Keep the Fire Alive
Shreya Kabir
You just heard a motivational talk and got all pepped to study with focus for the next 2 hours! You sit and make a long day plan with everything that you want to accomplish in the day! And when at the end of the day, you sit down to strike out all that you’ve completed; you realize that you didn’t even make half-way. Why does this happen, keeping all the other distracting factors constant? Why does your preparation start out with much pomp and show and then becomes a drag? Why does only disappointment remains in your hand, despite of such lofty aims?
The fizzling out of “enthusiasm” is a major reason behind this. The enthusiasm that you had before starting or maybe in the initial phase of your preparation soon dies out. This enthusiasm might stretch till some days or weeks or maybe months, but then it meets its unfortunate fate. The geography optional that you had so much interest in turns cumbersome and disinteresting! Or the toppers’ words gave you much motivation and you decided to follow in their footsteps, but soon enough those footsteps seem to vanish! This might be the story of most of you and it is very normal to feel this ‘loss of enthusiasm’.
Our human mind is wired such as to jump from one thought to another, one interest to another. You need to hold it on to keep your enthusiasm and motivation levels intact and achieve your goals. Loss of enthusiasm may also be the result of your deep-rooted habits such as procrastination, lack of proper-planning and many others. But, the one main reason behind all the reasons is that, you haven’t really aligned yourself according to the goal that you had made. You haven’t really inculcated habits like discipline, will power which are much needed to make it to your goal. This gives your monkey mind more reasons to wander on its own whims, lowering your enthusiasm and making your focus volatile.
In this high-attention requiring examination, you cannot afford to lose your enthusiasm and spirits. Till the time you are the slave of your fickle interests and attractions, success will be a distant dream. You need to deal with this rationally, reminding yourself of your commitment. Surely, this isn’t an easy job to do! But, you need to keep your enthusiasm high and unwavering. You need to anchor your interests and appetites in determination and tenacity.
So, how to keep this fire alive and away from the storms of fleeting interests that can extinguish this fire? You must:
- Make a track of your routine activities and see for yourself how much net productive time you spend. Whether it is spent on not so important activities or on ‘actual’ studying. If score high in the former, you know that you exercise some will power and discipline here.
- You will need to make tough choices between watching your TV show for half an hour and studying for 20 minutes! There are definitely sacrifices involved and you need to make them.
- Constantly remind yourself why you are doing and what you are doing. Even constantly question your actions, whether they are bringing you closer to your goals or simply burning up your time.
- Even in times of low motivation and enthusiasm, keep working and keep going on! You have a commitment and you “need” to fulfil it no matter what fleeting state your mind is in.
- Last but not the least, enthusiasm and motivation need their daily doses just like our body needs food every day. So, feed your mind with lot of enthusiasm and motivation on a daily basis and surround yourself with positive people.
Enthusiasm is one of the most important factors required to crack this examination! So, take care of your enthusiasm levels and keep refuelling yourself from time to time.
“There is a real magic in enthusiasm. It spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment.”
-Norman Vincent Peale
