Imagine your ideal college experience.

Once you know why you’re going to college, imagine your ideal outcome.  Let it flow outward from the reason you’re there.  Whether you’ve already started college or not, stop and simply write down some attributes of your ideal experience.  Describe it in as much detail as you can.

Before I returned to school, I spent hours visualizing the kind of experience I wanted to have.  I saw myself being challenged but managing it easily and without stress.  I saw myself making new friends.  I saw myself having a really great time.  Most of all I imagined a very balanced experience — a blend of academics, activities, socialization, and fun.  The keyword I used was “richness.”

This was a really important step.  I didn’t understand the mechanism at the time, but I was pre-programming myself to succeed.  Whenever I encountered obstacles, my ideal vision was so much more compelling that I was always able to find a way to get what I wanted.  I became a co-creator of my experience instead of a passive victim of it.

Visualization allows you to make mistakes in advance.  If you can’t get a clear visualization, your experience is likely to be just as fuzzy.  Debug your visualization until it inspires you.

Real life will of course turn out differently than you visualize.  The point of visualization isn’t to predict the future or to restrict your freedom to decide later.  The point is to give you more clarity for making decisions right now.  Your ideal scene serves as a map that can guide you through the quagmire of options.

Answer the question, “Why am I going to college?”

 
Many college students really don’t have a clear reason for being there other than the fact that they don’t know what else to do yet.  They inherit goals from family and peers which aren’t truly their own.  That was how I started college.  Is this you as well?

As I’ve stated previously on this blog, the three-semester deal wasn’t my first time at college.  I had previously gone to college when I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to be there.  In high school I was a straight-A honors student, President of the math club, and captain of the Academic Decathlon team. 

That momentum carried me forward, and without really ever deciding if it was what I wanted, I found myself with four more years of school ahead of me.  It seemed like a good idea at the time, but my heart just wasn’t in it.  Consequently, I sabotaged myself in a big way.  I blew off my classes and got an education in parties and alcohol.  Apparently some administrator was biased against students whose GPA starts with a decimal point, so I was soon expelled.

That experience sent me into a bit of a tailspin.  I was in a funk for about six months, mostly just playing video games.  Finally in an attempt to re-ground myself, I got a retail sales job and tried to stay under the radar while taking some time to “find myself.”  That was the time I began developing an interest in personal development, and boy did it pay off.  A year later I was ready to go back to college, and I started over as a freshman.  But this time I knew why I was there.  I wanted to be a programmer, and I wanted to earn my Computer Science degree (I later added the Math degree).  But it was more than that.  I knew I was capable of a lot more, and I wanted to push myself.  I wanted to create the richest experience I could.  For me that meant a really dense schedule.

Your goals for college will likely be different than mine.  What are they?  Why are you there?  If you don’t know — and I mean really know it in your gut — then you have no focal point for your experience.  You may as well not even be there.  What is it about your experience that resonates as true for you?  What are you there to learn?  What do you want to experience?

live now

Learn from the past, set vivid, detailed goals for the future, and live in the only moment of time over which you have any control: now.

conquer

If you want to conquer fear, don't sit  and think about it. Go ahead and beat the world with your attitude. 

Inspirational words

You have to work too hard and too long to let anything stand in the way of your goals and you will not let yourself down. 

True words

Either you run the day or the day runs you.......

Action words

Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you. 

a lesson for motivation

A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others. 

Motivating

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.

Your playing small does not serve the world.

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking 

So that other people won't feel insecure around you.

We were all meant to shine, as children do.

It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,

We unconsciously give other people permission to do the same

As we are liberated from our own fear,

Our presence automatically liberates others.

Motivation

Our greatest teacher really is ourselves. Only we teach ourselves. Only we are the ones who make the decision to accept something and learn - no one else. We can listen to others, but in the end it is our choice to learn.

Peaceful day

Living a day with anger & bitterness equals to taking several steps backward from happiness, from people you love, and from your dreams. Anger & bitterness are only a waste of time. Want to make wise use of time?? Do what the mind CANNOT DO but what the heart CAN DO. That is to make peace with yourself, and then you can start forgiving.

success words

Human success is a quotation from overhead. - Charles H. Parkhurst

A well-cultivated mind is, so to speak, made up of all the minds of preceding ages; it is only one single mind which has been educated during all this time. - Bernard de Bovier de Fontenelle

Maxims are the condensed good sense of nations. - Sir J. Mackintosh

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind, than in the one where they sprung up. - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Always have a book at hand, in the parlor, on the table, for the family; a book of condensed thought and striking anecdote, of sound maxims and truthful apothegms. It will impress on your own mind a thousand valuable suggestions, and teach your children a thousand lessons of truth and duty. Such a book is a casket of jewels for your housebold. - Tryon Edwards

Stay Positive

Every bad situation will have something positive. Even a dead clock shows correct time twice a day. Stay positive in life. God knows what is the best for you.

Best Quotes

Never complain to people around you, learn how to complain to yourself alone for you to visualize your mistakes.

Motivational Quotes

"Unless you're willing to have a go, fail miserably, and have another go, success won't happen."

Phillip Adams

Attitude Quotes

"It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect It's successful outcome."
            William James

Positive Attitude Quotes

"I believe life is to be lived, not worked, enjoyed, not agonized, loved, not hated."
Leland Bartlett

Motivational proverb

One must be a wise reader to quote wisely and well. -Amos Bronson Alcott

The maxims of men disclose their hearts. - French Proverb

To select well among old things, is almost equal to inventing new ones. - Nicholas Charles Trublet

I have gathered a posie of other men's flowers, and nothing but the thread that binds them is my own. -Michel de Montaigne