B2 - Raul Cuero

While watching the video on Living Smart, I learned a lot about Raul Cuero. His life story, his accomplishments, his adversity, and his tips in life. In 1948 Raul Cuero was born in Columbia. He comes from a family of 7 who never had much in life. When he was young he started to be very observant of things, such as the roaches on the floor that he would study because he didn't have a bed to sleep in. As Raul got older he realized that he had to break away from his town if he ever wanted to make something of himself. This is why he got interested in sports such as, soccer and basketball but basketball was the main thing that helped him. He ended up being on his national team, graduated college, moved to America, and eventually became a Microbiologist. In the video, we get concepts from him that we can apply to our everyday life. 

One concept that we can apply to our everyday life is not limiting yourself to what society thinks of you. This is something that Raul said in the video based on his experience in life. So basically he was very known for his basketball career but he knew that there was more to him intellectually. Because he knew that there was more to him than what people saw he tried very hard to get this other side of him shown. He didn't take this comment toward him negative though which is surprising, he took this positively and realized that he needed to improve. This is when he decided to take matters into his own hands and work even harder in school. He wanted to prove everyone wrong that there was more to him than they thought. So if you used the concept of not limiting yourself to what society thinks you will be motivated to accomplish more things than you ever thought you could and prove them wrong and prove to yourself that you're capable as long as you work hard enough. 

Another concept that we can apply to our everyday life is the importance of learning by doing things. Something that Raul talked about is how you can't just sit inside and learn, you need to do more than that. You need to learn through experiences, exploring, questioning, and doing. One of the main things he said was that you should be doing all of these things, that I just stated,  instead of just receiving because you won't be able to fully learn everything. An example of this is when he stated that creativity had nothing to do with art or technology. It has to do with how you perceive nature in relation to your existence. So in his mind, this meant that you have to be a good observer. When people stay inside too much they are limiting themselves to what they can learn.