Day 36- Pushing Myself to Study Effectively

I’ve been in school for two years non-stop now, and I’m still having some difficulty with focus and concentration on my studies. I know I spent 18 years developing bad study habits and so it’s going to be a bit of a process to correct it, and that’s cool- I can do ths. So I’m just bringing it up here once again, from a new angle/dimension as I have slowly been addressing all dimensions of my toubles with studying. I started with stress and anxiety, fear of failure, problems with authority and lack of self-movement and discipline already, and now it’s just some nitty gritty stuff. Some real practical application stuff that requires diligence as I actually continue to walk this change into the physical reality of myself. Self-forgiveness makes pushing through resistances more do-able I find, because of the understanding involved where it’s like: “okay, I know why I ‘m doing this, I know why it seems hard, I know where I’m going with this, I know this is not going to last forever, I know how much better I’ll feel later if I do his now” …etc…

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to resist studying, reading my lessons and taking notes for an upcoming exam.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become distracted and preoccupied while studying my lessons, reading and taking notes, because I have defined it as boring and not what I would prefer to be doing, instead of realizing that everything I do can be utilized as an opportunity to apply myself, to push myself and to expand myself- no matter what it is I am doing.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think/believe/perceive that my lessons are hard because of the vocabulary.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to define texts with more advanced vocabulary as hard instead of realizing that it only takes one moment to look up the word in a new tab and to then integrate that word by looking at its context within the sentence.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become lost and overwhelmed within the denser parts of the chapter, because I would rather be skimming through all the material within the desire for it to all be simple and easy and something I can complete quickly, instead of realizing that some parts of the chapter will require more focus and attention to fully understand, and that I need to take it slow at those points so as to fully comprehend the lesson.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want/desire to skip over the parts I don’t understand within the text, as if I’ll piece it all together by the end, instead of realizing that this causes me to become frustrated because I end up not completely understanding what I’m reading.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to judge myself when I don’t completely understand the text because I’ve skimmed over some parts due to laziness, thus sabotaging myself and hashing up old memories of being completely lost in school wherein I developed the belief that “I just can’t do this, I just can’t understand, there’s something wrong with me, I’m not like the others, it’s more difficult for me” and so on, without taking a moment to look at how I actually created this reality for myself by not applying myself as much as is/was required of me to.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to relive two particular memories of doing quizzes which I had not studied for, wherein I did not take any self-responsibility, but instead allowed myself to fail and go into self-judgment, and after repeating this type of behavior enough times I ended up defining myself as one who is not capable of school.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to play the victim by defining myself as incapable, instead of standing up and changing my habits and actually applying myself fully, as I know full well I am capable of.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to use my self-definition of ‘incapable of schoolwork/focusing/concentrating/understanding’  as an excuse to not have to fully apply myself, because it’s easier to judge/define myself than it is to actually push myself to change.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to define myself as incapable of schoolwork.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think or believe that school is more difficult for me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to abdicate my self-responsibility by believing I simply can’t do it, instead of realizing that I can do it because I have all the tools I need available to me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to overdo it at times when I’m studying, within the belief that I need to push push push all the time, instead of taking myself and my physical body into consideration by giving myself breaks and doing it in shorter spurts, such as studying for 45 minutes, and then taking a 15 minute break.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think or believe that pushing myself to sit there and stare at the screen is effective, instead of realizing quality over quantity- it’s doesn’t matter how much time I put in if I’m not learning, absorbing, understanding anything.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to build up studying as some big arduous task that ‘nearly kills me,’ and then procrastinating from doing it because I’ve built up this belief, instead of simply setting up my spot, setting up my timeframe, sitting down and starting. It doesn’t have to be so miserable- that is entirely self-created.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to define studying as miserable instead of taking self-responsibility and looking into how I created that experience for myself, wherein I am now using it as an excuse to become distracted and make it worse.

I realize I have made studying ‘miserable’ ‘arduous’ and ‘difficult’ by skimming over tough sections of text, by not adequately looking up and integrating the vocabulary I don’t understand, by defining the entire experience on past memories, and by projecting those past memories into the future thus setting myself up to procrastinate.

When and as I am going to study I DO NOT STOP moving me towards the task. I DO NOT give myself the time to project how it’s going to be. I simply keep putting one foot in front of the other until I am sitting down and ready to go, and then I breathe, clear myself, and start with 45 minutes.

When and as I see myself becoming distracted while studying, I stop, and I breathe. I bring myself back to awareness and check why I am allowing myself to be/become distracted: is it the vocabulary, is it a tough spot in the text, is it past memories or am I defining the moment as too hard, too arduous as an excuse to escape self-responsibility.

I commit myself to push myself within studying, within the understanding of the importance of being able to discipline myself and utilize every moment and every breath as an opportunity to push and expand me.

I commit myself to gently change myself from the bad habits and definitions I have created for myself within school/studying over time, so that I may stop creating the same experience over and over, and instead simply move myself through the task, within presence as who I am.

I commit myself to push through the resistances I will inevitably face as I change the habits and patterns I have become so used to within studying.