Continuing education works for me.

 I can’t say that I liked school much. There were so many other things I’d rather be doing. I didn’t like the teachers much. All they did was tell me to do stuff I didn’t really want to do, and the stuff I wanted to do, like talking to my friends, they wouldn’t let me do.

I didn't like the majority of the lessons. I hated maths – all I felt I needed to do was learn to count. For the life of me, I never thought I’d ever need algebra in my life, and to this day, I don’t think I’ve ever needed to use it.

The sciences did nothing for me – cutting up frogs wasn’t something I planned doing in later life. In fact, I didn’t want to cut up anyone! If I had plans on being a doctor, then yes it may have been of interest.  Blowing up the lab seemed like it could be fun – after all if we could do that, I wouldn’t have to do that again! The only thing I’ve ever been good at concocting is a decent cup of tea!

And as for physics! Too much like maths for me, although years later when I had a little set of chairs that went round too fast, I wished I’d understood about ratios in order to get the right sized flywheel to slow it down.

History was OK if the teacher wasn’t as bored as I was. I’d have loved Geography had it been all about places and not cumulous clouds and rock strata as well.

Sport was good though. As was Madamoiselle Rieg, our french teacher who was pretty good looking and sounded as sexy as hell when she spoke (at least to my 14 year old self she did).

And as for exams, I could never see the point – and still don’t.

It’s easy for someone to freeze up on the day, and it’s not so easy to cram for the tests. The purpose of exams to me, is to show that the student has a decent memory for data and that they can put it down on paper succinctly.

I still feel that people’s results should be down to the coursework completed during the course of the year. The teacher should be able to tell whether the student has pulled their weight in class over the year, should have a good idea of whether the student has understood and learnt the material covered. And if they aren’t able to recognize that, then perhaps they should be in another career.

I ended up leaving public school without any qualifications – I didn’t end up doing my ‘O’ levels because my Dad was ill at the time and instead of going to school to do the exams, at 16, I stayed at home and run the family business.

Therefore going by my official exam status, I’m bottom of the barrel and would struggle to get a job anywhere these days. That’s OK though, I don’t want one anyway. I’m happier working at my own things.

But here’s the funny thing.

I’m all for education. I’ve continued learning all my life. In fact this morning, I’ve signed up for a course to learn how the fundamentals of some software I recently bought and have been trying to teach myself how to use properly.

Given time, I think I could master it on my own, but I feel I can speed up the process by enrolling on a course that will show me many tips and techniques that I would take ages to find, and some that I never would.

Over the years, I’ve signed up to many courses. I did a website building course, I’ve gained an NVQ level 2 in I.T. and I’ve been learning Spanish online as well.

I read plenty of self improvement books, on all kinds of subjects. I read autobiographies and biographies. Whenever I get involved in anything, I buy books that will help me in that area.

As examples: When I was doing discos, I hunted down business books and books on promotion to help me put it on a firm footing. When I started doing radio, I bought books on technique, on how to use various pieces of equipment. I learned what it would take to run a station, how to set up playlists, how to format a show. I asked questions to well established presenters. I was open and willing to accept advice and critique.

I am constantly looking at ways to make me a better me. I’m always open to finding new ways of doing things.

I even signed up to an online course to learn to play a piano on a whim once. I’ve always liked the idea of playing piano like Fats Domino or even Russ Conway. I do love a bit of plinky-plonk. One day I’ll get around to it. I just need a piano!

So yes, I’m a great believer in education. But personally, I like to learn what I like to learn.

I was not a success, certificate-wise at school. The things I’ve learned in life that have been useful to me are pretty much things that weren’t available to me at the time.

I think it’s important that we all continue to educate ourselves. Life is an ongoing education in itself.

I found the most important part of schooling, preparing for those final exams, tedious. I was more interested in developing business skills, which I did at home, in our arcade. School didn’t set me up to develop the kind of business I was going into.

And because of that, I didn’t think it was right for me at the time. For me personally, I’ve found education better when it’s been about the things I had an interest in. Sadly, most of what I learned in school hasn’t been of much use to me as an adult.

The majority of things that have been important in my life were taught by my family and associates I’ve made along the way.

I can’t say having no qualifications has made my life more difficult. It wasn’t as if I was going to be a scientist, and investment banker or a vet.

The thing I learnt most at school was when I was boarding at Prior Park, and that was sticking up for myself and being independent. Although painful at the time, it’s helped me stand my ground in this world.

I will say though, that I wish I’d have paid more attention in English classes. It would make my writing more coherent that it is now!

Surprisingly, I have to say, one of the joys of my life is learning. I love the sense of achievement when I master something new.

So I can see quite plainly, that me and education are going to be together for a while to come.

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Failure is your friend

Whether you know it or not, failure is your friend...and your teacher. It’s a bold statement I know, but it’s true nevertheless.

I’ve got to admit for many years I didn’t think this was the case, but after a lifetime of trying and failing at many things, I’ve come to the realisation that failure has taught me far more in life than I ever thought it would.

The fact is that if you don’t fail, you’ll never win. And that’s because we’re not born brilliant at anything. Think about it, how many times have you seen a baby fall over in their quest to walk? I read recently that the average baby will fall over at least 40-50 times an hour in their attempts.

Babies don’t understand failure. They don’t fall over a couple of times and think to themselves, “Stuff this, I’ll just sit down from now on. This will never work!” They just keep getting up and trying until they succeed. And as parents, we’ll encourage them to keep trying.

And yet it’s after this time, that we start telling them "no". Usually, we try to stop them from doing things because we’re frightened of them hurting themselves, but that is the start of us passing on our fears to them and that’s when the start of the fear of failure begins to be transferred onto them.

And the more we hear it, the more we succumb to the thinking that failing is bad.

But to be honest, it’s not true. Failure is our friend. It’s when we fail at anything, if we’re willing to, we’ll learn from it and it will become a stepping stone to something else.

I’d bet money that people who are more successful than you have failed more than you. They’ll have stepped into the arena more than you. They’ll have had more failures, maybe not massive ones, but more none the less. And given hindsight, I’d even go so far as to say that failure is what makes life interesting.

Could you imagine if everything went right? You’d have to be covering the same ground over and over again because to move on you need to learn. And from my own personal experience, it’s in the moving on that mistakes happen.

Let me give you some examples from my life.

I failed my 11+ exam, so couldn’t go to the school my parents wanted me to go to. And rather than send me to our local Comprehensive school, I ended up going into the Public School system which I hated.

I was away from home from 14 years old, was extremely homesick, getting bullied and as a result, didn’t do as well as I could have done given my capabilities. On the flip side, I learned to stick up for myself, become not only resilient but independent as well.

Businesswise, since I’ve been an adult. I travelled on fairgrounds but ended up stopping after I’d worked all summer and the money we’d saved was spent during 6 weeks of poor business. I had no idea what I’d do next, I just knew I wouldn’t be doing that the following year.

Later, I developed an online travel business, Go2morrow.com from the ground up. With no knowledge of the travel industry but gut instinct, I decided to have a go. I taught myself how to build a website, went out of my comfort zone to approach many businesses about being part of my website, attended trade shows trying to share my business idea with various hotels, B&Bs, holiday camps etc, to get them to come on board. I did all of this and over the first few months of trading, I was getting in excess of 1,000000 hits per month on the site.

You would think that’s successful, but I failed to get others in to help and over the next 18 months, I became drowned under the amount of work I was doing and ended up losing the business because I couldn’t keep up,

I joined the Amway business and built a reasonable network business. I worked my socks off trying to help others all over the country develop theirs. However, before I’d got the business into a sustainable position, I was taken ill and didn’t work for 6 months, and because it wasn’t yet sustainable, the business dwindled without my input into it.

As I developed a radio career, my marriage fell apart. No-one’s fault but mine.

I started an online magazine, ‘Pure Grooves’, alongside my partner Debz. It was growing nicely but not bringing in enough money to pay its way and 11 months later we decided to call it a day.

And from 2016 when I had my cancer scare and lost my kidney, I panicked and decided that I needed to do something else. And over the next 3 years, I spent pretty much all of it trying to put together two more business plans, neither of which came through to fruition.

Is there enough failure there for you?

And I’m not ashamed to tell you that during all that failure, there’s been a whole load of pain, intense pain, but what’s come from that, and over a period of years, I’ve become mentally stronger.

For years, through so many of those businesses I’ve had, I had so much self-doubt. When each of those businesses closed, I beat myself up. I heard people say, “Told you so” and I knew people laughed about my misfortunes (because others came and told me what was being said).

The cancer scare however, changed everything – it freed me from fear and self-doubt. It enabled me. It made me realise how brave I’d been, how daring.

Sure I remember the pain of the situations. But I realised that pain is part of the process and that failure, although it temporarily demoralised me and wore me down, it never stopped me.

Because in the middle of the night, when I’d be awake re-running everything through my mind, over a period of time, I came to realise the lessons I’d learned could be useful in the next episode of my life.

And what’s more, as I’ve read more and more stories about successful people, I’ve found that they too have had their own situations much like mine. I’ve realised that for so many people, failure has been a stepping stone on their road to success.

I’ve heard story after story of the ‘overnight sensation’ who’d been at it for 10 years before they'd caught a break.

And are you aware that it took James Dyson, 5126 prototypes before he came up with the vacuum cleaner that we know of now? Or that Walt Disney went to 302 banks before he found one that was willing to take a chance on him? Or that it took Thomas Edison over 11,000 attempts to come up with the incandescent lightbulb?

Success doesn’t come easily.

I’ve had more failures than you can shake a stick at, and so have many others. I’m not saying that I'm a success, I’m still on my journey. However, the only ones who never fail are those that never try.

Those that rise in their lives fail often, whether it be in the workplace, pursuing a higher position, in their cause, or trying to build a business will fail. 

In our personal lives building a family and relationships, we’ll fail – maybe not drastically, but we’ll fail along the way.

What you have to remember is that we’re not born perfect. When we’re born, we know nothing and along the way we learn. And in the learning, we fail. Far more often than we’d like.

But once you realise that failure is your friend, once you understand that each little failure is a lesson, it really does give you freedom.

Obviously, not the freedom to just dive into everything willy nilly, but it gives you to freedom to give it a go whatever it is.

It may be that you need to take a deep breath and tell someone how you feel about them. It may be that you really want to start your own business but are scared that you don’t know enough. I can promise you, you'll never know enough to begin!

Whatever it is that deep-down you know you want to do or be, don’t let the fear of failure stop you. And don’t worry about getting things wrong. You could learn something far more valuable.

You can take a risk. Weigh up the pros and cons. Don’t worry about what people think. After all, it’s your life.

Be prepared. It’s not always going to be hunky-dory, but it’s not always going to be a misery either.

Yes, it’s good to be aware of the risks in regard to the things you want to do. But don’t let the fear of failure hold you back.

I’ve failed many times, but I’d rather that, than being laid on my deathbed wondering,  “What if?” I'd rather the fear of failure than the fear of regret.

Do your homework. Be aware that there’s risk in everything you do, but don’t let the fear of failure hold you back if there’s something you really want to achieve in your life.

Take that first step, get the ball rolling, and go for it. And remember....failure is your friend!

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