Someone has rightly said that “When you change your thinking, you change your beliefs. When you change your belief, your expectations start changing. When you change your expectations, you find considerable change in your attitude. When you change your attitude, you find a dramatic change in your behavior. Change in behaviour directly influences the performance of the individual. You may experience a metamorphic change in your life if your performance level increases.” And remember, change is inevitable and it is a truth of life.
We are experiencing a rapid pace of social dynamism, where Darwin’s theory of ‘Survival for the Fittest’ is still relevant. One who develops the right temperament and acumen to face the unforeseen challenges of life can achieve his targets. Developmental cycle of neo-society is spinning off various avenues and opportunities in even the same stream of profession. Every year Indian Institute of Technologies (IITs) are attracting the best talents from India and preparing them to re-engineer and re-invent the wheel of progress. Hence, the demand of IIT graduates is escalating as compare to other professionals. This is the reason why young & energetic graduates prefer to enter into the campus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). This is the dream of almost all the engineering aspirants. They invest years of their most crucial phase of their life in preparing for the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) either on their own or through some coaching. The target remains to get one of the approximately 10000 seats competing with more than 10 lakh candidates. Some of the good students sometimes loose confidence by just knowing the IIT seats-appearing candidates ratio.
To achieve your goals and realize your potential, you must be willing to be uncomfortable – to do things that you’re afraid to do. That’s how you develop your potential!
One of my friend & colleague, Mr. Shailendra rightly says “Don’t be one of those who let his regrets take the place of his dreams.” Confront your fears… and you’re on the way to developing your potential and leading the exciting, fulfilling life you deserve. It’s a decision you’ll never regret! Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.
You have the ability to transform your life and soar to new heights of success and fulfillment. The only thing you have to do is to inculcate the habit of positive attitude. Most of the students in spite of knowing how to get better marks than what they have been getting, they don’t seem to be improving on that. Similarly most of the sales people know how to sell more than what they are selling at present. What hold them? There are many people who are constantly in debt. They know how to come out of that but they don’t. Why? Their action and what they know are not coherent. The reason is that they haven’t applied their knowledge to form good habits. Bad habits are holding them. They keep repeating the mistakes by habit and don’t apply the knowledge of doing better.
By forming the habit of doing certain activities you are able to do them with complete ease and almost automatically. This is true for good and bad habits both. When you do an activity for the first time you have to think about each step and perform the activity. But when you keep doing the activity repetitively you develop habit of doing that. Then the activity becomes so easy for you that you can do that without much of the effort. Ideas related to that activity starts flowing to your mind automatically.
While taking the IIT-JEE, you have to be at your conceptual best during the examination hours. All the three subjects, Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics are tested in one session in screening test and in three sessions on the same day during main examination. The syllabus is vast. If you need to recall the theories and concepts while solving the problems in the examination, then you will not be able to attempt sufficient number of questions to get you in IIT. Theories, concepts and ideas to solve those problems should keep coming to your mind automatically.
Habit formation uses the power of subconscious mind. Subconscious mind dictates most of our activity and so it is important to use its power. As you practice an activity and become independent of conscious thinking during the performance of the activity you achieve a state where the activity is performed automatically by the subconscious mind. To achieve better result, you need to push your knowledge to this part of your mind by practicing and habit formation. Look for the bright side. Make it a habit to look for the good in life rather than the bad. Accentuate the positives. Concentrate on ways to use your strengths and abilities and look for ways to improve your weaknesses.
Habits get formed as you keep doing the activity repeatedly. Building on theories, concepts and ideas to solve problems involving multiple concepts is the key requirement. You can improve your chance of getting into IIT by developing the habit of understanding the theories well, thinking and conceptualizing those theories, applying them in solving conceptual problems and continuously developing better techniques to solve the problems.
Whatever process you want to follow during the examination, develop habit for that so that you don’t have to consume mind energy and time for doing them consciously. If you plan to do something right directly in the examination hall, you will either not be able to do it or you will take more time than required. It’s better to practice that in advance and form the habit of doing that right so that it happens automatically for you without much of the thinking.
For example, you might have developed habit of making silly mistakes in the examination. If you simply feel that you will be more careful in the final examination and not make such mistakes then either you will not be able to do so or you will waste lots of time in consciously remaining careful. Solving majority of the questions involves three steps in general. First understand the problem and visualize the details. Then establish mathematical relations between variables. And, finally solve them mathematically. If you analyze your common mistakes and find out the step in which these happen, you can reduce the occurrence of silly mistakes by becoming careful in that. By practicing and developing the habit of it you will be able to do automatically which will save your time in the examination and also reduce mistakes.
Remember, “We first make our habits, and then our habits make us”. As, there are some habits that are good and help us in attaining our goal, there are bad habits too which become deciding factor in the failures.
In truth, the only difference between those who have failed and those who have succeeded lies in the difference of their habits. Good habits are the key to all success. Bad habits are the unlocked door to failure.
IIT-JEE is a different examination in terms of types of questions and it conducts both. It requires a different approach and hence a different set of habits. That is why a topper in board examination may not clear IIT-JEE whereas an average scorer in board examination may make it to IIT. It’s better to start developing these habits with positive attitude at the earliest. Developing a new habit is easier compared to changing a well-formed habit. So sooner you start, better it is. “There is no such thing as failure. There are only outcomes. The only time you fail is the last time you try.”
About the Author: Mr. Pramod Maheshwari (Director Academics, Career Point, Kota) is an eminent educationist. After receiving his B.Tech. from IIT Delhi in 1993, he started institute by the name of Career Point at Kota.
