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Most of the times when we don’t perform well in the activities we engage ourselves in, we tend to feel frustrated and inferior. Especially if we see others, humans like us, performing the same things and excelling at it effortlessly.
In times like this, the logical thing to do is to move closer to these people and study their manner of approach towards things. Well, that doesn’t actually work in all cases. Why? You may ask. I’m about to show you why.
In my first semester in the university, I had a very brilliant roommate who was an avid reader.
He studied his books like his life depended on it (maybe it did). With the way he was reading, I felt motivated and in no time, I modelled my reading schedule (which was non-existent at the time) after his.
I stayed up all night to read just as he did, took little or no breaks while studying, I basically didn’t want to feel left out.
It got to a point that my body system started giving me signs that I should slow down a bit. I was falling sick every now and then but, in my mind, I just felt that I was being “lazy”, so I persisted and stuck to my schedule of sleepless nights.
It’d eventually take me a whole semester and a not so exciting GPA for me to realize that I am not my roommate (who conveniently topped his class when results were released) and his system might not actually work for me.
So, after figuring out the problem, I sought out to seek for a solution.
I sat down to analyze myself and come up with a system that works well for me.
After thinking for a while, I discovered somethings about myself. I discovered that I tend to not function well during the day when I stay up during the midnight to read.
So, the first thing I did was to stop that.
One other thing I discovered is that I naturally wake up during the early hours of the day (around 5am).
Knowing these two things, I came up with a plan to study my notes when I wake up in the morning before even preparing for school and making sure I do the same thing whenever I get back from lectures.
By doing this, I still managed to meet my personal goal of studying for at least four (4) hours per day without having sleepless nights.
By the time the next semester results came out, I had a better result than the previous semester! And this time, I did it with less stress.
Ever since then, I resolved in my mind to always stick with what works best for me and not others.
Of course, one should still seek out to know how other people succeed in their activities, but we should always have it at the back of our mind that it might not be what’s best for us. We should be quick to realize when a model isn’t working for us and, with the same speed, come up with a convenient custom-made model that suites our personality.
In cases where we’re confused on how to forge an actionable plan, I’ll advise we look into activities that we’ve engaged in during the past that are related to what we’re doing currently and borrow wisdom from our manner of approach towards overcoming that particular obstacle back then.
And if what we’re dealing with happens to be an uncharted territory for us (which is always the case most times), it’s okay to start with other people’s model but we should be quick to recognize when a particular system isn’t working for us.
In all we do, we should make it a habit to KNOW WHAT WORKS FOR US AND STICK TO IT.
Thanks for stopping by to go through this post. Do have a nice day.
I learn it the hard way as well
True though not everything that works for A works for B.we just need to discover what works for separately.
Exactly. We were all created differently.
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