Collide

Education can be less about compliance and more about painting a reality for indispensable students who do not need permission to color outside the lines, build without a map, embrace wonderment, and never fear the beauty of their own inextinguishable light.

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Students do not need permission to build on the timeline of now.

Whether it’s rethinking career day in elementary school, high school students flexing innovative muscles earlier, or college students earning a degree while also building a profitable business, the education system is becoming more than just a machine to produce factory workers. Students must still learn to play the game of school, but it’s not all about following rules, good grades, and earning that expensive piece of paper to work for someone else.

Students become leaders when an educational system welcomes the weird. No matter the age, curiosity and initiative are required to go beyond the status quo, but that happens more often when students are introduced to the opportunities of an entrepreneurial lifestyle.

The future of education is providing a safe space to learn how to learn. To explore knowledge, different cultures, social interactions, and activities that feel like play to us but look like work to others. Along with activating students in the classroom, invaluable insights await educators who prioritize activity outside the walls of a school. Participating within a startup community is often seen as extra effort for educators already asked to do so much, but there is ease in leveraging community members eager to share experiential wisdom in the wild as well as back inside the classroom.

As we keep things interesting by colliding students with founders and intrapreneurs, educational organizations infuse recurring energy into startup communities and entrepreneurial ecosystems. Ongoing collaboration is required between educators and community builders, but as lines blur between classrooms and community, students are introduced to reality.

When students are set free to paint their own future in ways that transcend a class, school feels less like day care. A thirst for conformity can be replaced with curricula that rewards pure wonder and life-long learning for students of all ages.

Brewed From Within
#55 📖 Leadership

By Ben McDougal, ago

Career Nirvana

Career nirvana is achieved when your community, work, and personal life are in harmony. This state of mind comes from happiness, health, and wealth emanating from the freedom to do whatever you’re best at with people you care about.

There is little holding you back from achieving such splendor. Start by doing remarkable work you enjoy. This creativity earns attention and delivers intellectual, human, financial, network, cultural, physical, and institutional capital. As we learn from The Startup Community Way, the Seven Capitals keep you building by using what you have, to attract what you want.

Let passion fuel persistence, then fuse your career portfolio into the entrepreneurial ecosystem. As you connect into community, be generous by accelerating others and use the trust that creates to do it more often. When this becomes routine, your generosity will leave a legacy. For innovators looking to change the world, such a legacy grants enduring satisfaction and furthers the sense of euphoria.

As a fulfilling career is composed, it’s easier to find work-life balance. Remember, we work to live. We don’t live to work. Nobody looks back wishing they had spent more time in the office. Use the freedom you create to embrace those you love while doing more things that make you happy.

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“The peace and satisfaction of building what you truly care about is one of life’s greatest gifts.”  –You Don’t Need This Book

This may sound idealistic, but it’s not all rainbows and unicorns. This approach to work requires creativity, immeasurable time, immense ambition, and advanced efficiency. As discussed in the Side Hustles chapter of YDNTB, an acute awareness of your personal bandwidth is essential to optimizing when and how resources are utilized. It can also be tempting to spend too much time on things that are fun but may not have real potential. Be humble enough to recognize what you have and what it will take to evolve your idea(s) into reality. Managing multiple “hobbies that pay” takes serious effort, but the reward is extraordinary work you love talking about and an inner peace that provides transformative happiness.

If you achieve career nirvana, be thankful, but recognize that things will always change. What you have today may not be the same tomorrow. Keep building to enjoy the moment, then make it last with generosity that recycles a sense of abundance for others along the way.

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Cheers to everyone who made last week’s book launch a huge success! Signed softcovers were shipped nationwide and more orders continue to pour in. As you dig into YDNTB, I’d love to see photos, hear what resonates and explore fresh ways to accelerate your work.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Pure Wonder

Children embody a state of wonderment.
They wake up each morning without a plan.

They have no preconceptions. No judgments. No worries. This lack of anticipation allows kids to live naturally in the moment. These littles get excited about teeny things and cry over nothing. Their states of wonder are fascinating.

Now, fast forward 20 years. The world hardens us. We want to impress and make our mark, but life is exhausting. A loudness disguised as busy is distracting. The need to make ends meet adds constant noise. Our experiences make us intelligent, capable, and aware of our surroundings, but they may limit our ability to feel the silence of pure wonder.

Occasionally, trade a daily grind with thinking like a child. Pretend you were born yesterday. Be silly. Forget the agenda. Color outside lines. Get weird to solve problems. Laugh at mistakes. Play in your sandbox and get messy.

Wonderment can shrink the ego to make room for more. What you’re building matters, and if you discover pure wonder, be thankful and pass it on.

Brewed From Within
#67 📖 Technology

By Ben McDougal, ago