The First Lecture: 5 Things Newly Grads Might Want to Know

Few people know that I lost my cum laude medal during our after-graduation pictorial.

Maybe it was God’s reminder that high grades and awards can serve as entry-tickets to good companies, but not an assurance that all the pieces would fall into place once you leave school.

Two years later, allow me then to share five lessons I have learned after getting a few bruises and scratches in the “real world” (which burns by the way.)

1. Find your purpose (and everything else will follow)

If your heart and your talents are not in synch with your course, you would most likely be frustrated when you are already working.

That applies even if your grades did not miraculously reflect your misery, and even if you instantly landed a job with a fat paycheck. Sooner or later, you would be dragging yourself to work, wondering why you cannot find satisfaction and fulfillment in what you are doing. Worse, you might be stuck at being average, because it is hard to push for excellence when you are not a hundred percent committed.

But what if you do not know your purpose? Or what if you are tailor-fitted for a certain course, but the future salary range will barely cover you and your family’s needs?

They say our purpose lies where our passion meets our potential. If you are good at something and you get a kick out of doing it, then maybe it is what you are put here to do.

Ironically, the money will follow from there. The universe has a way of rewarding those who live out their purpose. I’m betting Manny Pacquaio and Steve Jobs will not achieve their level of success if they swapped careers.

For those who want to be their own bosses someday but are not yet confident to start so early after school, you may find helpful Dado Banatao’s advice (who is considered the Bill Gates of the Philippines):  find a good job in a good company, take advantage of the trainings they offer, and gain experience and knowledge as much as you can. Then after two years or so, you can already stake out on your own.

The above advice may not work for everyone, but I’m throwing it in case you find it useful. The endpoint is, all of us must honor our dreams and do what we are supposed to do here on Earth before it’s too late, before that final, inevitable “graduation” happens.

2. Maintain life balance

In the corporate world, “work-life” balance is a popular term because burnout is very common.

If you find yourself working most hours with no time left for other meaningful activities, and getting constantly sick and tired, then chances are you are already burned out. 

I believe most cases of burnout are subject to Advise #1. As the saying goes, find a job you love, and you will never work a day in your life.

But, even if you cheerfully go to work and do not really mind the long hours since you absolutely love what you are doing, then maintaining what I preferably call “life balance”  – finding time to nourish the other important aspects of your life – is still crucial.

Brian Dyson, CEO of Coca-Cola Enterprises, explains it well in this analogy:

“Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling five balls in the air. You name them – work, family, health, friends and spirit – and you’re keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back.

But the other four balls – family, health, friends and spirit – are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged, or even shattered. They will never be the same.”

I also encourage you to join organizations, volunteer groups, or a spiritual community. Not only will it contribute to society, but also to your growth as a person. You may think of it as a waste of time at first, but once you see how it widens your perspective and makes you more grateful of your blessings, you will not regret sharing your time.

3. Develop financial literacy

Once you get your first salary, it can be tempting to blow it off in all those wonderful things you were not able to afford when you were still studying. There’s nothing wrong in enjoying your hard-earned salary, but don’t overuse the phrase “I deserve this...” else you will just be another broke employee who lives from paycheck to paycheck.

Learn to pay yourself first – in the proper way. Many employees, upon receiving their salary, pay their landladies, the electric company, Smart, Globe, Samsung, etc., forgetting to take their portion out first. In short, they fail to save, and accordingly, fail to invest for their future.

It would take many books to discuss financial literacy, and I hope you will set aside time to read some of my recommendations. Aside from Robert Kiyosaki’s popular Rich Dad, Poor Dad, you can check the locally-published 8 Secrets of the Truly Rich by Bo Sanchez and Kuntento Ka Na Ba sa Kaperahan Mo by Vic and Avelyn Garcia. They helped upgrade my almost zero financial literacy to a decent level. You can also start by reading one of my blog posts about financial literacy.

4. Have standards (and stick to them)

One of our high school teachers once advised us “Society may have a low standard, but always aspire to have a higher standard. It does not mean that you put yourself in a pedestal, but you should not have a low standard.”

Once you go out into the real world, you will encounter situations where your integrity and morality will be challenged. If you have managed to avoid bad influences in college and surround yourself with good friends, I applaud you, and encourage you to stay strong in holding on to your values since you will be venturing into another kind of jungle.

Needless to say, the world needs more role models – honest people like Jesse Robredo who have not been lured into the dark side of wealth and power.

At the risk of sounding a prude, that also applies to matters of chastity. For those who are being ridiculed for being old-fashioned, then just tell them vintage is rare and expensive. Seriously, it is not about holding on to some outdated, irrelevant, mothballed belief, but it is about valuing yourself enough to wait for someone who respects and deserves you.

But there is always hope and second chances, and if suddenly you have found yourself in the off side of life due to some bad decisions, you can make up by owning to your actions, learning your mistakes, and choosing to live in the light again.

Be a rebel – don’t go with the crowd even if everyone else is doing it when you know it is not the right thing to do. You are worth it and you should not let other people’s skewed beliefs hinder you from becoming the great person that you are.

5. Fail your way to success

Yes, you heard it right. As Soichiro Honda puts it: “Success can be achieved only through repeated failure. My success represents the one percent of the work that resulted from the 99 percent that was called failure.”

It may sound at odds with the previous advice but let me put it this way – we are talking here about “good” mistakes which are stepping stones to success and not failings of integrity or morality.

With that in mind, it is okay to make mistakes. A whole bunch of them actually. Because what separates the successful people from the unsuccessful ones is that they have made more mistakes, and thus were able to learn more from them. They know if they persist long enough, they will win.

By trying and trying again, they rule out the options that do not work until they found out that one gem of an idea which works. Ask Colonel Sanders, who was rejected 1009 times before a restaurant took a chance on his chicken recipe, and the rest was KFC.

To be honest, this is the lesson I found the hardest to absorb. Whenever I make a mistake, I feel bad because I take it as a sign that maybe I am too young, too inexperienced, or maybe not that good enough. My thought then was that “If as early as now, I am already failing, then how much more in the future?”

I had this messed up belief that success is built upon a string of success, and I unwind everything I worked hard for whenever I fail. Until I learned that nothing can be further from the truth, because the real foundation of success is failures wisely learned from.

If you are not making mistakes, then that either means: you are perfect and you know everything there is to know (but where’s the fun in that?) or you are playing it safe. But, growth only comes with pain and if you want to live your life fully, then your comfort zone is the worst place to camp in.

That is true whether you are still searching for your purpose, honing your financial knowledge, or pursuing any of your goals.
As Og Mandino said “Failure will never overcome you if your determination to succeed is strong enough.”

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