7 Habits of Highly Successful Students - Habit II

7 Habits of Highly Successful Students - Habit II

Habit II :: Believe the Unbelievable

Welcome back. I trust you have pondered over Habit I.

The next habit is one that differentiates the overachievers from the average performers. It concerns your beliefs, or the mental notions and assumptions you have about yourself and the world around you, which you hold onto as absolute truths.

Beliefs are emotional, psychological and often irrational. Yet they form a set of guiding principles that govern how you perceive your world and determine the choices you make. They form the bridge between your inner reality (your thoughts, emotions, and attitude) and your outer reality (people, places, and events). In other words, your beliefs formulate your responses to the happenings in your life.

The absence of control over one's beliefs is the primary source of limiting beliefs. I once had a student who scored badly for a test early in the academic year. Her friends ridiculed her by saying that perhaps second year in middle school was getting too difficult for her. Motivated by these adverse remarks, she studied harder for the next test, only to score just as badly. Consequently, her teacher requested that she attend extra lessons, together with the other students who had failed. Based on these experiences, my student unknowingly developed a belief that she was incompetent. Her grades started declining rapidly and her self-esteem deteriorated so quickly that by mid-year, she had become a different person.

The truth is that the girl wasn't the slightest bit incompetent. She had done fairly well in school in the past, and had shown the potential to do much better. Her limitation, however, lay in her mind. She had interpreted her experiences as an indication of having limited intelligence. As a result, she became certain that she was doomed to achieve academic failure. Her belief had become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Unfortunately, most students do not possess conscious control over their power to believe. They go through their lives taking minimal notice of their thought processes, such as how the mind moves, what it fears, what it heeds, what it says to itself, and what it brushes aside. They do not question their beliefs, but instead treat them like gospel. Consequently, they allow their inner realities to constantly react with their outer realities. In such cases, the Power to Believe destroys the possibilities of the present and future. These students will remain mediocre and achieve nothing more than average grades.

Therefore, to become an overachieving student and get the best grades in school, you will need to remove the virtual boundaries you have established in your mind. Tear down the walls of possibilities and believe the unbelievable. Make a habit out of it and you will see yourself achieving the top grades that you have always dreamed of!

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