Success; the accomplishment of an aim or purpose(Oxford Dictionary). This is the general overview of what Success is to people internationally as said by the Oxford Dictionary. In my personal opinion, the definition of success should be more along the lines of “completing the list of steps needed to reach a goal, task or dream” because, while i do agree on success is an accomplishment, the steps that lead up to it are what ends up bringing you to success.
For example, in the On Course© book, they give you a list of eight total “Student success principles” that represent qualities of good learners. These principles are the following: Self-Responsibility, Self-Motivation, Self-Management, Interdependence, Self-Awareness, Life-Long Learning, Emotional Intelligence, and Self-Esteem.
Success may seem hard to achieve but with these steps, you can always be ready to have success in mind as an end goal. Three of these topics that I think would help me and possibly anyone else that needs it is Self-Motivation, Life-Long Learning, and Emotional Intelligence and here is the reason why.
People who are successful Self-Motivation according to the On Course© book will be able to create inner motivation, design a compelling life plan and commit to their goals and dreams. Let’s start with creating inner motivation, this is easy, you just have to find something that motivates you so you can get what you need to do, done.
For Example; when I need the motivation to continue on with what i’m doing I usually put on music or remind myself of the benefit I will receive by completing what I need to finish thus giving me inner motivation to continue on with what I’m doing. Anything can be the source of motivation you just need to learn to harness it for yourself so that way things don’t go south.
Lack of Inner motivation can lead to not doing school work and skipping classes which we want to avoid. Designing a compelling life plan: this can be a little bit harder if you don’t know where your life is headed towards or if you are struggling to be interested in anything in particular.
This life plan should be comprised of both short term and long term goals they should have a date for when you want them done by, they should be achievable, personal, positive and specific for whatever you have in mind as a short or long term goal. A good goal for this would be the goal I put up on the wall at the beginning of the year which is “I want to get an 85 or higher by the end of the semester in this class”.
It is dateable, achievable, personal, positive and specific meaning it maintains the criteria to be a goal. Don’t forget to have an overall dream of where these short term and long term goals would eventually conspire into, even if you might not know what that dream is, don’t be afraid to change it more than once until you are happy with the result but, stay committed until you do decide to change your dream and goals.
Life-Long learning is a skill that you can use in an everyday setting, from seeking new learning experiences, learning your preferred way of learning and finally using critical thinking these things all put together what it means to use Life-Long learning. Things that may divert you from being able to use Life-Long learning are avoiding new learning experiences, like for example if someone has an opportunity to study abroad they wouldn’t take it because they don’t think they have the ability to do so because they think their intelligence is fixed, while successful students will do the complete opposite, they will use all of their resources to be able to get the best experience possible and believe they need to keep doing new things to gain more knowledge.
The next part of this is how you learn, in which there are four categories that show who you are as a learner; these categories are the following: Thinker, Doer, Feeler, and Innovating. Thinking learners are more the person who wants a logical response to things and ask questions what usually with “what?”.
Doers are usually the people who enjoy taking action in projects, benefit from just diving right in and doing the work and usually ask questions that involve “how?”. Feeler’s are usually enjoy personal connections with a professor and a supportive environment to surround them, they usually ask questions involving “why” or “who”. Lastly, innovating learning styles enjoy imagining new areas in their imagination and making unexpected connections and ask questions of “what if?”.
The last step of Life-Long learning is employing logical thinking which to summarize is basically like being able to make logical reasoning for yourself without going off the ideal of others. Like for example if you ask some who had issues with a teacher if they like the class, they will obviously say no. It’s our job as people to figure it out for ourselves or using other peoples past judgments as only a slim percentage of our overall ideals. This step is the last thing in life-long learning which in my opinion is probably one of the most important things I learned.
The last step for success is emotional intelligence which comes in many various forms. Emotional intelligence is a lot different from what you learn from taking a class in high school. Emotional intelligence is basically how your emotions control you and make you effective on your day to day life.
This includes being empathetic, how you react to certain situations and it even can deal with relationships. If you have poor emotional intelligence it can be the result of how you were raised to be. Another part of emotional intelligence is reducing stress in your life, which means how you deal with stress, for example, if you punch a wall you are not dealing with stress an appropriate way. You should deal with stress in a manner that doesn’t hurt yourself or anyone around you. If stress is bad enough it can even lead to heart problems and possibly death, Dealing with stress in a more mindful manner can lead to healthier relationships, better emotional intelligence and even be good for your mental health.
The last part of emotional interdependence is creating a flow which basically means your skill level needs to be equal or slightly below your challenge level to be able to not create boredom or anxiety. Having a flow can make us feel better because of its right at our challenge level.
For example, if you give a Harvard scholar a third graders multiplication times table they are going to be bored; while if you flip the scenario it causes the third grader’s anxiety doing a Harvard scholars math homework. This is the last thing of emotional intelligence, I think this is important for the reason that everyone struggles with this in this era that learning how to control it might be the way to solving it.
Overall, in my opinion on these three strategies for success is that these could help me and anyone else to succeed in college and in life for the fact that these hit the important categories of emotional intelligence, how to stay motivated, and how to use Life-Long Learning in a long term and short term aspect.
The On Course© book does a really good of showing you how to be successful in life while putting it into perspective of how you can better yourself but, if you had to only pick three categories to help you get through college and life, these would be the three to pick and hopefully other people would think so as well for the reason that these three alone could change your life.
