In this newsletter, I am writing especially to those students and their parents who set goals for academic success at the start of the year. Term 4 is certainly the harvest time for effort already invested and labour expended. My word of encouragement is to persist or start.
It is not time to give up or slow down; keep going! Your best intentions from the start of the year are still in play! There is still time to make improvements.
There are three phases in achieving any goal:
1. Proving to yourself that you can make the difference.
2. Making the difference permanent.
3. Seeing the goals for grades, weight loss or fitness manifest further in reality.
Our relationship with interpreting our reality is sometimes fraught. Often when pursuing a goal, we need to ignore the absence of evidence that we are making progress. Our commitment to our goal must persist because our dreams are developing. Like the seed that is germinating below the ground, progress is being made even if we cannot see it.
In these times, we need to maintain our faith.
The maxim is that “attitude determines your altitude.” The element of success that sustains us through bleak, challenging, and disappointing times is our attitude.
To put it another way, there are times when our spirit needs to counsel our soul. When our mind, will, or emotions tell us that the obstacles are too daunting, we need to reach outside ourselves for inspiration. As people of faith, we believe that we are made in the image of God. As Christians, we believe that God’s spirit comes alongside us with guidance, an eternal perspective, and a deep knowledge of who we really are.
If there is not yet evidence of your success being realised, then give yourself a good talking to!
In the coming weeks, there is abundant opportunity to start a journey to improve, persist with your effort or cement the crowning achievements of a stellar year.
So, there may be validity in persisting despite the absence of any evidence that you are achieving emerging success.
Every day is a new day and the perfect opportunity to begin the process to your best self.
The only incorrect option is to postpone commencing your improvement until next year.
I encourage you to get your hopes up. I implore you to listen to your “better angels” and ignore any self-doubt.