Zen College Life

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Michael Phelps is probably the most well known Olympian today. He holds 16 Olympic Medals, 8 of which he won recently in Beijing.   His success, though, is no accident.  He’s no freak of nature, nor is he genetically engineered to swim.  Phelps attributes his success to his hard work, dedication, planning, and practicing.   He practices 365 days a year, with 2-a-day practices 145 days a year.  With this much hard work and dedication, it’s almost impossible to not do well.

So where do we stand as far as our success.  What type of dedication do we have towards achieving success?  We can clearly see what it takes to be the best, how hard are we willing to work to be the best?  I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to be the best me.  I’m ready to do the work, no matter what it takes, to develop myself into the greatest me possible.

So how can we achieve Phelps-like success?

It’s pretty simple, though not necessarily easy.

Do your Homework: Ok, we’ve decided to be dedicate ourselves to becoming the best.  Now it’s homework time.  Spend some time doing research.  Figure out exactly what ‘the best’ means to you.  Then find someone else who has already achieved these great results.  Find out exactly what they did, how they did it, what their circumstances were, etc.  Use this as a rough outline, tweaking where you see fit.

Visualize: Next we need to visualize success.  If you are trying to be the best ‘business student’ you need to visualize the important aspects of being a business student.  Visualize your image.  What do you wear?  How do you speak? How do you carry yourself?  What kind of grades do you make?  Spend time each day visualizing the perfect ‘business student’ and before long you’ll be it.

Plan: Ok.  We’ve visualized exactly what the successful version of our self is.  Now it’s time to create that vision.  What did your visionary you dress like? Get the clothes. How did he speak? Learn the lingo.  What were his grades?  Study your butt off.  Make plans and get organized to make your vision a reality.

Practice, Practice, Practice: You are going to fail.  We all do.  But it is important that you keep practicing.  If something doesn’t work, try something else.  If that doesn’t work change it up again.  Chances are that not every solution you come up with can fail, and even if it does, it just means your that much closer to success.

Don’t Stress: Like I said, we are all going to fail sometimes.  Instead of dreading the failures, understand what didn’t work, learn from it, and try again.  In the quest to become the best, we don’t have time to dread failures.  All we have time for is to keep trying, keep working, keep running, keep doing and so on.

Exercise: A healthy body is important for a healthy mind.  Many college students find it difficult to juggle all of the things thrown at them.  It is imperative that you make time for physical exercise.  If you don’t, the 40 year old version of you is going to hate you.

I recently started swimming daily.  I enjoy swimming because it is a cardio and muscular fitness work out all in one.  I’m only 3 days in, and I can only swim for about 17 minutes before I feel like I’m going to sink, but I really enjoy it.  Since I’m fasting for the next 27 days I’m going to go ahead and take it easy, but once Ramadan is over I’m going to kick it up a notch.  I recommend starting with biking, skating, swimming, or sports.  Running is good, but I find it too difficult for beginners, and the last thing you want to do is lose enthusiasm for fitness.  It is too important.

Become the Best: Once you have gone through all of the steps and are continually working towards being great the only thing left is to arrive there.  Many of us will find that as we get closer, though, the goal only becomes farther, because our understanding of what greatness requires makes us aware of how much farther we have to go though.  Think of it this way, you’re young and have plenty of time to get there.  Plus, if you are reading this, you have a head start from the rest of the people your age.  The lack of college self development material shows that people don’t start thinking about developing themselves until later ages, so your ahead of the crowd!

Good luck being great!

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