Self-Control and Score Outcomes
Overcoming adversity and competition to achieve great success always depends, at least in part, on willpower. No less a luminary than the Dalai Lama joined the chorus in praise of this trait when he said, “We all have the power of thought – so what are you lacking? If you have willpower, then you can change anything.” I’ve shared some thoughts on how willpower leads to higher scores as well. Willpower can be defined as the ability to resist urges, impulses, and short-term gratification in pursuit of long-term goals or objectives. We’re always fighting urges to eat what we shouldn’t, pay attention to something other than what is in front of us, or walk away from what we’re doing and just go back to bed. As a limited resource, willpower only lasts so long, especially under sustained stress. Test prep, obviously, demands lots of willpower. For greater success in our…
Building the Habit of Success
Where does success come from? To paraphrase Will Durant paraphrasing Aristotle, we are what we repeatedly do. Success, then is not an act but a habit. Too many imagine the accomplishment of their most ambitious goals as a deviation from their normal routines, when such achievement is actually the culmination of what a person does day after day. Do you want to be successful? The surest way to improve the quality of your life and work is to emulate the example of other successful people: Read a lot Practice deliberately Work every day Minimize distractions Take care of your mind and body Obviously, successful types also follow more specialized strategies based on their fields; Olympic athletes train differently than, say, world leaders. But regardless of the scope of your ambitions, you will go much farther by heeding Michael E. Angier’s advice: If you develop the habits of success, you will…
A Little Reading Every Day
Reading, at least as far as Jim Rohn is concerned, is essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary. Yet far too many teens who aspire to the latter cannot be bothered with the former. Too bad, as a regular reading habit not only leads to literacy but also throws off tons of ancillary benefits from happiness to serenity to community engagement. Despite the massive benefits from reading regularly, more than half of students average fewer than 15 minutes a day of reading. The true shame in this deficiency can be found in the implications of how much reading per day makes sense: 15 minutes seems to be the “magic number” at which students start seeing substantial positive gains in reading achievement; students who read just over a half-hour to an hour per day see the greatest gains of all. Reading ability–like so many skills–stems from regularity. Study…