Mind Training - Part 2

This is a continuation of an earlier post called "Mind Training" (click on ARCHIVES: August 2006). I'm having my son check his answers and encouraging him to focus on finding the ones he's missed versus the ones he got right. Then he needs to figure out why he got them wrong and learn how to get them right.

It's like going to the gym and only lifting the easy weights; the ones you know you can. It's the same with school. If students only focus on what they got right, they're really only focusing on the ones they know they can do. It is important to focus on the positive, or what you do know, in order to build confidence. And it is equally crucial to improve upon the negative, or what you don't know, in order to get stronger, smarter, and better.


Last year I had a student who would stop me at least once every math class and say "Mr. Stuart, wait a minute. That's the one I don't understand." He was a top-level math student and it's easy to understand why. He didn't say "I know most of this stuff, I don't need to learn anything" (well, because I wouldn't let him). He knew that although he received "A's" and earned test scores of 90% plus, he had to focus on the 10% he didn't know (well, I kinda made him). So he focused on the stuff that was hard, or "heavy" to understand for him, practicing the maxim "Even the smallest leak can sink the biggest ship", attributed to Thomas Jefferson,

or Thomas Edison maybe,

or...

it could have been Thomas Thumb. I do know somebody named Thomas said it, I think.

But the point is the same. Even when you know only 10% of what you're supposed to (i.e. flunking a test) the same principle applies. It's just that the leaks are a lot larger and need to be fixed a lot sooner. I came home once to find my daughter flooding our home with her tears because she got 2 out of 36 right on her math test (that's 06% correct for those of you wondering). She was sobbing uncontrollably so to break her pattern I threw the papers down on the tile floor, making a loud "SMACK" sound. She immediately stopped and stared up at me with her big brown eyes.

I then asked her in a soft voice why she was crying. She told me it was because she didn't know anything and that....sob.....can't..sob..get this...sob...stuff...and..sob..sob...sob. I bent down and put one hand on her shoulder and lifted her chin with the other so she could see my eyes. "Yes you do." I told her. "You do know how to do two. Now all you have to do is learn how to do three. Let's go to the table and figure it out."

By focusing first on the positive, then attacking the negative, she went from getting "F's" to "A's" in a matter of 2 months. Her first year in middle school her name was on the whiteboard as a challenge to anyone who could get a higher score than she did.

And it all came from focusing on what she didn't know, not all at once, but one thing at a time. Both the body and mind grow from "weight" that is just heavy enough to make us struggle and....when we absolutley will struggle with it until we succeed in "lifting" it.

Maybe we can use the same principle as adults. Perhaps it's because we so much want others to tell us we're OK that sometimes we only focus on what we're doing right and not on what we could do better. In fact, it's so much easier to focus on what others are doing wrong or how we're not so bad by focusing on the their faults (this has to be the reason for the popularity of shows like Jerry Springer).

In either case, we, who we are, does not improve. What we eventually become is nowhere near the person we dreamt of becoming. We don't "Become Big" because we stopped "Dreaming Big" and believed others who don't believe in us. We stopped "Doing Big" by not focusing on how much better we could become than we are and looking inside to make the hard changes within. We dishonor ourselves and allow others to do the same.

Emerson's words from the grave call out to us: "Things don't change; we change."


Fire up those big dreams of your best self. Hunger again for opportunities to see where you are wrong and where you can get better.



Respect yourself enough to demand only the best from yourself. Allow no one into your life who dishonors you by doubting who you are and who you want to become. And little by little, making small improvements every day, you do become who you were meant to be, as big and amazing as the rising sun. Why else would you be here?




To read more about the powerful effects when two people believe in and honor each other, go to the July Archives and scroll down to "Keeping a Promise". You'll see that just "loving" someone doesn't determine whether you are in another's life for a reason, season or lifetime. Loving intention and strong loving thoughts determine this. This is Sensational Living in action.