Educational Needs And Expectations Of People Over 50 Years Old: Fill & Download for Free

My best friend, at around the age of 8, told me, “my mom says your spoiled.” And I felt terrible about it, even though I wasn’t quite sure what I meant. When my friend went on to explain that it was because I got a lot of Christmas gifts, and Easter stuff, I still felt bad. I had no idea what to do.I’d pose this question to people on the board who are heaping judgment on spoiled children: what should I have done? As an 8-year old?I’m writing anonymously because I was a spoiled child and there is a lot of animosity and blame on this board for being a ‘spoiled’ child.The animosity is found in phrases like “poor little rich girl.”It’s appropriate to blame the parents for spoiling their children, but it’s wrong to blame the children themselves. Even in blaming parents, which isn’t all that useful, we should be honest about the fact that people parent the way they were parented.No child choose their circumstances, and most children get mired in them. Most people who grow up poor, stay poor. People who grow up abused, frequently seek abuse and choose abusers. People with low levels of education usually become adults with little education.Being “spoiled” if you give it some thought, means you are ruined. The implication is, you are ruined for life, like an egg that’s gone bad.No child chooses to be spoiled.There is a strange abiding attitude among many people who’ve responded to this question that the spoiled child is really enjoying all the “stuff” they get and all the “responsibilities” they’ve always skirted because they can continue to act like “brats.”This is akin to saying that poor people secretly enjoyed their childhood poverty because now they can act like martyrs. Or that women who’ve been raped enjoy the attention.It’s called blaming the victim.I feel it’s necessary to point out that children do not set limits, parents do. No child is going to say to a parent, “please don’t give me stuff, it makes me feel bad.” No seven-year-old is going to ask, “please - assign me more chores, I feel it will really help with my psycho-social development.” For most children, getting stuff doesn’t make them feel bad! Not doing chores doesn’t seem like a problem!It’s only years later that they can see the damage.It’s outrageous, unrealistic, and wrong to expect children to parent themselves and set limits for their own parents by correcting the parental mistakes.Here are my qualifiers for being spoiled ….I wasn’t required to do many chores. I never washed dishes, swept, vacuumed, or cooked. I was asked to clean my room - though this wasn’t enforced. My regular chores were setting and clearing the table. Once I year, I had to remove all the ivy & weeds off the chimney (a half day) and clean the grout out of my shower (a few hours). If I was asked to help out with something I usually did. As a teenager I recall washing to car in addition to my usual light chores.I was the youngest and got a lot of gifts each Christmas. I was given the pile of gifts but then kind of made to feel guilty about it. So that was a lot of fun. I was not taught to take care of them, but I was made to feel guilty when I didn’t play with them. (This was an attempt to teach me gratitude which didn’t work). I was also given expensive gifts at other times - I remember a really nice watch I had in first grade that when I showed off pretty much made all the other kids hate me instantly.At easter my grandmother would send loads and loads of chocolates. Three huge chocolate bunnies, white chocolate, chocolate eggs, etc. It went on forever.I went to a more expensive, private college than my sisters, who went to state schools. I was 8 years younger and my parents had more money. My sisters resented me.I lived a very unstructured life as a kid. I was mostly feral. I had very little supervision: latchkey kid, rode my bike everywhere (when I was 9 years old my best friend and I rode our bikes into Washington DC - a ten mile journey that included crossing a highway, riding through an entire city, and then negotiating the streets of DC to find our way to the museums).I grew up in a neighborhood with a rarified atmosphere: doctors, lawyers, judges, heads of state. This tended to make me a little sheltered.I was given a weekly allowance (50 cents as I recall … this was the early 70s).I attempted to get out of all this by going to work at age 11. I didn’t need the money. just desperately wanted to “earn my keep” because even though I was given all the stuff, I always felt guilty about it.In retrospect, my parents may have assigned me no chores because I had a job.I literally have been working like a dog most of my life, often having 2 jobs at a time, to somehow get over the guilt and anxiety of being “given everything” and not being famous, fabulous, amazing and all the other bullshit I was told I should be because I had “so much.” I have had over 75 jobs, and a few careers, from which I am mostly disengaged because I could never take any of it very seriously. It all just felt like an attempt to stay busy and that I was acting like an adult, a construct I had no grounding or practice with.I am not by any means saying a whole lot of other unfairnesses don’t suck: being poor, being a non-white minority, being disabled, being abused.But having parents who set limits, pay attention to you, punish you when you screw up, and generally show that life has consequences is really what I wanted.I’m pretty sure my parents spoiled me because (1) they had the money (2) they felt guilty because my mother was ill the whole time I was growing up (3) I was the last kid, and they were over it (4) they were extremely distracted by my mother’s bi-polar illness, which took off full-bore when I was 2 and subsided when I was 17.And despite the nice house, manicured lawn, the responsible people around me, and all the “stuff” I didn’t get what I wanted or, more importantly, needed in terms of being taught to be a responsible adult.I did not get basic skills that I needed to function as an adult and even now, over 50 years old, I have bad habits related to having so little expected of me. The biggest is the secret fear that I am incapable, and that’s why I wasn’t given much to do.Stop blaming kids for being “spoiled” as kids, and usually as adults, blaming them for they transcending their birth and family circumstances. No other group of kids who were treated like shit gets blamed for it.

Live below your means and DO NOT GET IN DEBT. Debt is how efficient consumers are made. If you are in debt, you are on the treadmill and you cannot concentrate on anything else in life. Not much anyway. Every decision you make will be different if you can pay all of your bills for one year from your savings, than if you can’t. Success lays between confidence and fear. When you are under the gun all the time you cannot recover and recharge. Gaining financial security (not wealth) as early as possible in your life will directly affect every other decision you make. You MUST live below your means. The government hates it when people are not in debt. Too much time to think. Thinking bad!As it relates to politics, governments and leaders, don’t allow yourself to be confused and don’t become cynical. Disengagement leads to disenfranchisement. Blindness to a leaders acts because he leads your party is called Tribalism. When tribes formed and a Chief was picked, not following his orders or questioning him resulted in death. Free thinking was not valued, obviously. The vast majority of people form opinions about issues/people/situations, etc. before obtaining all the facts and then anchor in, even when provided irrefutable evidence supporting contrary facts. Don’t be lazy and don’t be ignorant if your beliefs or convictions are challenged. Always consider the possibility that your positions or long held beliefs may not always be correct. You MUST keep an open mind. This is the essence of humility. Your beliefs are not your identity. At work, in your romantic relationships and your friendships, considering at all times that you may not be right regarding any type of conflict/debate will serve you well. Quick to listen, slow to speak.50 percent of the people that get married end up divorced. Staying married is mostly about picking the right mate. READ THIS CAREFULLY. You need to read about Cluster B personality disorders. Especially Borderline Personality Disorder and Narcissism. These people do not attach. When dating, you MUST remember these three questions. A. How do you get along with your mom and dad? (if they say bad or not good that is red flag 1) B. How long have you had your best friends, how many friends do you? (no best friend or short time best friend or few friends. (red flag 2). C. Why did you divorce/break up with your ex? It will always be the ex’s fault. (red flag 3). Date is over RUN. This is likely a personality disordered person who will ruin your life. RUN FOREST RUN. Not all personality disordered people are monsters by the way. Many are simply abuse victims looking for a way to survive. In every failed marriage one or both people were conflict avoidant. Learn conflict resolution. Frustration turns into contempt. Contempt turns into bitterness, bitterness leads to divorce. No one hears anyone when they yell. Calculate divorce/marriage based upon return on investment. If you know today how expensive a divorce will be based upon splitting your savings, selling your home to split equity and then the payment of child support, you would make different choices. The emotional devastation can also set you back years or sometimes for life. Children are affected long term. Most divorces can be avoided. Use rules. PRIMARY OBJECTIVE ABOVE ALL ELSE; WE DO NOT MARRY PERSONALITY DISORDERED PEOPLE ON THE CLUSTER B LIST (or cluster A). A. No swearing at your spouse. B. No name calling no sarcasm ever. C. When tempers flare, walk off, take 20 then come back. You cannot take words back. D. Apologize and take responsibility for yourself. E. If your spouse physically abuses you, the relationship is over. F. DON’T EVER THREATEN YOUR PARTNER WITH DIVORCE OR ENDING THE MARRIAGE. TRUST ENDS AT THAT POINT. G. Never ever lie to your spouse. H. Once per year take a conflict resolution course somewhere, some way. It’s the best insurance you will ever buy to keep your marriage together. Trust=Intimacy. No Trust=No Intimacy. Infidelity erases all relationship equity and erases all trust. In marriage, preservation of trust is your primary goal. It is the well from which all else flows. Be very very careful of women that did not get along with their fathers, or felt their father did not love them. They, for the most part, do not attach to a man. Be very very careful with a man that was the victim of a father they could never please or felt loved by. One of the seeds of Narcissism. Caveat: Unless they have been or are in treatment. Both deal with anger and rage at mom and dad, but it will be directed at you.Many young people deal with anger issues. If you have difficulties with anger you need to attack this and get it out of your life. It will cost you friends, spouses, jobs etc. Depression is usually anger that is internalized. Learn to express yourself and detox in a mindful, healthy way. Sounds weird but so is a divorce or jail or both. If you have a filthy mouth, that is your anger venting out of your face. Do something about it. Read about it, watch videos, counseling. Everyone I talked about above in 2, Personality disordered people have anger issues. Theirs are typically from abuse/parenting.If you suffered abuse as a child and suffer from some of the criteria outlined in the description of Cluster B disorders, this can affect how you approach parenting. If you are going to be a parent or are a parent, you have an OBLIGATION to break this cycle. Inconsistent and maladaptive parenting perpetuates this cycle, one you can break. When you don’t listen to and validate a child as they grow, they come to believe they are not loved AND not valued because they are BAD. This turns into toxic shame. Girls that grow up believing their fathers don’t love them seldom configure a healthy attachment to a man. Plus a lot of other truly painful coping mechanisms and traits. Don’t just assume parenting is a no brainer. How you interact with a child the first few years of their life has huge ramifications that will be life long. Please do yourself, your family, your spouse and the world at large a favor, don’t be ignorant about maladaptive parenting. Know how NOT to cause your children to develop Cluster B traits and the life long agony that comes with them. A lot of really good people are really bad parents. They just never really learned some of the do’s and donts of parenting. Cluster B disordered people generally lack maternal or paternal instinct. That’s another reason they need to be in therapy.If you give someone your word, live by it. If your word is no good, you are no good. It is simply integrity. If you don’t have integrity then life is going to unnecessarily difficult for you. By being mindful of what you say, you will curb your tongue.Always get a second opinion regarding things like cancers and other surgeries, oncology, behavior modifying medications for your children, being held back over grade issues, medical testing. And remember insurance is a business. The less they pay towards your care the more they make. Your insurance company would prefer you die if they could save money. Schools do what works best for them, not your kids. They are interested in not being sued. If it comes down to whats best for your child or a law suit, they will take no risks to side with the child. Understand that if you are in an adversarial situation with your childs’ school, their motivation is shifting potential liability. Check up on everything and everyone. Don’t get confused by thinking doctors will always do whats best for you. The vast majority of doctors just want to practice medicine and are really great, but they are in business. Especially Cancer/Oncology. Doctors are required to disclose any money they get from drug companies or any other providers so ask. One Dr. calls for chemo and radiation for a Stage 1 tumor with non lymphatic invasion, and NO mapping of the tumor. One calls for mapping, and no chemo and no radiation. Guess which one calls for what. You must either have an advocate for your health or be an advocate for someone else. Practice trust but verify on yourself first. Most good doctors tell you to get a second opinion. Be smart, not cynical. Understand what the other party is dealing with and where they are coming from.Strive to be kind at all times. Remember the tongue is sharper than steel. You will never be content in life and truly be happy unless you are doing things for other people. You can make all the money you want, buy all the shit you want, travel wherever you want, it will not make a difference. If you ever get depressed, start donating your time at a school, shelter or old folks home. When you bring a smile to other peoples faces by doing something you have no expectation of getting anything in return, it will change your life. Plant trees under whose shade you never expect to sit. If you are not in church find one and go long term. If you have no interest in what benefits the people you share this planet with, feel no sympathy or empathy, refer to the Cluster B reference above. Every success you want or have had starts with you understanding, dealing with and loving you. You are the only person that can make you happy. Don’t shove your BS on someone else just because they love you.Pay your bills on time. Right now you think that you need your credit rating to buy stuff. At some point in the future an employer may look at your credit for a critical job. They can also get your credit back 20 years. Don;t forget that. How would you like to miss out on a great job because you didn’t pay your credit cards on time. Credit is not what most people think it is. Many firms will not hire you if you have had a DUI in the past 20 years. Same with Bankruptcy. It tells people about your integrity, not your finances. Also if you ever think about being cute on your taxes, the IRS can get your credit report without you knowing. They look at your reported income vs the expenses on your credit report. Don’t be stupid, pay your taxes. Its easier to just earn more money than worry.Never ever lie to a Federal Agent. Ever. They only ask questions they have the answers to. You would be better off running from one of the agents in the Matrix than lying to a Federal Agent. Their conviction rate is 90 plus percent for a reason. Again, don’t be stupid.If you get to a place where you are thinking about cheating on your spouse, don’t be a dirt bag. Women do it too, but its mostly men. When you cheat on a woman you break them in a way that cannot be articulated. If you have to cheat, get a divorce. Infidelity is an incurable character flaw, absent a ton of work. When you start thinking “ I m happy but I could be happier”, your delusional. If you think an affair is going to fix your emptiness, it will just add to it. Also men that cheat hang out and “run” with other men that cheat. If you are looking for a good guy, you need to look at his friends. If they are clearly players, so is your intended. Don’t ignore obvious clues. Men that don’t cheat, don’t hang out with men that do. Well kept secret.The silent treatment is worse than physical abuse. Don’t do it and don’t put up with it. I don’t mean being quiet for an hour, I mean clear and obvious silent treatment that is designed to psychologically abuse you. This is the tool of use of personality disordered people. When called on it, they say “what are you talking about”.Don’t be too hard on yourself. Being overly critical of yourself can trigger shame or worse, toxic shame. Come to terms with a universal truth; to become old and wise, you will first need to be young and foolish. Its all part of the process. Self loathing over mistakes is counterproductive. Don’t waste too much time beating yourself up. But don’t waste too much time learning the same lessons over and over either.Holding a grudge or not forgiving someone is the same as drinking poison hoping the other person will die. Forgiveness is the gift we give ourselves. Forgiveness cleanses your soul, allows you to break free of the person that hurt you and changes your entire spirit. A lack or inability to forgive is directly tied to the retention of anger and contempt. A toxin that kills you from the inside. The problem with poison is you usually spill it on yourself while trying to give it to your enemy. If you believe in God, the best way to forgive someone is to pray for God to bless them, their life, their health and their prosperity etc. When you pray for God to bless your enemies or someone that you hate/cant stand etc., it releases you fairly quickly. Also if you believe in God and you refuse to forgive someone, that means you walk in unforgiveness. As in you are not forgiven. And that is a scary notion to me. If you don’t believe in God and don’t pray, good luck on dealing with forgiveness.If you are conflicted about the existence of God (Intelligent Design VS Evolution) read “ Darwin’s Black Box” or the “The Case for Christ”. You will find the authors backgrounds to be interesting. Also read the Drake Equation. It’s the math behind other planets holding intelligent life likely capable of communicating with us. The end result is that it is believed to be around 10 to 15 planets, in our light cone.Don’t loan money to friends or family. Give it to them. This will lessen your future disappointment. You loan money to people you never want to see again. Believe me it works.Men are terrible at guessing at what a woman wants or needs. I strongly suggest you learn to tell the man in your life what you need or want. His inability to guess is not proof that he doesn’t care, it is proof that you don’t know anything about men. This includes understanding that men are problem solvers. When you are simply wanting him to listen to you vent about something and then he seems to be thinking and processing, he’s working on a solution, one you are not interested in. So you simply say at the beginning “I am not looking for you to fix anything or give me a suggestion, I just need you to listen for a few minutes”. WE DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU WANT UNLESS YOU TELL US. If we did know what you needed without you telling us, we would be called women.If you want to achieve a higher calling in life, figure out how to get rid of pride and how to stop being offended. These are simply people expressing their opinion, often to be manipulative. Pride and offense triggers anger. You would be better off dragging a dead body behind you than carrying around pride, offense and anger. Those three little issues will sabotage and poison every part of your life.Know the definition of Betrayal Trauma and Trauma Bond. Learn about it before your in it. These are two patches of quick sand you need to avoid. You will have friends that you ask yourself, “why the hell does she put up with his constant lying, cheating and bs”. That would be a Trauma Bond. Or “ why can’t he just get over that crazy, psychotic bitch”. That would be Betrayal Trauma. Read up!It is scientifically proven that humans are built to change based upon what their brain hears coming from their mouth. You must work to deny your mouth from speaking negatively about yourself, others, goals etc. Especially about yourself. Speak those things you seek to be and achieve, out loud to your brain, your mind. Write it down and READ IT OUT LOUD TO YOURSELF. Read Battlefield of the Mind, by Joyce Meyer. Limit your time around people that are negative. That feeling you get around them is called ‘soul sucking’. Recognize negative thoughts as self talk. We listen to ourselves. Start telling that same voice to quiet down, shut up and listen. Turn negative self listening into positive self talk. These negative discussions are called strongholds. They must be broken and denied.When in conflict, negotiations or conflict resolution assume the other person or people are smarter than you, have more experience and have information you do not have. Never fall into the trap of thinking you are the smartest person in the room. Humility will serve you well, all throughout your life. With more education and experience, so will your doubt increase.Go to www.yourbias.is. Learn how to avoid the 24 most common defects in our thinking. Print it, read it and come to understand how your brain is wired. Especially the Dunning-Krueger effect and the Sunk Cost Fallacy. If you want to radically change your life, know and understand how your brain works. You can’t change your IQ, you just need to increase your knowledge and understanding of you what you are, where you fit, why you exist and most of all, what you can do for other people and the world around you. If you spend the majority of your time trying to figure out what to do for yourself, how to be “happy” and why you are not, boy are you in for a surprise.Lastly,As you get older your desire should turn to honing and finishing your character. Finished character means that you are quick to listen, slow to anger, slow to speak, you hold your tongue and replace its venom with honey. You come to appreciate each persons struggle and you begin to have a heart for people. And finally you have a bottomless capacity for love, even towards those that cause or have caused you extreme pain. I was unable to do this or to truly understand the items above without having a relationship with God. More pointedly, Salvation. The gift that keeps on giving!God Bless!If you are climbing the corporate ladder, here is some additional advice you might find helpful.Molly Dooker's answer to What are the biggest lessons you have learned in the corporate world?God Bless.MD

I'm very excited for you. You're 20 years old. When I was 20 I was busy saving money that I would end up losing. When I was 22 I was thrown out of graduate school and then fired from 3 jobs in a row at higher and higher salaries where I saved nothing.When I was 24 I moved to NYC and began the first of about ten career changes.In that time I made a lot of money. Then lost a lot. Then made a lot. Then lost a lot. Then made a lot more.I did this so many times I made a study of what was working for me on the way up. And what wasn't working on the way down.So I'm not an expert on anything. I just know what has worked for me to create massive success.First off, don't bother saving money. You get more money in the bank by making more money. That's rule #1.Buying coffee on the street instead of in a Starbucks is the poor man's way to get rich. In other words, you will never get rich by scratching out ten cents from your dollar.People save 10 cents on a coffee and then....overpay $100,000 for a house and then do reconstruction on it.Or they save 10 cents on a book and then...buy a college degree that they never use for $200,000.Now your real education can begin:A) Don't save money. Make more. If you think this is not so easy then when you walk in a certain direction then eventually you will get there.B) That said, don't spend money on the biggest expenses in life. House and college. Just saving on these two things alone is worth over a million dollars in your bank account.C) But doesn't renting flush money down the toilet? No, it doesn't. Do the math. You can argue all you want but the math is very clear as long as you are not lying to yourself.D) Haven't studies shown that college graduates make more money 20 years later?No, studies have not shown that. They show correlation but not causation and they don't take into account multi-collinearity (it could be that the children of middle class families have higher paying jobs later and, oh by the way, these children also go to college).E) Don't invest in anything that you can't directly control every aspect of. In other words...yourself. You can't make or save money from a salary.And salaries have been going down versus inflation for 40 years. So don't count on a salary. You're 20, please take this advice alone if you take any advice at all.F) If you want to make money you have to learn the following skills. None of these skills are taught in college. I'm not saying college is awful. I'm just saying that the only skills needed to make money will never be learned in college:- how to sell (both in a presentation and via copywriting)- how to negotiate (which means win-win, not war)- creativity (take out a pad, write down a list of ideas, every day)- leadership (give more to others than you expect back for yourself)- networking (a corollary of leadership)- how to live by themes instead of goals (goals will fail you)- reinvention (which will happen repeatedly throughout a life)- idea sex (get good at coming up with ideas. Then combine them. Master the intersection)- the 1% rule (every week try to get better 1% physically, emotionally, mentally)- "the google rule" - give constantly to the people in your network. The value of your network increase linearly if you get to know more people but EXPONENTIALLY if you and the people you know, get to know and help each other.- how to fail so that a failure turns into a beginning- simple tools to increase productivity- how to master a field. You can't learn this in school with each "field" being regimented into equal 50 minute periods. Mastery begins when formal education ends. Find the topic that sets your heart on fire. Then combust.- stopping the noise: news, advice books, fees upon fees in almost every area of life. Create your own noise instead of falling in line with the others.If you do all this you will gradually make more and more money and help more and more people. At least, I've seen it happen for me and for others.I hope this doesn't sound arrogant. I've messed up too much by not following the above advice.Don't plagiarize the lives of your parents, your peers, your teachers, your colleagues, your bosses.Create your own life.I wish I were you because if you follow the above, then you will most likely end up doing what you love and getting massively rich and helping many others.I didn't do that when I was 20. But now, at 46, I'm really grateful I follow the above rules.