(Photo via College Loan)

If you’re in university, college or high school are you worried that you’ll be drifting through life after graduation without meaning or purpose?

Maybe you hope that you’ll be one of the lucky few who’ll stumble on the “right” job or that perfect opportunity will land on your lap. Alas, the reality is that you make you’re own luck. And to do that takes serious thinking ahead of time.

Many college and university students are making 10 major mistakes while doing school that could make their job search and job hunt a lot harder.

Here’s what you may be failing to do (and how to fix it):

Part 1 of 3

1. Knowing Yourself

“Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel, as a reminder of your strength.”

- August Wilson

You won’t be in college, university or high school forever and the sooner you start to understand yourself, the sooner you get ahead of the game.

Traveling with no destination in mind makes it harder for you to find the right job and the right opportunities to get to that job. This is the biggest mistake. You need to know what you want now so that you can plan ahead otherwise you’ll put off what you need to do forever (well for awhile).

Here are some resources that can get you started.

What is Passion?

How to Create a Mind Map of Desire to Guide Your Life [Video]

8 Things Roleplaying Games Can Teach You… (Part 1)

How to Plan Like a Master with Omnifocus [Video]

How to Set Goals – Wikihow

2. Building Confidence

The whole world steps aside for the man who knows where he is going.

- Unknown Author

A lot of people go through university, college or high school doing endless paper work, paper-pushing projects that do nothing to build your confidence in real world situations. Now’s the time to start exploring and building up your confidence armour.

You can control this and it helps if you have a supportive group of friends and family. If you’re lacking in that area find some and build up your own mental toughness. Stand behind the decisions you make and move with them.

You’ll still recognize, accept and fix mistakes whenever they happen however you’ll never be laid low — you know you’re human and you know nothing is perfect. You’ll keep on going and improving so why fear what others think?

Take their criticism with a smile and “Thank you” and keep going. Positivity is a useful tool.

And most important of all:  never fear to fail.  See every failure as a step to victory (because if you’re still breathing you can still win).

Try these articles for a start:

How to Build Self Confidence on wikiHow

10 Ways to Instantly Build Self Confidence

25 Killer Actions to Boost Your Self-Confidence

3. Constantly Learning

”A learning experience is one of those things that says, ‘You know that thing you just did? Don’t do that.”

Douglas Adams (The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time)

Becoming confident means constantly learning new things and overcoming your fears of the “unknown”. When something becomes “known” your fear vanishes like smoke. Universities, high schools and some or many colleges are terrible because they trick you into thinking that you’ll get real world skills when in reality they don’t (there might be a few programs that do it right and they are very, very few).

You have to take off the blinders are start learning real world skills before the real world hits you. Communication skills are one of, if not the biggest for example and higher education does little to teach you the best in presentation skills or teamwork skills.

There are other skills you should learn (based on personal experience). Always have a good grounding on:

• how to be passionate (partly learned and partly linked to doing something you want to do)
• how to be a “leader” (and it’s not the same as managing)
• how to create a budget and other financial statements
• how to create and use a spreadsheet (and do the math)
• how to work well in a team and alone (be a good fit)
• how to manage people
• how to take initiative

Among others. (More discussion on these skills later on and in my upcoming book, How to Find Your Job in 3 Powerful Ways: The Shinobi Guide to Job Search)

Forget the “if they give me a degree that’s enough” mind set and you’ll thank yourself later.  Too much traditional schooling is overrated.

Possibly useful pieces include:

Communication Skills Get the Job

Leading Without Authority

Strategic vs. Operational Leaders

8 Things Roleplaying Games Can Teach You… (Part 2)

Tyler Durden’s 8 Rules of Innovation | Lateral Action

You’ve learned how important it is to start knowing what you want out of life and improving yourself.  Obvious yes?  Common sense?  Totally.  Do you and I need a regularly reminder?  Absolutely.

Stay tuned for Part 2 where you learn why getting into the real world, taking initiative and patience are so important to you as a student.

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