No. 1 of 2014

It's so easy, really!

Ruan was in Grade 12 when I first met him, and he had only six months of school left. But already he looked set to fail the end-of-year exams - again! And the reason was simple: he was weak in most of his subjects and he rote-learned everything. Nevertheless, the words just didn't seem to stick in his memory.

Biology was a particular disaster for him. In fact, he'd never passed this subject even once in all his years at high school. The same was true for Cecil when it came to English.

What could they do? they asked.

The answer I gave seemed at face value quite foolish: Each night as they were about to fall asleep, and once again as they awoke the next day, they were to repeat a little mantra: "Biology (or English) is easy! I love Biology (or English)!"

Just two weeks went past before Ruan actually passed a Biology test - for the first time ever! And he passed every other test that term. His mid-year exams saw his mark climb by an astonishing 37%.

In the meantime, Cecil's English mark climbed by a massive 25%. Neither of them ever failed again.

Was the answer given them foolishness? Was it just a simple accident that they now succeeded? Or was it perhaps a miracle?

In reality, it was none of these. The truth is that each was struggling simply because he believed he was useless - and what you believe tends to be exactly the same thing as what you get.

Their repetition of the little mantras changed the way in which they were thinking. It told their subconscious mind that Biology (or English) was very easy indeed, and that they both loved studying.

You see, the subconscious believes implicitly what it gets told. It doesn't understand logic. It therefore accepted Ruan and Cecil's negative thoughts. And then it accepted their daily mantras and made their studying easy.

They still had to work, of course. There's no shortcut to hard work. But each had lost his fear for learning. In fact, studying quickly became something that they rather enjoyed doing. Why? Because they now believed in it . . . were excited by it. And if you love something and are excited by it, then it is surely very easy to do.



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