Spring is a tough time to motivate — especially when you are in college. Your friends are outside, or road-tripping, or basically doing anything but studying for the June LSAT…or trying to get their GPA up ever so slightly to raise the bar above a median. You, on the other-hand, need to find the darkest, deepest, windowless library corner and dig in. I’m thinking about you and want to help. Indeed, I want to help both of us. Let me explain.
In exactly two months I will be running a 10K, the BolderBoulder (come race me and save me: http://spiveyconsulting.com/blog/run-with-spivey-consulting-save-money/). Right now I have both a time goal and a person who I want to beat. Right now, the goal is far off (48:00, if you are a runner) and the person I want to beat is younger, fitter and faster. There is only one way I am going to beat my time and beat my competition. I have to train harder than them. I have to set a training schedule that ignores snow, sleet, 5am wake up calls and my progressively battered 42 year-old self. If I do not train harder than that pace, I won’t best it. ***If I don’t train harder than my competition, I won’t come close. ***This strikes me as a simple fact.
And so it is with you. When you are out on the Frisbee Golf course — someone is cracking open an LSAT book. Or meeting in office hours with their professor. Every time you are faced with a choice of either bearing down in the grind or enjoying the temptations of college in the spring (and they are many and great), so is someone you need to beat. It is the same in law admissions as it is any race. You are going to have to do better than the person who wants your spot. To better yourself, your score, your GPA you have to go hard, now.
But ultimately, it also dawns on me that until race day, until June 9th, until the end of the semester we are really competing with ourselves. We are in a constant battle of choosing the more difficult path, every single day. A quote comes to mind:
“You will become as great as your dominant aspiration
*or as small as your controlling desire”
*
None of us has to work towards our goals all of the time, but we do need to work towards them more than those who have the same goals. It’s the only way I know to beat them. There is a huge light at the end of the next two months, as there is not much greater than dedicating yourself to a worthy cause. Dig in! Beat that voice in your head 9 out of every 10 times it tells you to take the day off. These two months will fly by and at the end you will be able to look in the mirror and say you gave it your all. I want us both to be doing just that, let me know how it goes.**
-Mike
Also, this is the best motivational speech/music mix I have found so far. Please share yours with me, at mike@spiveyconsuting.com