Student Life (Self-Limiting Beliefs)!

As a student we receive several feedbacks from our teachers and also from parents. Some of these feedbacks are positive and some are negative.

Now how we perceive these feedback affect our career. It’s not because of particular teacher’s negative feedback, but acceptance of that feedback by us is the main reason affecting our career.

How improper feedback works?

We shall understand this with few examples. If you as a student receive feedback that you are not good at math. There are two possibilities, either you accept this feedback or reject that feedback. If you reject feedback and after some time you were again given same feedback. What can be your action, good possibility that you will accept that, but your will power is strong, then you can reject it.

If you accept that feedback on very first day, then this is how things will move in your student life. Math will become more and more complicated to you. You will hardly understand anything in math lecture. Thing will go off you head. When teacher is explaining math exercise, you will be at some other place in your thoughts.

It’s not you, who is doing all this. You want to understand math at least to pass the exam, but not able to concentrate. Every time you are focusing on lecture but your mind drift to some other place.

As on one side you are willing to perform good in math, but at same time you have accepted the fact that you are not good at math (as per your teacher and somewhere in your mind you have also accepted that). So when you are having contradictory thought in you mind, it doesn’t support any.

Let’s understand how our mind works, if I ask you to think about person who take good care of you in childhood. Image of that person flash in your mind instantly. If I ask you to remember your best friends, again you visualize all your best friends. You also visualize that how you are enjoying with them in both case, you may have goose bumps right now.

Think & visualise happy moments of your life, now see the miracle, you are able to see the clear picture of each moment one by one, be it your birthday celebration, the gift you mother or father has given to you, winning moment in sport and cheer from all the people around there, appreciation by your friend, teacher or principle on your academic result, picnic enjoyment with your friends or family members etc. This list will continue and till now you have cherished each moment. I can see the happiness & smile on your face.

Now if I ask think about bad experiences, here also list will be long. All the bad memories will be recalled by your mind instantly.

So point here is your mind, especially subconscious mind has tremendous power to recall each and every moment of your life with which you are emotionally connected, be it positive emotion or negative.

This mind record each and every thing happen to your life through 5 senses (Sight, Sound, Smell, Taste & Touch) till this movement. Even it record complete environment around you. It store all the related things at one compartment in even more effective way then supercomputer. Whatever subject you want to search, it will show you all the related results in fraction of second.

Here come the most important point, what if when your are thinking about math?

What do you think, what will it recall? Are you able to visualize it? Obviously it will show you a complete web series as ‘when your teacher say to you that you are not good at math’, all you academic low score result of math; be it class test, main exam test, critics from your elders on low scoring marks etc. Slowly you will feel low in energy. Now you do not want think about all this, then you suddenly change the topic in your mind or move to some other place.

Once you admit that you are not good at one particular subject, even with good preparation for exam, will hardly give you good score. The reason is your subconscious power will try to prove your own firm belief that your are not good at math. So things will fumble in exam and in spite of knowing question well, you will not be able to answer it properly.

How to deal with it?

My humble request to all the teachers is not to criticise student for their understanding on any particular subject. Just recall the cases of your own school /college, where initially so called dumb student shine later.

Now to students, do not accept negative feedback directly as you are dumb on any particular subject. In this world no two student have similar intelligence. You can take following approach. Whenever you get such feedback from teacher or relatives, simply say to yourself that ‘May be right now I am not able to perform, but I will improve on this subject soon. I shall put extra effort, take help from friends or ask my teacher.’

Now once you change your thought process, some wishful thing will happen. Some hidden power will start guiding you to improve on that particular subject. It will suggest you all the new way to improve your skill. Your concentration will improve. Things will be much clear in classroom during lecture. You will be amazed to realize that this is the same subject which was really tough once but not now. Do you know what is this hidden power, it’s again your own subconscious mind.

My good Practice of college time

You can try this useful practice. Generally many teacher suggest ‘next day topic’ after completion of their lecture. What I used to do was this, I simply go through that topic quickly in just few minute before going to college. Now once lecture start, I was able to connect on that topic quickly. My understanding was better. Then once I arrive at my home, I used to sit alone for few minute and visualize what teacher taught in the lecture. I could visualize in detail line by line, what teacher had written on board.

Actually what happen, I had gone through that topic three time. My performance started improving drastically. You can also adopt similar practice. Then there are high level of chances that you will be able to recall good amount of content during exam and your performance will improve.

Anyway, I topped the exam in final year of my engineering. 

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”— Benjamin Franklin