both worlds and not only one side of them in order to realize the greatest lessons in life. To be able to really survive in life, learn to make choices about a life you will not regret. If you’re founded on that path, you will never get lost.
Bill Gates Rule # 9:
When you are out in the real world where your fate or survival is in your own hands, you don’t always get second chances. It’s do or do not; there is no try kind of life you are leading. Be so sure and strongly confident about your choices that you don’t have to regret. Live each and every moment as if you are gonna die next day. Build firm foundations for your life, make your own way through this world.
Yoda could not have put it simpler, “Do or do not. There is no try.” There is also a famous adage, “Carpe diem,” which means seize the day. Make both work.
Bill Gates Rule # 10:
Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
While we fancy ourselves with television series which involves the fun part of life, that’s not entirely what’s happening with the rest of us. We have to work and go to jobs more than just hanging out with friends, say at the Central Perk. These shows may entertain us, but it’s not the right reference towards how we should do life. There are far more realities not discussed in situational comedies.
Bill Gates Rule # 11:
Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.
Take this as a motivation to stop bullying others especially the nerds, because one day you might end up working with them. The odds are you will just get your karma if you do not treat the nerds at the moment you meet them. They remember the faces who offend and abuse them, so you have to be very careful.
Perhaps some of these lessons have transformed you now in one way or another. If all these indeed come from Mr. Gates himself, we are a few steps away from becoming a billionaire.
