A blog for overwhelmed students looking to excel through 3 simple methods!
“Champions aren’t made in the gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them—a desire, a dream, a vision.”
-Muhammad Ali
A quote from one of the greatest athletes of all time, giving insight into the mind’s and attitudes of champions. While Muhammad Ali was best known for his athletic achievements, I firmly believe that they attitude addressed in this quote can be applied to many aspects of life. A quote about being your own champion, in whatever endeavor you choose to pursue.
My name’s Matthew, and as a third-year student at the Ohio State University, I’ve been able to complete a variety of collegiate tasks that I am proud of, however, I always had a feeling that I wasn’t quite built for some of the goals I had in mind for my life. As a result, I became unmotivated and lost sight of some of those goals. That’s when I decided to take this course at OSU, which exposed me to just the book I was needing: The Champion’s Mind. This book gave me the insight I needed as a student struggling to find motivation and drive. That’s why I created this blog, to share with all of you the methods I took away from this book that I truly believe can be applied to any one of your lives, however my methods will be steered more towards the academic side of life! I hope you all enjoy this blog and can learn some new methods to applying yourselves.
Table of Contents:
Introduction…………………………………………………………………..Pg. 1
Personal goals………………………………………………………………..Pg. 2
Plan of action…………………………………………………………………Pg. 3-4
How I tracked my plan…………………………………………………….Pg. 5-8
Major Takeaways……………………………………………………………Pg. 9-10
Personal Goals
The Champion’s Mind is a book geared towards athlete minded individuals, and I would consider myself to be one of the individuals. All throughout my life I was an athlete in most all of my endeavors, pushing myself to greatness. In college, this lifestyle seemed to vanish, and I lost faith in my abilities. I didn’t know where to start to get back on track. When I stumbled across this book, it gave me the necessary tools to set goals and achieve greatness. My goals were influenced by the advice given throughout this book, which included being able to start at the basics, and be able to slowly build back up my abilities and self-esteem. By returning to the basics, it allowed for an approachable goal that was also extremely beneficial. My goal was to increase my self-esteem by increasing self-efficacy, improving sleeping behaviors, while keeping my eyes on the prize. Through the use of motivational quotes throughout, methods to improve self-efficacy, and an emphasis on what as important, The Champion’s Mind helped shape and improve my life, and I hope this blog allows you to do the same.
Plan of Action
This image says it all. Without a plan, it would be impossible to reach my goals. I know what you’re thinking…ugh a plan of action, this sounds like too much work for me. Trust me, this plan of action takes so little time out of your day but will make a huge difference in boosting your self-esteem as a student. My plan of action consisted of three methods, which I will describe in further detail below!
Becoming a Champion Sleeper
This method is extremely simple, and is a small lifestyle change that can lead to a big improvement in your life. Before I read this book, I had horrible sleep habits, sleeping around 5.5 to 6.5 hours per night. The Champion’s Mind emphasized the importance of a good night’s sleep, particularly ranging from 7-9 hours per night. My method of ensuring I would improve my sleeping habits was by downloading the app, Sleep CycleTM, which sets an alarm for you and tracks the amount and quality of your night’s sleep. Being able to see this data allowed me to make necessary adjustments to my schedule to get those important 7-9 hours of sleep. Later on in my blog I will post daily sleep logs as well as an overall trend graph of my sleep habits.
Creating a Scouting Report
“If you can spot greatness, you’ve got greatness.”
Getting bogged down by focusing on your weaknesses only decreases self-esteem and increases self-doubt. The Champion’s Mind suggested creating a scouting report, by first addressing what makes you great at a certain task ahead of you. By creating this scouting report, I was able to manage my limitations by focusing on my strengths and not my weaknesses. My scouting report became a journal, where I recorded two strengths I possessed in a certain area, before trying to tackle the task. My journal is published later on this blog as well.
Daily Goal Journal
It is easy to be overwhelmed by your ultimate life goals and being overwhelmed can lead to a decrease in motivation or drive. In a strategy described in The Champion’s Mind, setting smaller, easily attainable goals daily that lead up to pursuing your ultimate goal helps to improve self-efficacy and self-esteem. Instead of taking a giant leap and falling on your face, this strategy suggests taking baby steps, to ultimately reach the same spot, but without becoming disheartened by your failures or missteps. The way that I implemented this method and was able to track improvements was through the development of my daily goal journal, where I relate a smaller goal for the day to a life goal that I have planned for myself. This connection between the easily attainable goals to an ultimate goal helped me see how the simpler things were really moving me closer to an end goal instead of primarily focusing and stressing over the end goal itself.
How I tracked my plan
Seep Reports: (some days are missing due to inaccurate sleep recording)
These pictures show each individual sleep log for the day, but the data shown next will demonstrate the sleep trends over the extent of this method.
This data shows the trend of the average total time spent in bed, so even though the average was 7:37 hours per night, this graph shows that my average sleep per night was improving since starting the use of this app.
Scouting Report: (below will be screenshots of the journal document)
Daily Goal Journal: (below will be screenshots of the journal)
Major Takeaways:
“The destiny of man is in his own soul” -Herodotus
This project and book really allowed me to self-reflect and realize that I can be my own champion when I put time in and recognize my abilities. As the quote above says, it is important to be able to self-reflect, because what we are capable of completing is already within us. Using the methods above, I was able to get one step closer to unlocking my full potential, via methods that increased efficiency, self-efficacy, and confidence in my own abilities, methods that you too can apply to your own lives. Over the course of this project I learned a lot about myself, my capabilities, my strengths, and how the smaller goals lead up to ultimate goals. Next, I will briefly go over how I think each method contributed to meeting my goal of increased self-esteem as a student.
Takeaways of Becoming a Champion Sleeper:
Before implementing this method, I was a horrible sleeper. I would get minimal hours of sleep during the night and it left me feeling exhausted during the day, often forcing me to rely on midday naps that decreased my efficiency as well. I was moody and tired all the time, and it was extremely detrimental to my abilities and attitudes towards being a student. By becoming a champion sleeper and tracking my sleep to ensure 7-9 hours per night, I saw almost instant improvements in my attitude and mood. I had more energy to take on the day, and I was more efficient in my endeavors throughout the day. Being well rested allowed me to take my classwork and homework more seriously, giving me time to prepare and study more often, resulting in increased confidence and self-esteem in my abilities as a student! It seems simple to say that you will make a lifestyle choice towards more sleep, but you have to actually choose to pursue this and keep with it. The benefits will astound you! The only negative aspect of this method was the annoying alarm that was used for the app haha! I eventually got used to it however, and the increased amount of sleep was amazing, and as the book put it, is a crucial aspect of recharging and staying full of energy to tackle the challenges of the day.
Takeaways of Scouting Report:
Allowing myself to focus on my strengths in a certain area before tackling a task kept my self-esteem high and improved my willingness and ability to complete said task. As The Champion’s Mind said, it is important to keep self-esteem high, and a scouting report allows you to find strengths you can focus on. It helped me from feeling that any one task was too difficult to complete, as I had already pointed out two of my strengths regarding the task. I really did find this method beneficial, however, I warn that this method may not work for everyone! Sometimes only focusing on strengths means that you aren’t attempting to improve your weaknesses and just ignore them. With this being said, I believe that this method is good in small amounts, because it is very important to stay confident in your abilities, but it is also very important to learn from mistakes and attempt to improve them.
Takeaways from Daily Goal Journal:
I loved this method, as it allowed me to stay focused on the reason why I was completing small assignment or studying for classes. It helped to remind me each day that I had a larger purpose and that the completion of these small tasks was important and would be the stepping stones to get me where I need to go. This related back to the book, as the book suggested setting small goals that are easily attainable and lead up to your ultimate goal. As you can see in the journal, the connection to my goals become a lot more career oriented, and I began to find a purpose and motivation in even the small tasks/assignments.
Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed and learned a lot!
By addressing the simple things in my life such as sleep time, strengths, and daily goals…I was able to become my own Champion.