The Last Word

By Scott Tisdall | Posted: Tuesday April 10, 2018

Picture this. You have a Biology internal due next week, so you decide to go to a quiet place and hit the books.

You get two questions into a topic that you're not really interested in and your imagination begins to bombard you with different distractions and fantasies. You sit there trying to battle through it when you start thinking about that lucky lady on your snapchat or the sandwich in your fridge or maybe it's time to go catchup on some Netflix. Either way it’s like all the ideas and wants in your head aren’t happy to just sit there and wait while you prepare for your internal. The reason this happens is because you’re not actually interested in the work so the procrastinating ideas pop up and try to take control of your concentration.

So why aren’t you focusing? Because after all it was YOU that choose the subject. YOU should at least be motivated enough to finish the damn paper. But you can’t... and it is all because of your subconscious bad habit of wanting to do something else, something more entertaining. You have lost the motivation that you had when you chose the subject at the end of last year. And the reason this speech is so relevant right now is because it’s the end of term 1, where everyone has lost the hype of being in long pants or being Year 12 or Year 13.

This next sentence will sound strange, but honestly it is the most effective way to get the hype back that you need to create your own heaven and your own hell. I know this sounds crazy but bare with me and answer these questions. Where do you want to be in ten years? What do you want from your friends? What do you want from your family? Your education? Your future career?

I’ll give you a moment.

Now take those answers and piece them together to build your own personal heaven. You now  have something to work towards, you have a place to "get to”. 

Creating your own hell is a similar task. To do this I want you to take all your personal bad habits whether it be procrastination, sleeping in, eating when you’re bored, playing too many video games, wasting time on facebook, staying up late, not exercising or flunking out of school work. Next, I want you to imagine what your life would be like if you continue to let these bad habits govern you for the next 10 years. If you were to continue down that path. You would hit a true rock bottom. And knowing that you alone put yourself there. Now that's hell.

Jordan B. Peterson once said, “It’s great to run towards something you like but even better to run from something that terrifies you.”