 Hi friends, welcome to my channel, I am Arapata Karva and before I dive into today's video, I would like to share a very very popular story from Mahabharata which is very much connected to the topic of today's video, I have always been fascinated by Arjuna who is one of the Pandavas from Mahabharata and whenever I am reading about Arjuna, I always come across this story which I think all of us has somewhere or the other read when we were kids. So, there was this story where Dronacharya who is the mentor, teacher of Arjuna and the other Pandav kids. So, Dronacharya is giving archery lessons to all the Pandavas and Dronacharya tells them that you have to hit the bird's eye, you have to hit the eye of the bird and that bird is sitting on the tree. So, that is the task given to all the Pandavas except Arjuna, everyone misses the target and when Dronacharya ask each of the Pandavas that what did you see, somebody says I saw the tree, somebody says branches, somebody said leaves, somebody said bird but when Dronacharya asked Arjuna what did you see? So, Arjuna said that I only saw the eye of the bird and then Dronacharya counter questioned that did you see the bird, he said no, did you see the tree, he said no, did you see the leaves, he said no. So, what else did you see apart from the eye of the bird, he said nothing and he releases the arrow and exactly the arrow hits the eye of the bird and that is what Arjuna is well known for, he is known as the world's best archer who has laser sharp focus and when I read this story, the moral that I get from this story is that in order to become the best in anything, you have to imbibe in yourself certain qualities just like Arjuna who wanted to become the best archer in the world ensured that throughout his life he imbibed qualities that any good archer would need. Similarly, in this video I am going to talk about certain qualities that you should have in you if you are aspiring for a competitive exam as difficult as UGC net. The very first quality that you should have in yourself if you are preparing for UGC net is the right mindset. I have seen a lot of students who think that net exam is a burden, they find it as a struggle or you would see that the way they prepare for this exam it seems as if they are burdening themselves. Now, if you are struggling with an exam, do you think you would be able to prepare for it in a nice manner because I think that if you take anything as a burden, you don't enjoy the process and if you don't enjoy the process, you never are able to give your 100% to it. So, look at it as an opportunity to gain knowledge about your subject. Look at it as an opportunity that will help you to rise in the ladder of your success or rise in your career ladder because if I look at my UGC net exam, I can clearly see that if I was not preparing for UGC net, I would have never gained the kind of knowledge that I have gained after this exam. I would have never gone into the details and depths of the topics. I would have not read such great literary works and I would not have been able to gain so much knowledge that I could start a channel of my own. I could start a website of my own. I could start an online course of my own where I give the same knowledge to my students. I see UGC net exam as an opportunity that can help you to go higher in your life, to go higher in your career. So, don't look at it as a struggle as something that you have to just do because there's no other option left. Look at it from a positive angle and I'm telling you that the way you prepare, the way you study, everything is going to change. The next important quality is confidence. Now, I know that a lot of you would be thinking that confidence is important. It is important in not just a competitive exam but it is important in order to excel in any part of life. But then the real reason why a lot of people struggle with confidence is one mistake and what is that one mistake? That mistake is that we generally tend to question our own potential based on the actions that we are taking. So, all of us make mistakes, right? But then whenever we are making mistakes, whenever we are not succeeding, we try to question our own potential. What we need to understand instead is that we all have infinite potential. The only thing is that by making mistakes, by making errors, we are going to learn. Going back to the same example of cooking, that when I look at a dish that I prepare, there are times when I prepare a dish really nicely and there are times I goof up with the dish. But then whenever I goof up, I don't have to question my abilities to cook. I have to understand the fact that I do have the ability to make a dish properly, just that I was not able to do it this time. But then I would learn from the mistakes and I would not repeat the same thing next time and that is how I progress. So, your potential and the actions that you do should be kept separate. You should understand that you have the potential but you might not be able to succeed every time. Just like a kid, when a kid is trying to walk and every time he falls, he would not start questioning his potential to work. He would not start saying that I don't have the potential to work. We all know that the kid has the potential to work. Just that whenever he's trying to move forward, he would make mistakes, he would struggle with balancing his body but then gradually he would learn. So, every time he falls, which is an action, he should not start questioning the potential. That is how you will always be able to keep your self-esteem high. The next important trait is consistency. Guys, consistency is the key. Consistency is something that can take you to the last because we all must understand that you just in an exam, preparation is not a sprint. It's a marathon. It's a long race and you have to be consistent. You can't just study for five days for 10 hours and then not study at all. That will never help. And most of us have this tendency that every time we make a timetable and there's a chapter that we have to revise early in the morning and that day the alarm did not ring and we woke up late and then when we see that okay, we are waking up at 9 and we should have completed one chapter by 7 in the morning. So, let's not study today because we have any which ways we would not be able to cope up with the timetable. So, let's just not study today and we are going to study from tomorrow. Now, guys, this never works. I'm working with a dietitian these days and that dietitian said a very, very nice thing to me a few days back. He said that whenever in any meal, you eat more calories. Suppose you had this temptation of having a sweet. So, you had a sweet which was not there in the diet plan and you goofed up. Now, you know that you have taken extra calories. Now, don't start thinking that okay, just because you have taken extra calories in this meal, let me over it throughout the day and from tomorrow I am going to follow a strict diet. Whatever you have done, don't get on a guilt trip. Forget it. And from the next minute onwards, stick to the schedule from there. So, if I have goofed up in breakfast, I had a sweet Gulab Jamun in breakfast. Let me not make it affect my lunch. My lunch should be as per what the dietitian has told me. So, just because I have not studied for those two hours, I woke up late or whatever. I did not study in this time slot that I mentioned in the timetable. I should not let it affect the rest of my timetable, the rest of the day. Whatever I have not done, let me forget it. Let me not get on a guilt trip and let me start from where I can. Last but not the least, we have efficiency. Now, what is efficiency? Efficiency means that your input and output should match. It should not happen that you are putting in a lot of input. You are putting in a lot of efforts, energy and you are not getting result. That showcases that your preparation strategy is wrong. A lot of students make these kinds of mistake. I have seen a couple of students who were not a part of my online course. Later when they joined my course, they were able to see where they were heading wrong. They focused so much on learning the publication dates, birth date, death date of the writers that they did not touch upon the main topics like literary theory, criticism. They did not know what to study in a writer. They were learning so much about a writer but when they were solving the questions of that particular writer, they were not getting it right because they were studying information which was not relevant from the net point of view. So, that is where you have to see that if you are putting in a lot of effort, last week you got a score of 60 in a mock test. You studied for 25 hours this week. Now when you give the mock test, if you still score 60 or you score 61, is it worth the effort? So, always try and see the ratio of input and output should match. That is what is going to make you smart worker. So, with that note I would like to take your leave. That is it from my side. Make sure you invite these qualities in yourself and you start practicing a little harder for the upcoming net exam. So, I will meet you very soon in the next video lecture till the time I meet next. Happy learning, keep loving literature and stay tuned to