Tip: All of life is paying tuition!

Have you ever attended a school where you had to pay tuition? Perhaps you were fortunate enough to have parents who paid it for you or maybe you had a scholarship or a grant. But, odds are, at some point in your life you have had to pay tuition in order to attend school or go to a training seminar or register for some kind of specialized program. Hopefully, what you paid turned out to be a wise investment.

I have paid a small fortune in tuition myself, since I have graduated from five different colleges. However, some of the most valuable lessons I have ever learned have come from outside of the traditional classroom setting. I have paid “tuition” to learn a lot of good information in business. Unfortunately, some of it has been at great expense. The cost of one such lesson was over $300,000. On another occasion I paid $50,000 to learn a real estate lesson. And at another time, I paid over $20,000 to learn a “.com” lesson. All of these were indeed very expensive lessons. However, from each of these experiences, I also learned a great deal that has helped me be smarter and wiser. As the years have passed, I have been fortunate enough to be able to recover from most of my losses. I am not saying that in a boastful manner. I am simply saying that I have learned (and sometimes very painfully), to view these life-lessons as good information for which I had paid tuition.

Perhaps you have paid to attended a seminar or have been involved in some kind of coaching program where you gleaned information from another person who paid dearly to learn valuable lessons in their own life. You can avoid some of the heartaches and disasters yourself that other people have experienced by paying the tuition they charge to attend their seminars or workshops.

I have always thought it ironic that some of the best lessons I have been taught in life have come from attending seminars and workshops. And, unfortunately, some of the most impractical and least useful information I ever learned came from the traditional classroom for which I paid tuition. Looking back, I think the difference had to do with the personal experience of the instructors. Because, as I stated earlier, the absolute best lessons I have learned have been the first-hand personal experiences from my own failures and successes.

Let me encourage you not to be defeated or discouraged when it seems you have “wasted” money in some situation. It really is not wasted if you learn from it. More than likely you will be able to use that experience many times throughout your life and be able to pass it on to others as well. I am extremely grateful for every disappointment, heartache and struggle that I have experienced because it has made me a wiser, stronger person.

These days I am working to keep my “tuition lessons” from being too terribly expensive. It is not necessary to spend your very last penny to learn a good lesson. Sometimes you can read a book and save yourself many years of heartache and frustration by learning from the author’s mistakes. You will, however, have to pay the “tuition” price to purchase their book in order to learn what perhaps took them years to understand.

So, you see, everything in life really should be seen as paying tuition. When something goes wrong, fails or turns out badly, I have discovered that I can profit from it, if I have the attitude that I just paid some more tuition. Nothing needs to be wasted and everything can become a blessing if we are wise enough to see the value that our tuition payments have brought into our lives.

If you will begin to see the merit that comes from paying tuition, then everything you do can become a positive learning experience and will make your life better.

Tip: All of life is paying tuition!

Have a great week! God bless you!
Dr. Robert A. Rohm