Tips #14

Egyptians once believed that breaking a mirror caused seven years of bad luck. You might wonder, why only seven years? Egyptians held that in seven years time, one had gradually become a completely different person. In effect, the bad luck was still around, but after seven years, the person who broke the mirror no longer existed.

In less than seven years of college, you will become a different person. Your college years are a critical juncture in your life, and the college experience will deeply affect you. First, there will be a growth in knowledge. You will be exposed to many new ideas. Your beliefs will change as you evaluate various facts and opinions. You will come to know more about yourself, about others, and about the world. The opinions that you form in college will be your opinions; no longer will most of your beliefs come from your parents, family members, friends, or teachers. No one at college will be able to force you to accept a point of view, although many will try to influence you. Second, the time you spend at college will give you additional skills. Reading, writing, and speaking skills will improve. Your people skills (those skills involved with getting along with others, working well with others, and providing leadership) will also become much stronger. As you gain more skills, you will earn more responsibilities, and having these responsibilities will give you new perspectives. Third, your values will change. "Values" has many different meanings. In this context, it refers to what you consider to be valuable. You will be become less dependent upon what others think, you will be entering into mature relationships, and you will be exposed to new ideas, people, and ways of life. College will be a time when you start to make decisions about how you wish to live the rest of your life. Priorities will change. Consider yourself very fortunate to be able to postpone the demands of a full-time job and the responsibilities of starting your own family by spending the next few years in college, where finding out about what is really important is your central task.

The changes that will occur to you can, at times, be a little scary. It can be frightening to take a good look at yourself, to see how little you (and we all) know, to acknowledge that your skills need to be improved, and to take on new values. Your friends from back home may treat you differently, and you may see them in a new light. Your relationships with your family will be altered. The things that you once enjoyed doing may no longer provide pleasure. However, although change is never easy, it is the only way for you to grow and to reach your potential. Striving to improve gives you the opportunity to make the most out of your life.

What are some of the things that we can do to make positive changes in our lives? First, reading is the best way to enhance our knowledge. Authors express themselves as clearly as possible when they write. Readers can adjust their reading rate to make sure that they have enough time to extract the meaning from what the author has written. Books contain the best (and worst) ideas ever thought. Through reading critically, you will learn how to sort the good ideas from the bad. Read as much as you can. Second, to gain skills, we must practice self-consciously. We do need to listen to others and to pay attention to those who set good examples, but ultimately we will learn through trial and error. College provides the opportunity to make mistakes. It is usually through mistakes that we learn the most. So, try new things and make a lot of mistakes. Third, we learn new values mainly through experience. We can mentally change our beliefs and establish new priorities, but it is only after we change how we live that our values are fully realized. Experiencing new things will help us to compare valuable ideas and things to better understand our potential and our range of our options.

The starting point for testing and enhancing our knowledge, skills, and values lies in our openness and flexibility. In order to change we must first want to change and to be willing to expose ourselves to new ideas, new endeavors, and new situations. College is your best opportunity to grow. Once you graduate from college, your options will become increasingly limited. Use this gift of time to change yourself. Expand your options, and consider which options are best to pursue.

The ancient Egyptians were wrong about the causes of bad luck, but they were right about the possibility of becoming a new person. We generally create our own luck. Change into the kind of person who has the knowledge, skills and values that will make you "lucky."