Academic Success
Step Two: The Law Of Attraction – Focus on What you Want, Not What You Don’t Want
This is the second secret to academic success. If you haven’t already, please read secrets one as well as steps three through six, so you become familiar with all the components that will help you succeed.
Please Feel free to download the exercise of National Examination for High School Package II, Code A Natural Science Program
Those of you who have seen the movie “The Secret” are already familiar with the Law of Attraction. For those who have not seen the movie, the Law of Attraction essentially says this: when you place your attention, or focus on, a particular goal, you increase the potential for achieving that goal. Oprah Winfrey continually makes reference to this law, often saying, “What you focus on expands.”
Keep your focus on that which you seek to accomplish rather than on what you seek to avoid. It is a common phenomenon for students to come our tutoring center with the hopes of getting a high score on the SAT. This is great! We support that! But what is very important for the student, in addition to having this goal, is to keep the focus on the goal rather than the temporary setbacks that often happen along the way. See if this sounds familiar. A student sets a goal, something along the lines of I intend to increase my chemistry grade from a C to an A. So they study for the weekly quizzes, take better notes and pay more attention in class. Then, the teacher gives a particularly hard quiz, and the student’s score drops down a bit. The student is crushed. The entire walk home, she tells herself I am so stupid, I am never going to ‘get’ chemistry, I am not smart enough, what’s the use? That evening, her best friend calls and asks about the chemistry test, and the negative focus continues, I messed up! What is this student focusing on? The exact opposite of her original goal!
It is much more valuable to focus on what you want to achieve. An alternative response to the temporary setback of the more challenging chemistry quiz grade would have been, okay so what can I learn from this? What information can I extract from this situation that will better help me to achieve my goal of an A in chemistry? Perhaps I can ask the teacher for some outside help after class; perhaps I can compare the questions on the quiz to my notes and figure out if the teacher tends to pull the question from the textbook or from the notes covered in class so I can maximize my potential for success. This continual focus, along with your intention and goal setting process discussed in secret three, will maximize your potential for academic success.