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20. Leave high school forever
Most of us feel like we’ve been left stranded in high
school forever. Like something happened there that
we’ve never shaken off.
Before high school, in our earlier and more carefree
childhoods, we were creative dreamers filled with a
boundless sense of energy and wonder.
But in high school something got turned around. For
the first time in our lives, we began fearing what other
people were thinking of us. All of a sudden our mission
in life became not to be embarrassed. We were afraid to
look bad, and so we made it a point not to take risks.
I’ll never forget something that happened to my
friend, Richard Schwarze, in high school. (He is now a
respected photographer, and I won’t need to ask his
permission to tell this story about him.) Richard and I
were walking home from school one day and all of a sud-
den he stopped in his tracks, his face frozen with hor-
ror. I looked at him and asked what was wrong. I thought
he was about to suffer some kind of seizure. He then
pointed down at his pants and wordlessly showed me
where his belt had missed a loop!
“I spent the whole day like this!” he finally said. It
was impossible for him to measure what everybody
thought of him as they passed him in the halls, perhaps
seeing the belt had missed a loop. The damage to his
reputation was probably beyond repair.
That was high school.
Today when I give my seminars on motivation, I love
the periods when I take questions from the audience.
But many times I can see the painfully adolescent looks
of self-consciousness on people’s faces when they pon-
der the risk of asking a question in front of the group.