Doing the right thing over and over again can be painful, especially if you’re not used to doing it. But the more you do it, the more you flex your success muscle, the easier it becomes to make the right decisions.
When I was in high school I was a terrible student. I had a lot of perfectly valid reasons for this- my mom was sick, things weren’t great at home etc., because of this I chose the easier decision to not do my homework and to not study. I was stretched thin and couldn’t make myself do what I knew I had to do to be a good student. It just wasn’t a priority.
When I went back to school as an adult I knew that getting good grades was a priority. I needed to have straight As if I wanted to transfer to the university that I had decided to go to. And it was extremely hard to make the right choice to do all the things that I needed to do, especially when it felt like unnecessary busy work or simply just too much. But after two years of forcing myself to do the right thing even when it was unfathomably hard, I graduated with a 4.0 and got into my dream university. And when I got to university, it was so much easier to consistently make the right choice.
Being the student that did all the work and put in the time to study had just become who I was. By the time that I graduated I was a great student. I didn’t even think twice about completing every assignment to the best of my ability. It didn’t become any less work, but it became much easier to do all the work. My academic success muscle had grown strong.
It can be hard at first to work the success muscles that will allow you to achieve your goals, but the more that you make the right choices the easier it gets. Just like with anything else, the more that you practice, the better you will get at it. Here’s to your success!