Student Life: How to get most of it

This part of my life, this little part is called happiness. The dialogue from the movie the pursuit of happiness comes into my mind when I think of student life.

According to statistics from stage of life, 80% of college students or young people are happy with their lives in general but this is not only the case, according to another survey, 40% of college students feel down, depressed or hopeless.

We are living in the dimensional world, where time as a dimension is unstoppable and it doesn’t matter how you are living , it shall pass. Student life is a golden time which will pass too, no matter with regrets or golden memories. 

Nobody wants to live with regrets and you’ll never have these opportunities, so here are a few tips or advice that helped me and will help you to get most of your student life.

1. Golden circle for clear and specific goals

Staying clear about your goals will help you set your priorities. This will also help you to set your balance between study, sleep and social life. 

Don’t just say, you want good grades. Be specific and say you want good grades because you want to get into a good college for higher education. Therefore you need to study 6 hours a day for 6 months.

The rule for staying specific and clear about your goals is the “the golden circle” mentioned by Simon Sinek in his book “Start with why”.

There are three parts of the golden circle, Why, How and what. 

1. Why defines cause or motivation, in the above example, getting into a good college is your motivation.

2. How defines the plan,start studying 6 hours a day for 6 month is your plan, in the above example.

3. What defines the action, Action you are taking on your plan and it will also help you to track your progress by comparing your actions and plan. 

When you know the cause and effects of anything, it’s easier to set clear and specific goals. When you set clear goals, it converts into a plan. And it is easier to take action on a plan rather than on a goal.

Start with motivation, plan, do what, and how much is required.

2. Explore yourself: IKIGAI for Students

What I meant by exploring yourself, is to get familiar with your strengths, weaknesses, mission, and passion. In short, it is the art of living and that will be your IKIGAI.

IKIGAI is a japanese word which means “a reason for being”. According to Japanese culture, your lifestyle lies at the center of four intersecting circles. 

Each of the above elements is important for living a successful, happy, comfortable and financially good  student life. It is important to make a balance between all of these elements and your life should lie in between of these intersecting circles. These few tips will help you find Passion, Profession , Vocation and mission.

1. What you love to do: Being a student, your life stucks between assignment, exams and lectures. These things are important but pursuing something you enjoy parallel with school work can take you one step closer to balanced life. Find something you love doing, anything which you can do for hours without losing focus.

2. What are you good at: Identify your talent and skills. It is not necessary that you are good at something you love, but you can learn what you love by diligence and hard work.

3. What the world needs: The world as a whole is a very big picture, try to identify where you can be fit in this world, what can be your contribution. You can contribute by offering your skills which the world needs for the good will of the community, and what you will achieve is feeling good about yourself.

4. What can get you paid: Financial freedom is important for living a good life. When you will find what you love to do and what the world needs, you can easily find a profession that can lead you to financial stability.

To know more about IKIGAI, our previous blog is related to this.

3. Curiosity in Student Life

Have you ever wondered why Leonardo da Vinci contributed in many different areas of science and arts field ? 

He was an inventor, painter, sculptor, architect, mathematician, and writer. He also contributed to geology,  literature, botany, astronomy, cartography, and history. Not only this, but he is also known as the father of architecture, and his painting “Mona Lisa ” is considered to be one of the most famous paintings in the world and his last supper painting is the most recreated painting. If we talk about his inventions, he invented scissors, parachutes, helicopter, design of extendable ladders and also some war machines. 

So, what drives him to contribute so much in different areas of science, art and mathematics was curiosity  as defined by Michel Gelb in his book “Think like da vinci”  as a first principle. He was always ready to learn, open for experiments and he wanted to know everything about everything. 

Being a student, and having curiosity can lead your academic and student life on the next level. Here are a few tips to be more curious.

1. Observe and keep an open mind. Learn, un-learn, re-learn . If you believe you are wrong, accept it and change your mind. 

2. Ask Questions. Ask what, why, when, who, where and how as they are the best friends of curious people.

3. Take out the “boring” from your dictionary. It will help you to open more possibilities in learning from the things that you were considering boring. 

4. Learning is fun. Take learning as a fun and train your brain to conceive this as a fun thing you like to do, it will help you to be interested in the subject.

5. Try different things. Before making an opinion about anything, try it. Do experiments, try it yourself as it will help you know about the things , you never knew and generate a new thought process.

4. Embrace Challenge: Leave the results on Hard Work

Hardwork always pays off, no matter what. No matter in which form but every action you are performing, every step you are taking has some consequences and it will put some effect in your life. That’s called the butterfly effect.

Student life offers so many challenges, competitions on a different level which develops so many positive personal skills no matter how you perform. Most of the students never participate in those kinds of competitions and never take challenges as they think they are not competitive enough or may have fear of losing. This mindset can lead to the feeling of negativity and loss of opportunity. 

In the following lines, there are a few reasons why you should embrace challenges and will help you participate in competitions and will enhance your personal and academic skills.

1. Improve your teamwork and collaboration skills.
   
2. Enhances your emotional learning and social skills.
   
3. Makes you Motivated.
   
4. Helps you make your academic concepts strong.
   
5. Grows your mindset.

5. Doing for others can help you do more for yourself

Doing something for someone can help you do more for yourself. For example take example of teaching something you do or know about,

When you teach something you do or know about, it helps you understand your idea about the subject. When you are presented with some questions about the topics you know and you are able to answer it , you have a feeling of fulfilment. And if you are unable to answer it, it will trigger you to find the answer and will enhance your learning.

The idea of “Docendo discimus” which is a latin proverb meaning “by teaching, we learn” is promoted by Seneca , the roman philosopher and there is a psychological phenomenon which is called The protégé effect , which can help us do more for yourself by doing for others.

Students can use the protégé effect in the following way for helping themselves do more.

1. If you have any hobby, you can teach the basic skills to master that skill.
   
2. Explaining concepts of the things you know and with what other people are not familiar with can help you improve your understanding of those concepts more.
   
3. If you are learning something, try to learn it in a way that you have to teach.

6. Learn to manage people : Win friends

Your technical and academic skills will just help you score good grades, get a good job. But what makes your college or university experience worthwhile is your skills with people.How you manage them, what kind of relationships do you have and how many true friends you have is what matters.

If we talk about elements of success in any area of life, “skills with people” will always find a place in a list as one of the most important skills. Let’s take an example of the engineering field. 15% of financial success of engineers depends on technical skills and rest 85% of it depends on social skills.

Dale Carneige, a famous author who wrote “How to win friends and influence people”, provided us some of the techniques that can help us win friends or in handling people.

The author has provided so many techniques to handle people, but I will provide few of them that can be helpful in student life.

1. Give people what they want: Health, food, money, and sleep are important for us but there is something more important for us and that is a desire to be important and feel appreciated. You can make your relationships important with people by providing what they want and they will stay for you forever.
   
2. Arouse in the other person an eager want: You cannot make anybody do anything unless he wants to do it himself. You can force them but it’s not a good idea. The good idea is to make him realize what’s good for him in the task, and he will do it himself.
   
3. Become Genuinely interested in other people: Most of the people talk about themselves and show how good they are and they think by doing this they can impress others. But the truth is, nobody wants to feel inferior in front of you. Everybody has a movie going on in his mind, in which he himself is the hero. So, if you want to make good bonds, you should be genuinely interested in the other person and talk about them.
   
   

7. Travelling is happiness, you can buy with money

This title is not some nonsense sentence but it is proved by science, that spending on experiences is more likely to bring happiness than spending on some material objects. And what is travel, it’s an experience that will let you know more about yourself and will bring a new set of issues and opportunities.

Here are few quotes that as a student will positivate you to save , take your backpack and explore,

1. Money can’t buy you happiness, but it can buy you a plane ticket and that’s sort of the same thing.
   
2. Travel is the only thing that you buy that makes you richer.
   
3. You can always make money, you can’t always make memories.

The other reason why you should travel now is because the best time to travel is when you are young. 

So being a student, travelling will add a lot of new experience and will take your student life to the next level.

In the following list, I will provide few things that you can achieve by travelling.

1. Exploring yourself.
   
2. Discovering new worlds.
   
3. Makes you a more interesting person.
   
4. Meeting new people and making real social connections.
   
5. Improves understanding of new cultures.
   
6. Discovering a set of new ideas and opportunities.
   
7. Making lifelong experiences.
   
8. Improves your health.
   
9. Takes you out of your comfort zone.
   
10. Makes you love your home more.

8. Write your experiences, thoughts, ideas

Writing is a way of communicating your ideas without making any noise. It is another way for exploring and discovering yourself. This skill will surely add a lot to the life of a student.

When you write about your painful or difficult experiences, you can easily move on from it and writing your good experiences, can help you know what makes you happy.

and why you should write down your thoughts? it can make your brain clear and can use it for more productive things.

When you write your questions or ideas, you can easily find a plan or solution inside the characters of those questions.

When you write who you were and who you are now, You can measure your life and anything that can be measured can be improved. 

In the following list, I will give you some reasons to write as a student.

1. Remove stress.
   
2. Make your writing skills sharp.
   
3. Writing skill is one of the important skills that can help you earn.
   
4. Enhance your communication skills.
   
5. Know what you want and reinvent yourself.

Hence, a student should start writing his own experiences, travel stories, thoughts and ideas. Not only this, he should revise all this stuff so he can measure where he was and where he is now to improve his life. 

9. Your fears should be in your to-do list

What’s the easiest way to live ? Just avoid the things that you are afraid of .

But will it be any good ?

Is living a life in a comfort zone worthy ?

What if your fear is success, you will avoid it ? 

The answer should be a big No. 

This powerful quote of Vincent Van Gogh, can help you overcome your fear. It can be applied to anything. For example if you are afraid of speaking in public, it goes like,

“If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot do public speaking’, do it by all means and that voice will be silenced.”

If you will live with all the voices that your mind tells you cannot do , you will miss alot of opportunities, therefore it is necessary to silence the mind by doing the things which scare you. 

Here are few tips that can help you overcome your fears,

1. Make a list of all your fears.
   
2. Start with smaller fears and a positive mindset.
   
3. Break bigger fears into smaller steps.
   
4. Take actions.
   
5. Stop comparing yourself with others.
   
6. Write your progress.

In the end, your mind will stop telling you that you can’t. Remember you are the owner of your mind and you can control it, not allow your mind to take on a ride you don’t want to take. 

10. Learn to Market, start Working and investing

Marketing is a skill that’s not just for the people in the marketing field. Marketing is not only about selling products , but when you send your resume to a company, your resume is a piece of paper that markets you, that tells the company why they should hire you. Not only this, when you apply at any college and you write your letter of motivation or statement of purpose, it is also an opportunity to market yourself to get the opportunity.

Learning to market yourself can also help you learn,

1. learn to listen.
   
2. make better decisions.
   
3. Self-awareness.

While studying, a student should start working as well. It will give him financial independence and not only this he can nourish his skills while studying. There are so many things that a student can do while studying and that can generate a good income, some of which are as follows,

1. Freelance services ( will help you learn some extra skills)
   
2. Starting a blog ( will improve your writing skills)
   
3. Become a tutor ( The proégé effect: you will get a better understanding of a subject)

Learning about investments at an early age gives you an edge on other people and will add so much to your financial life at student life. Not only this, starting investments at an early age will teach you much about risk assessments and it can help them embrace the high tolerance for risk. 

References:

Start with why by Simon Sinek

IKIGAI: The Japanese secret to long and happy life by Francesc Miralles and Hector Garcia

How to think like da vinci by Michael J. Gelb

How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie