Goal Setting For Better Grades

I remember every year in the beginning of the semester, my goals and motivations were pretty high for my grades, expecting to make the jump that semester as an excelling student.

But once we got to it, discipline slipped, bit by bit, eventually having to negotiate with myself how to lower my goals to make them more realistic.

I guess it can be compared to launching an arrow as hard as I could and see if it would land on a target three months from now.

That’s the main issue, I had aspirations, yet without targets or specific goals to really put myself accountable.

Goal Setting

After stumbling on a few books like “Grit” or “my stroke of insight” and doing some research on the brain, I started to understand the biggest flaw.

First, I must set exactly what my goals are, to guide myself to what I need to do to achieve them.

Keeping the goals blurry, in fact, gives you enough wiggle room to negotiate yourself out of them when you are in a more vulnerable position.

But a specific goal needs to be both challenging and emotionally desirable, enough for me to feel fulfilled after achieving it.

I can’t just say “stop eating chocolate” but rather “avoid eating snacks late at night to be in a better physical and mental state”.

That only scratches the surface on specificity, but since my physical and mental states are important to me, I will be more inclined to pursue that goal.

I am connecting my goal to something I know I will enjoy in the future, and also pinpointing exactly what I have to do to reach that goal, keeping me accountable for my failures and successes. If not I will never succeed nor fail, keeping me in limbo, until it’s too late to realize.

But why are these connections vital to get through my goals?

The Neuroscience of Goals

If you seek red in the world then you will find it everywhere. Maybe just a little in the beginning, but the longer you focus on seeing red, it’ll be everywhere.

This is because our brains are “seek and ye shall find” machines.

Just remember that viral video of a dressed up gorilla dancing in front of a team passing a ball. No one noticed the gorilla because we were too busy counting how many times the ball was passed.

What you aim at determines what you see. And your aim should depend on what you value.

That’s where successful goals come in. The journal of Experimental psychology showed that goals that are highly emotional causes participants to perceive obstacles as less significant than they appear.

This is because the amygdala, the part of the brain that creates emotion, evaluates the degree to which the goal is important to you. It then works together with the rational frontal lobe in order to best focus on achieving said goal, and literally ignoring everything else.

If you are looking for red, that’s all you will see.

The brain then restructures itself to focus on that valuable aim, and if it keeps you on your toes enough, it will continue to do so for a while.

Conclusion

Having that certain focus can probably make you pretty unstoppable which is why I recommend anyone with any important goals to write them down as specifically as possible and try to find an emotional link to them.

From there, you might have to think why you do what you do, and the purpose of what you’re striving for is. Instead of looking at getting good grades in the short term, perhaps instead look at what you really want to learn and achieve in your life.