Letting go

The art of letting go of a situation that doesn’t make you happy, or isn’t helping you become successful is a beautiful, yet difficult thing. Usually something which we have to let go of for our own benefit is hard; this situation, routine or person that you have to let go of may have been installed in your life for a long time, so it only seems natural and comfortable to remain where you are.

Whilst going through the process of essentially deciding whether or not to let go, personal judgement can become cloudy. Your mind is so habituated to see the pros of the situation, which can lead to you completely disregarding the factors that make you want to let go in the first place. Through seeing the positives, it’s only natural to want to carry on with whatever this situation may be.

I believe that if you are in this situation, self validation is crucial; By loving and respecting your own mental, physical and spiritual well being, your view can become kind of like that of a third person party. No matter how determined you are to see the positives in this, your mind will force you to see it for what it really is. No matter how difficult this may be, your instincts are always correct. If you feel as though leaving the situation is what you want, and need in order to feel safe, secure and happy then it is vital to do so.

Personally, I believe accumulating all the positives which can come out of this choice can allow you to see the silver lining it what may seem like a very confusing and regretful situation. By allowing myself to let go of something which wasn’t good for me, it was upsetting at first; I always had “what if’s” in the back of my mind. However I soon came to realise that if these “what if’s” were legitimate, they would have happened by now. This is when you really start to realise the decision to let go and put yourself first was the best. If something or somebody is not bringing positivity and optimism into your life, as hard as it may seem, the best thing to do is to let go. This isn’t selfish, it’s simply giving yourself the love and security needed.

Dealing with a lack of motivation

The foundation of all motivation, depends on one question of how bad do you want to succeed. If you want something bad enough and you really want it to happen, you are motivated to the max. The question is, do you really thoroughly want to succeed? And if not, why is that? Get to the bottom of this question and find out what you can do to make you want to succeed in school, college, university or work. Focus on the higher purpose of your education; getting offers to your favorite university? earning a prestigious degree? If you want to succeed in life bad enough, some lack of motivation to study or procrastinating over something you should be doing will not be a difficult obstacle to overcome.

Without a real goal, life can become really unfocused and pointless. Without aims and dreams, you have nothing really exciting to do, no task or anything that motivates you and gets you going. Change that, by thinking about some goals that really excite you.

To be truly motivated, you need to have hunger. Having mere desire won’t take you through difficult times since you don’t want things badly enough. In many cases, hunger makes the difference between success and average. How can you have hunger? Your cause and your dream play a big role here. If you have a cause you care about and a big dream related to it, you should have the hunger inside of you. If you think that you are losing hunger, all you need to do is to connect again to your cause and dream and let them inspire you and bring the hunger back.

 

Habits to encourage a productive day.

 

1.       Set daily goals.

By setting and achieving daily goals, you are becoming closer to your long-term goals, and it really helps to prevent feeling overwhelmed. It helps you to acknowledge what you have achieved during the day and having a checklist of tasks to do helps you create momentum.

 

2.       Wake up early.

Waking up early increases the hours you get in a day hence more opportunity to achieve. Productivity levels tend to be higher in the morning and there tends to be fewer distractions. When you wake up at 5am, you start your day earlier than 99% of the world, giving you a head start in your day. This creates a feel good factor and creates a host of positive effects. It will motivate you to stay ahead so you can maintain the lead.

 

3.       Planning tomorrow.

At the end of your day, evaluate what you have achieved and what still needs to be done. Feeling gratitude is a nice way of closing your day and putting your mind into perspective for your agenda the next day; It will help you to get to work right away without having to think about what needs to be done.

 

4.       Focus on what you’re doing

Most people spend the majority of their time watching and observing other people. Emulating or comparing. On the other hand, insanely productive people spend very little if any of their time worrying about what other people, are doing. This is as a distraction from work.

 

 

 

Finding motivation when you’re feeling burnt out.

After working and focusing for long hours my brain physically begins hurting, usually due to feeling overwhelmed so I easily become unmotivated to do any work, which I know I know I need to be doing. When I being to feel like this, I understand it is my body telling me to take a break for an hour or so, so that I can recuperate; this is very important to do so. Once I have relaxed for a while I have to build back up the energy and motivation to get up and work again and I have several ways I do this.

I remind myself of long term goals. This helps me to see the bigger picture and I realise that working towards them is more important than feeling lazy. I tend to do this by writing down grades and ambitions I want to achieve, or another thing I do EVERYTIME, is visit the Cambridge University website and look through the course I want to do which gives me that massive boost of motivation I need.

I also have a pinterest board with inspirational quote, study tips, and materialistic things. This helps me to visualize success and the reasons why I’m doing this in the first place. My favourite inspirational quote is “success is not an act, it’s a habit”- Aristotle. I follow several blogs that address motivation and success including wealthy gorilla, every day power blog and Forbes.

During the past week, I’ve been using a bullet journal. I use it to write down checklists of reasonable goals I need to achieve in that day. By looking at this, it reminds me that I have work to do and there is a lot of satisfaction of crossing one of the list out once I’ve completed this. Keeping this journal also helps me to keep on top of my work and helps minimize feeling overwhelmed. If I need to study, I find that clearing my desk and organizing my files tends to help and clear my mind.

If I need to study but I can’t bring myself to do it, I have a playlist of motivational videos, My favourite is definitely the one called no excuses by motivational madness and as strange as it sounds, listening to them actually helps. I also find watching other students video beneficial as I become inspired to do more.

“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing–that’s why we recommend it daily.” –Zig Ziglar

Achieving A*/A’s.

Achieving the first A*, regardless whether that be in mock exams or official exams, for me, was a pivotal moment which empowered and fed my hunger for academic success. A huge myth surrounding people who achieve straight A*’s is that they are “smart” or have “an above average IQ”.  Personally, I am not naturally smart and I would consider myself to have a fairly average IQ. The truth about people who achieve A*’s is that they work hard, so once you have stopped watching 5 and a half hours of cat videos on Youtube every night you can begin to achieve.

-Find out what kind of learner you are.

A fundamental key to revision that sticks is finding out what type of learner you are. There are three types; visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. Visual learners learn best through diagrams, mind map’s, highlighting key aspects or colour coding different ideas. Auditory learners learn best through listening. Some revision ideas for auditory learners include watching videos, recording yourself and replaying it back, teaching somebody else, and repeating facts aloud. Kinesthetic learners achieve the most through physically doing something whether this be experiments, demonstrating concepts, or talking ideas through with others.

-Tailoring your revision to the way you’re assessed.

Ways of assessment can range from essays, to regurgitating facts and processes, to applying ideas to different concepts, so by tailoring your revision to your examination, you can master what will come up in the exam. For example in English literature, you are assessed through essays, typically about key themes, concepts or characters, so for revision, practicing essay questions on key themes, concepts and characters seems the right way to go.

– Past papers and mark schemes.

By doing past papers, you gain experience with exam style questions and the way in which the examiner expects you to think. By using the mark schemes, you are exposed to model answers which will give you a good idea of what the examiner is looking for. It also improves your time management skills as you will need to spend less time in the exam articulating what you want to say. Utilising past papers also gives you knowledge about frequently occurring topics which helps you direct your revision. Past papers can also help to indicate gaps in your knowledge so that you can fill them.

-Using the specification.

The specification outlines every single topic which could come up in the exam so becoming over familiar with it is very beneficial. The specification can be found on your exam board’s website.

 

 

Self love after a break up.

Going through a break up was probably the worst thing at the time but thinking rationally about the situation really helped me to see the silver lining. Being single opened a lot of doors; and not in the way you’d think, of the opportunity to go on dates or speak to other guys, but in terms of personal growth and being able to focus 100% of my energy on myself and developing as a person. I have had the time to focus solely on school and invest all my energy into succeeding. I have the space to get to know who I truly am and learn to love that. What matters is healing the parts of myself that had been traumatized. I wanted to do this part right. I wanted to do it right for myself. I know where I need to love myself more. I know what I need to let go of. I don’t need to rush it. There were many times where I’d come home at night and feel lonely so I’d browse dating apps because I lacked true love for myself. I was reaching out when I felt unworthy instead of understanding where these insecurities came from. I wanted someone else to fill that void for me instead of doing the hard work myself. I took the time to explore who I really am and I answered some honest questions. I questioned my beliefs. I questioned what true happiness was. I questioned what was important in life. Through the process of getting to know myself, I am content with being on my own, and I have learnt to enjoy my own company.

I figured that the relationship I have with myself is the only guaranteed relationship I will ever have as others will come and go. The quality of the relationship I have with myself will determine the quality of my relationship with others. I tackled loneliness first. I started to spend more time in my own company. Solitude and silence became bliss. These practices helped me to dive deeper within myself and helped me to feel stronger and more secure. Finding myself was about realizing I am a whole and complete person on my own. I understand that I am capable of satisfying my own needs and desires, and knowing I can make my own dreams come true. It’s about being comfortable on my own and having a strong relationship with myself and embracing that.

 

Self motivation and staying motivated.

Through motivation, opportunities arise and potential is acknowledged, however becoming motivated and staying motivated proves to be a common challenge for many people I know. Over the last year especially, I’ve been working on self motivation and thought in depth on how to make it stick.

1. Mindset

The fundamental building block of motivation; your mindset. Having the mindset that “I can grow today” and having the right attitude will set you up with an optimistic outlook for whatever you want to achieve. Relate your mindset to the laws of attraction; positive thinking produces positive results; Contrast this with a negative attitude of “I can’t do this” or “I won’t do this”, analyse the different results each mindset produces, and then the importance of having a radiant mindset will become clear to you.

2. Why?

Successful people always have their own big why. Picture your “why” as your driving force to success. Without a reason for your grind and graft, you will struggle to feel motivated long term. Having an end goal which you can visualize down to the minor details can pick you up on a day where you are slacking and not giving 100% of your energy and effort. Personally, my big why is the idea that I want to become anomalous from the statistics of young people in the area which I live, or to prove people who have doubted me wrong, or more importantly, prove to myself that I can and will achieve the goals I have set myself.

3. Surrounding yourself with like minded people.

“You are the average of the five people you surround yourself with.” We are being raised in a society full of criticism, negativity and people who have given up on their ambitions. When you’re surrounded with so much negativity, it’s easy to believe that you wont amount to anything. This is why surrounding yourself with like minded, goal- orientated people is essential and in my opinion; one of the essential keys to motivation. The people we surround ourselves with influence us in subtle yet profound ways; if you associate with people who are successful, their habits will rub off on you and you will pick up their ways of thinking. Tailor your network to people who are on the same wave length as you and who will encourage, inspire and motivate you.

Why I love education.

I love education because it is a potent tool I am using, and plan to continue using for many years to disprove local statistics, the stigma surrounding male dependent women and expectations of women not pursuing fulfilling careers in modern day society. I love education because it supplies me with the liberty to express my capability whilst being able to push myself to the limits everyday, granting me with an overwhelming sense of satisfaction, but most importantly; to achieve my goals.

As a student, I have the aspirations of achieving the grades and A-levels required to go to my dream university; the University of Cambridge to study a degree in psychological and behavioral sciences. I plan to ace this degree with flying colours then progress onto a masters, then gradually onto a PhD. My dream is to have a trademark name on my very own private psychology practice, and be able to look back in 20 years time and salute the fact I broke free from that social stigma and the typical conventions I was expected to conform to regarding education.