“The key of persistence shall
open up any door that has been closed because of resistance”
I start my mornings usually by going up to my house terrace and
get a breath of fresh air. It feels
really nice when cool breeze hits your face and makes you feel highly refreshed
and relaxed. And this, followed by the
sunrise is a spectacular view to watch.
Everyday what I also notice is the activity of birds that makes
the whole morning environment quite chirpy.
You see thousands of birds flying here and there making it very difficult
to imagine if they are creating any particular pattern whilst in the air. Sometimes you see hundreds flocked and flying
together and sometimes you see only a couple of them sitting together trying to
identify what to do. Perhaps they are
mates trying to figure out their future J.
Whatever be the no of birds in the air, there is one thing
that clearly emerges out, i.e., their desire to go and fetch food or water for
themselves. You can notice each of them
fly down to a place that has some food, pick it up from their beak and then fly
down to a tree and sit and eat. Some of
them feed their children and relentlessly fly down to pick up food and eat
it. If you carefully watch them, you notice
a superb level of persistence, i.e. the ability to continuously fly down and
pick up food and fee the children or themselves and then again fly down to pick
up food. This process continues till the
time they are either no more hungry or are not left with any more food.
It is awesome to see their commitment to fly despite all
odds such as bad weather or a threat to get eaten by a cat or any other
animal. The birds continuously persist
in their motive to find food and never stop until they successfully achieve the
desired result.
What I wanted to bring out through the above illustration is
that if each one of us adopts the bird like attitude of continuously making the
effort to achieve our objectives, we can surely achieve our goals and
consequently, a much better life. The life of a student demands lot of hard work
and persistence and unless we develop that attitude, it is going to be very
difficult to survive and grow. Relentlessly
pursuing your objectives, filled up with the desire to achieve your goals is
the key to success and in my personal opinion people having that attitude are
the real winners.
A lot of students ask me – “Nimish, how do you develop
persistence or the attitude of not giving up on your dreams. They ask me that in this world there are so
many things to do and therefore, we sometime get lost in the mist. How do we keep moving with the flag of our
goal held high considering there are so many obstacles on the way”. These are highly relevant questions and more
important in today’s times when there are so many things to distract you. There has never been a time before today when
the world was inundated with so much information, so much media and so much
social networking. Today, people find it
very difficult to get away with Facebook and the temptation to not look at
WhatsApp whenever a new message arrives. Obviously, all these things including
TV form a major part of what I call the ‘Distraction Kitty’. The Distraction Kitty is nothing but a pool
of all the items distracting you from your goals and consequently, taking you
away from your dreams.
In my personal opinion the only way one can get away from your
Distraction Kitty is when you have a strong ‘Desire’. Unless and until you have a very strong
desire to achieve something, your Distraction Kitty is going to sway you away
from your dream goals. People who have
succeeded in life are the ones who have had very strong desire to become rich,
very strong desire to achieve success, very strong desire to create big organizations
and a very strong desire to change the world.
In addition to having a strong desire to achieve your goals,
there has to be a strong ‘Faith’ in your dreams. Unless you believe that something good is
going to happen to you, in my opinion no good will happen. You have to have a strong desire and that desire
has to be backed up with equivalent amount of faith. You would have heard stories of disabled
people climbing up mountains, or people without legs participating in cycling events
or children of slum dwellers clearing IAS or CA papers and topping the
charts. All these are brilliant examples
of the terms ‘desire’ plus ‘faith’. These
people have a very strong desire to achieve what they want and when they start
they have an unwavering faith in their capabilities and in their actions to
achieve the results. They simply ignore
the thought of giving up and that’s exactly what is needed to become a
champion.
From my personal experience I can share that when I was
doing CA, there was not even a single thought that ran in my mind whether I
would clear CA or not. I remember the
motley group of people in our firm and despite being different, all of us in
the batch of the year 1999 had one common desire – “the desire to become CA in
the year 2002”. And honestly, none of us
ever had any doubt in our ability to clear the exams. Our faith to pass was extremely strong it led
the majority of us including myself become CA in the minimum stipulated time.
Its end of March now and only a month left before May 2015
attempt appears before you. I think this
is the time to work extremely hard, burn the midnight oil and leave nothing to
chance. And along with hard work, have
faith in your capabilities and just believe in your self.
I want to suggest few tips that might help you develop faith
in your abilities, faith in yourself and the attitude that YOU WILL MAKE IT:
1.
Prepare a list of affirmations
For the next 45 days make a habit to say positive affirmations to
yourself. You have to convince your
subconscious mind that you are born to win and there is no way any obstacle can
deviate you from your goals.
I have been a staunch believer of affirmations and in a lot of my
previous blogs I have talked about how writing and loudly speaking out the
affirmations influence your subconscious mind.
Our subconscious mind gets influenced with images and words and the more
we affirm to ourselves that we can do it and that clearing examinations are
possible, the more our subconscious mind would make it a reality.
Some examples of affirmations you can use:
(a)
Everyday and in every way I
am getting closer to my goal of becoming a chartered accountant;
(b)
I can see myself holding
the chartered accountancy degree in the attempt of May 2015;
(c)
I am very well prepared for
the May 2015 exams and I will surely pass in this attempt;
(d)
There is nothing that can
stop me from achieving my goal to clear the papers in May 2015 attempt and I
can see myself very clearly becoming a chartered accountant.
Similarly, you
can create your own affirmations and read them loudly 5-6 times in a day.
2.
Emotionalize your affirmations
For affirmations to work in your favour, it is important to have strong
emotions in them. Emotionalizing means
putting lot of feelings so that the subconscious mind attracts the thoughts and
then put them into action.
Research on this topic has shown that when emotions are thrown in the
thoughts and mixed with faith, the subconscious mind gets charged up and
ensures that the same gets materialized.
It may sound slightly cheeky to you, but this concept has been proven
scientifically and has been used by top performers.
When you are speaking your affirmations loudly, feel as if you have
already got what you want and you are already in possession of your desired
object. If your desire is to clear the
exams then whilst speaking your affirmations completely submerge yourself with
the thought that you have already received the CA degree and behave the way you
would behave when the results would be out in July 2015. Have the same feeling that you would have
when you would see your results. Have
complete faith that whatever you are speaking is going to get the desired
result for you.
3.
Be consistent
Whatever you do, be consistent with it.
Whether it is following the schedule you have prepared at the beginning or
revision that you do everyday before you pick up any new topic or saying
affirmations to yourself 5-6 times a day.
Be highly consistent with your actions.
Remember – “Consistency is the key to mastery”.
4.
Have a Bubble around you
At this stage it is critical to cancel
all the noises around you and completely focus on studies. There should not be anything that should take
priority than your studies, food and rest.
These are the only 3 things that should form part of your life for the
next 45 days and until the exams are over.
Create a mental bubble around
you so that nothing else other than the 3 things I mentioned above enter your
life. If there is anything else, just
don’t allow it. Do this consciously and
do it well. You cannot afford to play
with your career and with your parents and friends expectations. Just Do It!
5.
Don’t try to do too many things
I am sure you would know it but its better if not too many experiments
are done at this point of time. You have
nearly 45 days left and therefore, it is critical to be calm, positive and just
revise whatever you have studied so far.
It might be much better to revise properly what you have already studied
so far, rather than studying new topics.
I would like to end this article with a beautiful quote:
“If you want something you never
had, you have got to do something you have never done”
Wishing you all green lights and loads of good luck…
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Authored by
Nimish Goel (www.nimishgoel.com), a
qualified chartered accountant who’s passion is to coach young chartered
accountants and aspiring students achieve the best in their life. Nimish used to work with EY and PwC in India
and has also worked with KPMG in Europe.
He now runs his own consulting company and runs a blog
www.nimishgoel.com. He
can be reached for any queries and issues on his blog.
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