For The Stressed and Unhappy College Kid, This One Is From Me To You

College has its ups and downs, here's how to ride the wave a little smoother.

Image: JETMag

I Know, I Have Been There.

I know exactly how you are feeling, heck I still feel it every once in a while.

We all think freshman year is going to be all fun and filled with parties, but at least at my school after the first few months the parties died down a little and I started to get hit with the realities of college.

I spent a lot of time with people, but I was with people that I didn't seem to connect with as well as my high school friends, I started to spend a lot of time alone and classes seemed to be taking over my life.

And from the people I have heard from, a lot of kids have a similar experience.

Sure, you might see your friends to go eat, to go to the gym and in class, but those are just a fraction of your days.

The amount of time we end up spending alone in the dorms is wild. I would have never thought about all of this free time in college actually being a negative.

Especially coming out of high school where everything is planned for you and you see your close friends for 8 hours each and every day and then even more after school.

Everyone has different class schedules in college and that was never something that I considered, so I found myself sitting in my dorm for hours at a time, something that really took a mental toll on me.

Our Preconceived Ideas of College

The first thing that we think about when we think of college is probably Project X type parties, I know this is a high school based movie don't judge the analogy, but even bigger and better.

You head into college hearing that it will be the best four years of your life, from what seems like everyone that you are talking to.

You think you are going to meet the best people in your life, and I'm not saying you won't, but this just adds to the pressure if you don't find these people.

You also think that each and every moment is going to be filled with some new adventure, some new person, some new friends, some new activities and that you will never be bored.

and then the reality of what college is hits...

Sure, the first few months are pretty solid, I am not going to lie, but then the winter started to roll around for me and everything started to die down.

People were hanging out less, just settling into their own schedules and really only planning things on the weekends.

Classes actually started to be a lot of work and effort had to be put in outside of the classroom, I couldn't cruise through like I did in high school.

Maybe your class schedule doesn't line up with your friends and you end up going to the gym and eating alone more often than you would like.

The amount of free time you have starts to be more of a curse than a blessing as you don't know what to fill all of this time with, I just started to go to the gym twice a day to kill some boredom.

Slowly but surely, as the years go by, you realize college might not have been all that it was hyped up to be and the "real world" is looming closer and closer.

The Good News: It's All in Our Minds

One of my best realizations.

The good news here is that this really is just four years of our lives, and I sure hope it isn't the best years of our lives because why would you want 70 years of boring in your life? I would sure hope you found something meaningful to do over the course of those years, not wishing you were reliving the college days forever.

College is really what we make it, much like the rest of life. This is definitely a stepping stone into the "real world" which definitely is what you make it out to be.

You can start looking at every day and every situation in college through a negative lens because it wasn't what you thought it was going to be, but that will just reinforce this bad habit that you might carry the rest of your life.

What does this negative mindset lead to? Less opportunities, less people wanting to be around you and less happiness, just to name a few things.

Or you can realize that everything is in your control for the first time and it is up to you to take advantage of this, the great realization of college.

Using Your Mindset to Revamp Your College Experience

A strategy that is applicable for every other area of your life as well.

Image what your experience could look like if you started to invest into yourself, the investment that you can make without any money and that pays the best rate of return.

All this free time you are spending on Netflix and YouTube, why not spend at least a little bit of it to build up that confidence, feel a little more happy and enjoy your time a little more?

Your mind is like a muscle, you can add skills to it, grow it and exercise it. This just takes a little bit of practice as everything does, just like you were practicing for a sport, just that it is the sport of life this time.

Pushing yourself mentally shows yourself that you are able to do more than you think you can, building your confidence and helping you carry this to other areas of your life.

No longer are you just going through the motions each day waiting for the weekend, you are working on yourself and other people will start to notice.

Our minds are at the foundation of everything in life, might as well craft a strong and resilient foundation so that we can attack other areas such as relationships, work, homework, sports and everything else, with a little different attitude.

This is the biggest realization for me in college so far and I wouldn't want you to miss out on all of the benefits as well.

A Quick Mind Workout For Your Busy Schedule

Exercise #1: Take a walk
Reps: 1x per day
Duration: 45 minutes
Notes: It is even better when the weather sucks and you go take a walk, that builds the ultimate mental toughness. This is hands down one of the best habits I built for my mind in college because you can think through everything and get those UV rays to help your mitochondria function a little better.

Exercise #2: Clean Up The Diet
Notes: Cut down on unnecessary carbs, cut out sugar and alcohol almost completely. You will start to think way clearer. This is hard as crap because all of these things seem almost too plentiful in college.

Exercise #3: Read More
Reps: 1x per day
Duration: 1 hour
Notes: We aren't in high school anymore, challenge yourself intellectually to learn a few new things every day, not reading is not cool.

Exercise #4: Stop Complaining
Duration: All day every day.
Notes: Once you start thinking about every time you want to complain, you will realize how much you actually do so on a daily basis. This gives us a negative lens of the world to look through and impacts how others see us too. Time to change that, start looking at the opportunities every time you want to complain. You will realize this is the hardest of these exercises to execute on.

Just like that another day on the blog is in the books! Thanks for all the support and if you enjoyed this or learned anything I just ask one thing: bring a friend back tomorrow! Time to make personal development more "normal" because it is at the foundation of every area of our lives. Stop back with a friend tomorrow-- yourmmntm.com/blog

-Taylor

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