There isn’t a limiting factor that cannot be conquered by passion.
“I’m not the smartest guy in the room.
I can’t do long division with a graphing calculator.
I struggle with reading comprehension, too.
But my academic struggles have never gotten in the way of my thirst for knowledge and serving others.
Passion trumps everything.”
Ray Zingler on X
They say education is wasted on the young and boy is that statement true with me.
Growing up, despite being a teacher’s kid, I struggled mightily in school.
ADD, ADHD, major pain in the ass, I was never diagnosed or medicated for any of it, but I believe I was damn near all of it.
I look back at it and recognize my problems in school were partly because of my learning struggles, but mainly because I just hated the idea of being stuck to a chair, inside, 8 hours a day learning about stuff that I believed to have little relevance to the real world. Or at least my perception of the real world.
I now understand it wasn’t education or knowledge that I hated, but the concept of schooling.
When it came to the training journals and bodybuilding magazines, I had no problem staying up until 2am absorbing every morsal information that I could, but ask me to do the same for a math test and see ya.
I, like hogs in a trailer rattled my way through school, got the piece of paper that proved it, and immersed myself in the real world.
As a lifelong entrepreneur, I slowed down my grass cutting and D-I-Myself moving businesses and went all in on the strength & conditioning business.
From 18-25 (thinking I “knew it all”) I kept my head down. Serving others, 60, 80, 100-hour weeks. I was all the way in.
At 25, I looked up for air and realized I created something, better said, my community who believed in me, helped me create something.
And you know what didn’t limit me one single bit?
My school hall, academic struggles.
If anything, as I got older and more mature, my very struggles became passions of mine.
Reading, writing, the basic “academic stuff” that I hated as a kid are now daily practices that contribute to my growth not only as a business owner, but an individual. They have been staples in my life for years.
The difference is, instead of having structured information thrown at me in a clinical environment, I am able to leverage education and all of it’s value in a free environment where critical and creative thinking are involved.
The way I believe it should be.
