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Bad Habits Learned At School

I'm sure we've all probably learned at least one useful thing at school, right?

But how many of us are aware that we've probably picked up a bunch of really bad habits at school as well? I mean, teachers were always talking about instilling "good study habits" in us and all that, but what if some of that stuff turned out to be bad for us in the long run?

Once you figure out which of these habits you have, and where they came from, you can get to work on un-learning them.

These are habits that I "learned" at school, or that I noticed other people have, which I imagine they probably picked up at school as well:

• You don't believe you have anything of value to add to most conversations.
• You're a bit of a workaholic and you find it difficult to just relax without feeling a need to do something "productive". (It turns out that rest is productive! And also pretty essential.)
• You also get bored easily because you've spent so much time working that you don't even know HOW to have fun on your own anymore. You always need someone or something else to entertain you.
• You try harder to fit in with other people than you try to come up with new ideas on your own.
• You don't feel good about your own accomplishments unless someone else notices them.
• You'd do just about anything to avoid having to think really hard, because thinking really hard reminds you of all those horribly boring calculations you had to do in school, and you don't ever ever EVER want to do that ever again.
• You feel like doing things you enjoy aren't worth your time unless you're sure it can accomplish something or make you money. This is because everything you did in school was assigned a grade when you were done with it... and real life doesn't really have any grades, so there isn't any objective way to measure your success. Most people substitute money for grades, and insist on believing that the more money you make, the more successful you are. This one is hard to break, because so many things in modern society constantly reinforce it.
• You tend to judge people by their achievements, especially the external and easily measurable ones.
• You're afraid to make mistakes because you want to get everything done perfectly the first time around. If you make a mistake you feel like YOU are a failure. This will probably make you reluctant to try new things.
• You think you're too stupid to teach yourself new things - you believe you need a teacher or a college course for that.
• All the times you had to ask for permission to go to the bathroom probably taught you to question whether your own natural instincts can be trusted.
• You've learned that it's easier and safer to tell people what they want to hear than it is to tell them the truth.
• You might find yourself always wondering whether what you're thinking of doing is against some rule somewhere, or if someone in charge is going to get upset with you.
• You feel that the only things worth doing are things that are unpleasant, things that you wouldn't do out of your own free will normally.

Posted in: Blog, Knowledgebase on March 9, 2024 @ 7:45 PM

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