14

Put the Pressure on Yourself

The first requisite for success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary.

THOMAS EDISON

The world is full of people who are waiting for someone to come along and motivate them to be the kind of people they wish they could be. The problem is that no one is coming to the rescue.

These people are waiting for a bus on a street where no buses pass. If they don’t take charge of their lives and put the pressure on themselves, they can end up waiting forever. And that is what most people do.

Only about 2 percent of people can work entirely without supervision. We call these people “leaders.” This is the kind of person you are meant to be and that you can be if you decide to be.

Chances are, if you are the sort of student to pick up and read this book, you are already putting pressure on yourself to do well. However, it can be challenging to distinguish between that and the pressure coming from parent expectations, school requirements, and peers.

Take this opportunity to put all that aside and think about you and what you really want. What is your objective? This is the goal that you should be aiming for. When you take full responsibility and ownership of your goals, putting the pressure on yourself can become energizing and exciting rather than stressful and demoralizing.

To reach your full potential, you must form the habit of putting the pressure on yourself and not waiting for someone else to come along and do it for you. You must choose your own frogs and then make yourself eat them in their order of importance.

Lead the Field

See yourself as a role model. Raise the bar on yourself. The standards you set for your own work and behavior should be higher than anyone else could set for you.

Make a game of starting a little earlier, working a little harder, practicing a little longer. Always look for ways to go the extra mile, to do more than the minimum requirements of any assignment.

Self-esteem as defined by psychologist Nathaniel Branden as “the reputation you have with yourself.” You build up or pull down your reputation with yourself with everything you do or fail to do. The good news is that you feel better about yourself whenever you push yourself to do your best. You increase your self-esteem whenever you go beyond the point where the average person would normally quit.

Create Imaginary Deadlines

One of the best ways for you to overcome procrastination and get more things done faster is by working as though you had only one day to get your most important assignments done.

Imagine each day that you have just received an emergency message and that you will have to leave town tomorrow for a month. If you had to leave town for a month, what would you make absolutely sure that you got done before you left? Whatever your answer, go to work on that task right now.

Another way to put pressure on yourself is to imagine that you just received an all-expenses-paid vacation at a beautiful resort as a prize, but you will have to leave tomorrow morning on the vacation or it will be given to someone else. What would you be determined to finish before you left so that you could take that vacation? Whatever it is, start on that one task immediately.

You may not be able to complete all the homework that will be due if it has not been assigned yet, but if you know you have an English paper due at the end of the month, you could get a big head start on that project. If you are in college, you probably have a syllabus. You could consider doing all the reading assignments ahead of time. When you get closer to the date of the class discussion, it will take you much less time to refresh your mind on the reading, and you will have learned it much more thoroughly.

Successful people continually put the pressure on themselves to perform at high levels. Unsuccessful people have to be instructed and pressured by others.

By putting the pressure on yourself, you will accomplish more tasks better and faster than ever. You will become a high-performance, high-achieving personality. You will feel terrific about yourself, and bit by bit you will build the habit of rapid task completion that will then go on to serve you all the days of your life.