What if you are facing a final. What if you need to ACE the upcoming test. What if you need to make the upcoming test so amazingly good that you are scared of it. You need to make this test as good as you’ve never made a test before. Pretty scare right? You will need a completely different type of focus. This isn’t high school studying where you study for 3 evenings in a row. This is college-mayhem. You need to be a machine the upcoming weeks. Let’s just do so.

Olympic athletes can do it – why can’t you?

If you look at the really crazy olympic athletes, for instance Michael Phelps. They train an absurd amount of hours in order to become as good as they are. What if you trained for every day except the first day of Christmas? You will be (of course) awesome at what you do. Get that mentality for the upcoming weeks. Get in the state of mind that you don’t want to do anything aside from studying.

You will need a coach – Probably yourself

In order to become that awesome you will need a coach. Someone who keeps saying you need to train more and harder. This coach can’t be anybody outside of yourself. You will need to do this, you will be the one who gets you through this process. So get a couple of clear goals for yourself. Set goals, make a plan. I explained this extensivly in my Successful Students’ Motivational Course on day 1 (fill in your email address on the side to get this course for free in your inbox!). Setting goals is probably one of the most important steps in this process.

Than, the coaching itself. In one way or the other you will need to bring up the motivation, over and over again. You will need to be the one who pushes you just through another half an hour. You will be the one who says that this isn’t ‘enough’. Can you ace the test yet? No? That means not enough.

You cannot be good to yourself, because you are the one who is going to ace the test. You cannot let yourself slip off for a little while, because you are the one to blame if you screw up the test.

Get in the olympic mood, work hard, work harder and ace the test

I’m not sure if I have anything to add to this sentence. Read Phelps’ biography ‘Under the Surface’ and you will find out what it takes to become an Olympic champion. Just imagine, if you did half of all the work he did, what will this do to your results? What will you accomplish? Of what will you be capable doing. Imagine what happens when you work as hard as an Olympic champion.

Now. Stop imagining. Just do it. Become an Olympic champion, in whatever you are doing. Good luck.

What if everything was possible?

What if there were no limits? What if nobody would ever tell you again that you ‘can’t do something’. What if that just would be in the past? From now on everything is possible, there are just no limits.

‘You’ll be setting better goals if you view life as a dream. What role do you wish to play in the unfolding storyline?’

One of the most asked (and most annoying) questions I get

If you are (and you probably are, or at least sometimes) like me, you will have big ideas a lot of the time. And I don’t mean ‘becoming-major-of-your-city-dreams’. I mean ‘becoming-president-dreams’. Really, big time goals. Just really awesome goals. If you have them every once in a while and you are brave enough to even speak them out loud you will get this question (or anything similiar) a lot:

‘But isn’t that really hard?’

I hate that question. It really bothers me when somebody asks me something like it. Why? Because the answer is always the same. The answer is a full YES. It is really hard. Probably that hard I wouldn’t even accomplish it. But what does it matter? Can’t I have dreams? Can’t I just shoot for the stars? If I reach the moon, I’ll be really, really satisfied. And that would be awesome also!

You know what the thing is? The thing with this question is that there is no point in asking it. The person who asks that isn’t trying to ask you a real question at all. They know from the moment they ask the question the question is a retorical one. They don’t want an answer, they already know it. You don’t want to give an answer, because you know that they actually know the answer!

From this point on, if somebody asks you anything like this, just answer with: ‘I’ll manage.’ Or ‘I’ll find a way.’ Don’t try to defend yourself. Why? Because you just have to believe in the fact everything is possible. I’m done complaining about the awful question. Because this question wouldn’t bother us anymore.

From now on, everything is possible

Remember the questions I’ve asked you above? ‘What if anything is possible?’ From now, it is. Anything is possible. You can do anything. Like you had some super-power-up-potion. From this point on, everything is possible.

What would happen to your life?

Now, tell me: Anything is possible right now, what would happen? What will happen to your life? What would be your next step? No, what IS your next step? What are you going to do with your unlimited powers?

Let’s cut the Personal Development-crap, let’s get practical

The words I’ve said above were pretty abstract, you are probably not getting any practical use out of it. They might motivate you, make you excited, but will you have a next step? Probably not.

Now, the next step. Write a list, what do you want to have accomplished on this day, only one year in the future (so 28 September 2011) How do you want to have grown as a person? In what field do you want to have experience? Look at the people who are around you, who is doing something you would also love to do? Who is working with special kids? Who is organizing an awesome event? Is there anything what you really want to have done in the next year? Do it! Write down steps you need to take to reach that goal.

For instance, do you want to have written a book in a year? Write down steps. You need to find a topic first, research a niche or develop the main characters. Then, you want to actually write an outline, how is it going to be, what is the book about? Now, start writing. Actually sit down in front of your laptop and write! Get something done. Plan, work, work even more and fulfil your dream.

Nothing is impossible, now go!

No guys, absolutely nothing is impossible. Things can be really hard, yes, I don’t have to ask a question in order for you to understand this, but when something is hard that doesn’t mean it is impossible. Now go. Define your goal. Make a plan. Stick to the plan, act like it. Work your ass off and fulfill your dream, your destiny if you want.

I want to end with a nice little thing Steve Pavlina said on Twitter:

“You would be setting better goals if you view life as a dream. What role do you want to play in the unfolding storyline?”

Good luck guys. I believe in you. Nothing is impossible.

‘Pretend he procrastinated, had no motivation. Made up excuses so thin they would blow with the wind’ – Eminem

As you probably know, I like Eminem as a musician. The guy raps really agressively, but he also ‘spits’ great lines. This is one of them. Pretend you didn’t do what you have to do, what would happen?

Let’s pretend: The Future

What if you don’t do what you have to do right now? How would that effect your long-term goals? How would that effect what kind of image people have of you?

For instance. What if I just stopped with writing right now. What would that mean for this blog in the next year? I’ll be probably recieving some traffic every month, but on the long term, it wouldn’t do any good. How would that effect my long-term goal of providing valuable content which helps the readers becoming better students, better persons? Probably big time! After reading the posts I’ve read before, there wouldn’t be anything more. And the reader would be stuck at where they are right now.

What if you just stopped studying right now? You wouldn’t pass this year, you wouldn’t get your degree and you wouldn’t become the doctor/lawyer/businessdude you want to become. Too bad.

But even a more important ‘what if’. What if you stopped improving right now? What if you stopped evaluating yourself every once in a while. Pretend you wouldn’t learn anymore. No learning from your mistakes, no growth. You wouldn’t be the awesome person you are becoming right now. Pretend you stopped working on yourself, you would be a mess eventually.

Let’s pretend: The Presence

What if you didn’t do certain things you did in the past? Pretend you didn’t had the motivation in high school to go to college. What would that mean right now for you? You wouldn’t be in college, you would be working already and starting the ‘grown-up’ life already. What would that mean?

What if you made up excuses in the past to not do the work you had to do. Where would you be? Cherish these thoughts. You’ve brought yourself so far, you are already such an awesome person. Cherish the person in the past who didn’t let you slip off your motivation. Love the guy who said you just had to ‘suck up and get going’. See how awesome the person is who didn’t let you sleep all day, but you got actually something done.

What if? Why even bother

Every once in a while you have to think about who you are, why and how you became you. This will learn more about you and more about how you will act in the future. Love who you are, enjoy the trip that it takes to find otu how you became that person. Pretending isn’t easy, but it can help you in the future. Next time you don’t have any motivation, remember you had motivation in the past, remember you need motivation RIGHT NOW in order to not be the person you just pretended you would be. Be awesome. Stay awesome. Become even more awesome. Good luck.

Want to get motivated? Sign up for the free Successful Students Motivational Course!

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Everybody who is following me on Twitter probably saw some strange tweets from me. I was working on a motivational course and every step was awesome! And now it is live.

• Are you in the beginning of your academic year and you are still not motivated?
• Are you in college right now but you can’t find the motivation to even go to a lecture?
• Are you wondering how those Successful Students always have the motivation which makes them actually successful students?

Good! This course will definitly be something for you! Because this is a free Motivational Video Course for becoming a Successful Student! After almost half a year after releasing my free ebook Nine ways to get motivated for college I decided to expand this. The Ebook has been downloaded A LOT and after a lot of questions and discussions I decided to expand this subject.

So, fill in your name below or at the right and you will recieve the ebook, the workbook and the video course, for free! Have fun.

Next?	Stefan Recommends
View the StudySuccessful homepage.	9 ways to get motivated for college – The ebook by Stefan Knapen (free)
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Niels Gouman stated in my ebook Nine ways to get motivated for college that watching a video can be a great way to get motivated. He posted one youtube clip with it, which is simply fantastic. I’ve found 6 others. Watch them and get to work. Just do it!

Warhawk Matt Scott: ‘No excuses’

Take it to the next level

I’m not an athlete?

My better is better than your better

Awake

Michael Jordan: Failure

Chris Bryant

• Alex: @VraagAlex: Focus on your goal and stay focused, celebrate every success! That’s how I stay motivated!
• @Paul_Arnhem: Follow your heart. Lot of contacts with friends. Visit inspiring cities. As an entrepreneur: Feel, do, think.
• @Skipski: Music! I’ve got an ‘energylist’ in iTunes with songs that inspire and motivate me!
• Martin: Daunting is exciting. Everyone should be a bit afraid and out of their comfort zone no matter how prepared. Don’t be put off by the new, embrace it!
• Niels Gouman: Depending on what I need to be motivated for one of these usually does the trick: YouTube1, Youtube2 and YouTube3.
• Sandra Müller: I don’t like to be tired in college, so I make sure I have enough sleep. Without the right amount of sleep, I just feel tired and it is hard to concentrate. So get enough sleep, or get some coffee!
• @vtamethodman: Go learn a new language; here is a great guide to get you started: http://su.pr/AQMkjL
• Scott H Young: Set yourself a habit. Most people overestimate how much work their motivation can do, and underestimate the power of routine. Keeping a consistent study schedule or approach usually beats marathon cram sessions.
• Nate Desmond: Have a fun task planned that you cannot do until you complete the less enjoyable project.
• Ibrahim Husain: Know your goal, and the reason you chose it, and you’ll find your greatest source of motivation.
• David Pierce: Do no more that you have to than you have to, and do everything you want to. The balance is easier to find than you think.
• Ajay Shrikanth: Learn to love what you do. If you enjoy the process of doing, there is never going to be a problem with motivation as you will enjoy the work!
• Thom Bongaerts: Listing music also gets you motivated. This is actually one of my own favorites: YouTube. Make sure you understand the lyrics; it’s a lesson for live!!
• Bianca Grimmius: Lecture is second priority, the first priority is of course seeing your friends and getting that awesome book out of the library!

Do you have an interesting way to get motivated? Would you like to be included in ‘Nine ways to get motivated for college‘? I’ll put your way in the ebook and everybody who downloads the ebook from that point will see your way to get motivated for college! Post them here in the comments or send me an email!

When you need to finish a paper, but you don’t do it, you are procrastinating. With this procrastination you build up a guilty feeling. ‘Shit, I didn’t work on my paper, I need to finish it right now, because I wasted a lot of time, I feel so guilty.’ This seems like a good motivator for a lot of people, they claim that they can work good with a guilty feeling.

Why I don’t think guilt is a good motivator
Ask yourself a question, is guilt an intrinsic or an extrinsic motivator? Does it come from the outside in the form of reward/punishment or comes it from the inside; do you really want to finish your paper deep inside? At first, you would say that guilt is an intrinsic motivator. You are feeling guilty, so you want to finish your paper now. I can’t agree with this. I think guilt is an extrinsic factor. Guilt is a punishment for not doing your task. So now you have to fix that guilty feeling by finishing a paper. In that way, you aren’t punished. So guilt is punishment before you did anything.

What will happen on the long term?
On the long term, you can’t keep guilt as a motivator to finish tasks. Because you aren’t changing from an extrinsic to an intrinsic motivator. If you want to succeed on the long term, you need to get away from rewards/punishments, you need to stand completely behind your goal. You need to find an intrinsic motivator to keep pushing yourself more close to your end-goal.

So, when you are feeling guilty about not-doing something, stop feeling guilty. You just didn’t do it, accept it. Finish it now and do your task on time next time. Don’t let yourself feeling guilty, because it doesn’t work. Good luck.

The anouncement

I have written my first ebook about motivation. It will be called ’9 ways to get motivated for college’, it contains 8 tips to get motivated for college. Not the ordinary way, but ways you may not have thought about before! By the reactions I already had, I can tell that the ebook is going to be pretty awesome.

But I want more awesomeness. I want you to get involved. What is your tip to get motivated? Please share it in the comments or on Twitter or just send me an email. Just write down your way to get motivated in about 25 words (not more than a twitter text) and I will put your tip in my ebook! I’ll mention your tip with a link back to your Twitter/site/orwhatever. Interaction all over the place! Please share your tips!

Where do you get all your good ideas? And where do you lose them? If you are the same as me, in the shower. Not always though. I shower in the morning most of the times, right after I wake up. So I’m not wake enough to think. But when I’m awake for 20/30 minutes or so, the shower is my ultimate creativity spot. Like all your creative borders are washed away. Everything is possible, like you see a naked idea and you just have to dry it and dress it. In the shower, the impossible is possible, solutions are unlimited and opportunities are everywhere. The power of a shower. That is why I am going to change the way I take showers.

What I (and a lot of people with me) do now

I wake up, press snooze a couple of times, decide to get out of bed and jump in the shower. Shower, dry, get dressed, make myself look good enough to face daylight and I get out of my bedroom and get some breakfast. After breakfast the day finally starts. And that is finally the moment I need creativity, a long time after the shower. So I don’t need to ‘feel awake’ until I had breakfast. I don’t use anything of the power of the shower.

How I am going to use the shower (and how you should use it!)

When I wake up, the first thing I’ll do won’t be taking a shower. I will get breakfast first, drink a cup of coffee, read my email and go through my RSS feed. Then, when I’m going to need my creativity (or motivation) for college or a blog post, I’ll start thinking about the task. Brainstorm for a blog post, read through a draft of my paper, something like that. Then, I will take a shower. I’ll bring a notebook in the bathroom, so I can write down the ideas I get. I will make full use of the power of the shower. Think, think without limits, and write down every idea I get (a water-resistable notepad would be nice). After the shower, I will feel enthusiastic, motivated and eager to start writing the blog post or I will even be motivated for college.

The power of the shower is real people, who is going to take the experiment with me? Tell me about your findings, I will do the same!

Next?	Stefan Recommends
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Where does motivation come from? Business’s think you can motivate your employees with rewards, or punishments. The big CEO’s get bonuses when they do their job well, and in that way, they get motivated to do their best. Is that true? I’ve covered motivation before, but I have something to add now.

Where real motivation comes from

Real motivation comes from inside. Not from the rewards we get for doing what we do, not from the fear we have for failing. When we actually want to do something really good, we need ‘intrinsic motivation’. I’ve based this post on a TED Talk I saw after reading Cal’s post Beyond Passion: The Science of Loving what you do. After seeing that talk, I look different at the phenomenon ‘motivation’.

• We have to change our view on motivation. How we think about motivation now is only about short-term motivation. We’ve procrastinated, so we have to do a lot of studying in the last couple of weeks and we need to stay motivated. Consider your goal again, reward yourself for studying. Those things work, but only on the short term. In the long term, we need other solutions. Other ways to get motivated.
• Common sense isn’t always true. The public opinion is that when you reward yourself, you will do your task better. But that works only with tasks you’ve already mastered, easy tasks. Things like cleaning your house, doing the laundry, will go faster, will go better. But when you need to get creative, rewarding yourself won’t work. This is because you are getting some sort of tunnel vision, you can only focus on the reward. And when you need to get creative, you need to have a broad view, everything should be possible.

How can we be motivated in the long term than?

Dan Pink gave us three components of motivation we need to understand if we want to get motivated on the long term: autonomy, mastery and purpose. I will explain those three with the example of Sid, the guy with the business major.

• Autonomy. Be the master of your own time. You are in charge of what you do when. In college, this isn’t completely possible, you can’t always schedule your lectures yourself and you might have other obligations. But you are the master of your school work. Sid can postpone his homework, procrastinate and have a lot of stress in the last couple of weeks before the test, but he can also choose to get on schedule, finish homework early and be in charge of his own time, also in the last weeks before the tests. We tend to forget that, you don’t NEED to postpone, you don’t need to cram everything in the last week. You can also choose to have a good schedule you stick to.
• Mastery. Want to learn something. Make sure whatever your major is, it is something you want to master. Sid wants to become a good businessman and wants to earn that suit he’ll wear later. He needs to master everything that comes with the business major. Master a skill, and feel awesome.
• Purpose. The most important. Sid doesn’t do his major because he wants to work for microsoft and earn a lot of money. Sid wants to set up a non-profit organization which helps other people to build schools in Africa. Sid wants to have a company which can supply the building material and the advice on how to build a school. He needs a good business model for this, because Sid isn’t something who thinks small. Sid does his major because he has a purpose. He feels the greater cause of studying on his shoulders, he goes to college for a reason.

These three things combined equals motivation on the long term. Motivation to change the world, to make great things happen. To conclude: The current view on motivation is wrong, people don’t get motivated to do great things by rewards and punishments, that’s only short term motivation, which won’t work on creative tasks. When you want to get motivated on the long term and want to make great things happen, you need to have autonomy, have a hunger for mastery and you need a purpose. Watch the TED talk, get motivated, change the world.

A great source of motivation is to read the success stories like Ehsan Bayat or someone who has achieve a purpose similar to yours

What is your purpose?

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I am going to try a new thing here. I am not going to try it alone. I have Archan with me. Archan wrote a poem. Not just a romantic poem, it’s a motivational poem. That is why I am going to post him here! Hope you like it.

‘Move Forward
Take it one step at a time
It will provide momentum
And you will feel sublime.

Move Forward
Hey, what can go wrong?
Try to sing a song
Aim for a journey which is long.

Move Forward
De-clutter your life
What do you want to achieve?
Nothing is out of your reach.

Move Forward
Never let fear hold you back
You don’t lack
So get back on track.

Move Forward
Stop rushing around
By running helter-skelter
Instead, mail that employment letter.

Move Forward
Why be a slave from 9 to5?
Start your own business
And don’t be shy.

Move Forward
Take an evening class
And earn an MBA
To keep the cobwebs at bay.

Move Forward
What have you got to lose?
Go swimming every day
And look like Tom Cruise.

Move Forward
It’s okay if you fail
Pick yourself up
Don’t ever feel like you’re stuck.

Move Forward
It’s okay not to arrive
Take a detour and find
Values you left behind.

Move Forward
Instead of aping others
Follow your gut
and stay away from the rut.’

Archan Mehta is a freelance writer and can be contacted at archanm@hotmail.com. Archan is going to write more for StudySuccessful, would you like to write for StudySuccessful also sometimes? Contact me, via the contact page.

Next?	Stefan Recommends
View the StudySuccessful homepage.	9 ways to get motivated for college – The ebook by Stefan Knapen (free)
More on the author.	Learn More, Study Less – Relearn learning
Get in touch.