What happens when studying more doesn't help your grades? Do this... Image: Newsroom When my grades used to slip, even the slightest, I was always told that I needed to put in more work outside of the classroom. I needed to spend more time studying and I needed to watch more videos to help myself actually learn, well at least that's what everyone else was telling me I had to do. But when that really didn't work, and I am sure you have experienced a similar situation, we possibly just accepted that "school isn't for me." Well, that doesn't have to be the case, we can't just discount school because that means we are de-valuing what education is in our lives and that will translate to other areas as well, such as your career. We are going to be constantly learning throughout our whole lives, decades after our college years, and once I realized this I started to test different ways to help myself learn because studying wasn't doing the trick. And that is what I want to share with you, because we can't just not learn our whole lives. I almost forgot! If you are new to the blog, thanks for stopping by! With MMNTM (mo-men-tum) my goal is to help you level up your mind and mindset with effective "workouts." Much like you would train your body, this is the gym for your mindset, everything from your happiness and mental clarity to mental discipline and productivity. These are the things that have helped me the most and I love sharing them with you daily on yourmmntm.com/blog so be sure to stop out daily! Now let's get back to what you started reading for. Today's Blog at A Glimpse
Why You Are Reading This BlogSchool is a constant struggle for us all, this will help a bit. You might have stumbled upon this blog randomly on Medium or just searching through Google, but more likely than not, you are not seeing the results or grades that you would like in school, so you have been reading a ton of these "study tips" articles. Maybe some work a little bit but none have been really getting your grades to where they want to be and you don't have the time to study more or just can't get yourself to study more. Maybe finals are coming up, maybe it's midterm season or maybe you are off to a rocky start at the beginning of the semester. There are a million ways we can be struggling in school and it can be hella frustrating. Don't worry though, we all experience it and now you are going to find a way to make it a little better! Whatever the case may be, this strategy will help because it is not going to be another "study strategy," but rather what you can do to start getting rid of stress in your life, freeing up your brain space and just being able to learn and figure out problems 10x easier than you can now. Your mind is at the foundation of your learning, so why do you expect that you would be able to learn and retain the knowledge that you need if you are constantly stressed and taking up space in your mind worrying day in and day out? After all the stress, worries and negative thinking are done occupying your brain, that doesn't leave much room for more knowledge, does it? What Most People Do To Improve Their GradesPretty basic and usually doesn't work because their minds are too crowded with stress. When you talk about improving your grades, most people just assume they need to spend more time studying in the library or take better notes in class. While those might help some of us, they don't help us all and can actually just waste our time if we don't focus on making our mindset right first because we will just spend hours studying and then forget what we read an hour later. Plus, with school and jobs for a lot of us, we don't really have the extra time to devote another 3 hours per class studying each week. We barely have enough time as it is to sleep and if we start to sacrifice too much sleep for studying it is going to do us more harm than good. Why? Because our minds are not going to be functioning anywhere near where they could be, if we only get a few hours of sleep. So, what was the point of studying late into the night if you don't remember what you read and can't effectively problem solve in the morning?  Image: Study USA What Happens When This Doesn't Work?This is where most people just take the L. Not us though... Well, a lot of people get lost when studying more isn't helping their grades and that is when they give up and just accept how it is. That doesn't have to be the case though, you can actually start to improve your learning ability and problem solving ability by looking inside and not for more external strategies that obviously aren't working for you. A lot of us never take the time to realize that we are living in constant stress and doing nothing about it, or we just accept that this is how life is and that we are always going to think like this. Many people don't even know that changing the way you think and improving your mental clarity and problem solving is even an option for them. Let alone an option that is relatively easy to put into practice, with a little discipline, and will yield noticeable results. All it takes is a little mindset work (which I will talk about below) and getting rid of some habits in your life that are not helping you and you would realize that if you really did a deep dive and looked inside for some answers. How Changing Your Mind Can Improve Your GradesHow does a clearer mind able to better find solutions and come up with ideas sound? "Can this really work though, like changing my mind is really going to improve my grades?" Yes, and it works so much better than one may think. First off, when you start to tackle the problem of stress in your life, you start to clear up some space in your mind that you were wasting worrying about things all day, and this leads to less brain fog. What exactly is brain fog? It is when you struggle to find solutions to problems, just can't think clearly and have trouble remembering things. A lot of people experience brain fog yet they don't even realize it and they just start to accept that "this is how my mind works." Then, once they start to actually make some lifestyle changes and this brain fog clears up, it is mind blowing the difference one can see. This brain fog can be caused by everything from lack of exercise to eating too much sugar and carbs to just being too stressed out and never taking time for yourself. One of the other main things that impairs our ability to learn is actually the negativity in our lives. Again, this takes up brain space and makes us see everything in a negative light. How do you expect to do good in any class when all you do is waste time and energy complaining and thinking about how you can't do something or how hard it is going to be? These negative influences are usually subconscious and we might not even realize them depending on how self aware we are. We have to start taking control of what we consume, from social media to news and TV shows because if these are all negative, then we are only feeding our mind negative or sad things and you can't develop a strong mindset doing that. A lot of the media now a days is negative, because that is what gets more viewers and more viewers equals more ad revenue for the companies. No wonder why so many people are negative or sad these days, it's all about what we are consuming. Improving your mind can be as simple as reducing these stressors, removing negativity and feeding your brain a little better in order to reduce this brain fog. But, it can be a little harder to implement even though the concepts are easy due to the fact that we might have been stuck in these patterns of thinking for a while now and it is easy to think this way. Our minds gravitate towards what is comfortable and easy to think about and it is likely these bad patterns of thinking that fit that description. Luckily, I am going to break it down into a simple "workout" for your mind in order to help with implementation. It is like going to the gym, just for your brain!  Image: Minute School Why This WorksIt does. Trust me guys. Your brain isn't just some part of your body that you either get a "good one" or you don't. Instead, it is like any other muscle in your body, when you work on it, feed it right and take care of it, you start to seeing grow and get stronger. A stronger brain means clearer thinking and a better ability to problem solve, that seems like it would be pretty important in terms of doing well in school, wouldn't ya say? Same goes for your mindset, otherwise known as that little voice in your head. That voice essentially runs your whole day as you are constantly thinking and talking to yourself and debating what you should be doing. When you don't take the time to work on that voice and just let it do whatever it wants, you are going to fall victim to negative thinking as that is what is easiest to think about, it doesn't challenge you at all. Negative thinking leads to negative actions and negative speech because that voice in your head always has the first say before it comes out of your mouth. If that is negative, do you really think you are just going to magically be only talking about positive opportunities when you never think about them? That isn't how this game of life works, it is time to upgrade our "players" in this game. How Do I Actually Get Started?Almost every day I will bring you these "workouts" at the end of the articles to actually help you take action and change your mindset. Why? Because that is one of the major things I see missing in personal development, the actionable advice. Everyone has ideas and theories that are "up in the clouds," yet they never come down to Earth and give us some real ways to change. And that is what MMNTM is for, to help you actually change in a unique and fun way, it's like taking your mind to the gym every day at yourmmntm.com/blog Exercise #1: Get off of your phone Reps: 2x at least per day Duration: 1 hour when you first wake up and an hour before you go to sleep Notes: Not only is this going to help you sleep better as you will get off of the stressful things that our phones are, it is going to help you take back control of your life and not worry and stress about what other people are doing. Exercise #2: Cut out alcohol and sugar on big test weeks Duration: All week, and longer if you want lasting results. Notes: The best way to clear up brain fog and start to problem solve better. Exercise #3: Go for a morning and/ or evening walk Duration: 45 minutes Notes: One of my favorite ways to destress and live more in the present. It gets me to stop worrying about the past and future as much and just enjoy where I am. *Leave the phone at home* Also, it gets you outside and getting UV rays, a huge plus for the mindset and happiness. Exercise #4: Hydrate Notes: The brain is made up of mostly water, why would you not be keeping it hydrated to keep up its peak performance. Try at least a gallon each day! Exercise #5: Cut out Negative Content Notes: Go over the shows you watch, social media content you consume, news you watch and see how much of it is influencing your mindset. Likely a lot of negative content that you are seeing on a day to day basis that can easily be cut out. Boom, 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 Now be sure to actually put what you learned to use, don't just read about it and make yourself feel like you are taking action, actually take action! -Taylor Other Content You'll Be Sure to Enjoy
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