Persistence Is The Key – Very Much Needed Before The Exams

“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:

• Everyday and in every way I am getting closer to my goal of becoming a chartered accountant;
• I can see myself holding the chartered accountancy degree in the attempt of May 2015;
• I am very well prepared for the May 2015 exams and I will surely pass in this attempt;
• 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…

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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.