America’s public school systems has some amazing teachers – some I know personally. But there are many teachers, administrators, and even advocates of the current system that are blind to the many failures the current system produces.

I was blessed to have some amazing people in my student years who challenged me to do better. And while I was often deaf to their voice or emotionally upset by their comments, I learned a few things…and even practiced one or two of them.

I hope that what follows can be included in any future curricula at any school in America. We need a return to this formula to truly Make America Great Again…political party differences notwithstanding.

Do you want to be the best you can be? Here are a few ideas about that noble and wonderful path:

1. Leave your ego at the door.

2. Be prepared to work harder than you’ve ever worked before. The only place where Success comes before Work is in the dictionary.

3. You must sacrifice good things that do not matter for the great things that do.

4. You must get ruthless with yourself.

5. You must forget everything you think you know about yourself. The only thing that matters is the generation of references to prove what you can do in the world of experience.

6. Mediocre people don’t like high performers. They will tell you to slow down, take a break, be realistic. You must speed up, keep going, and be “UNrealistic”.

7. You must make an ally out of two paradoxical principles: self-knowledge and faith. You need to have a clear understanding of where you stand at any given moment, but have a powerful belief in where you will be by working hard and getting better.

8. You must have a clear demarcation between what you believe and what you know. Don’t mix up the two.

9. Less than 1% of the people in this world are willing to do what it takes to push the limits and become the greatest they can be. That’s why they are the most prosperous and happy people on the planet.

10. You have no idea how jealous and petty people can become when you become great.