 Hello my people, my name is Meacham and today we're going to talk about motivation. So what is motivation exactly and why is it so important for the university admissions process? That's what we're going to talk about today. One way that you can help keep me motivated is by hitting that subscribe button. Please and thank you. Okay, so let's talk about what motivation is and why it matters for you. Motivation in the simplest sense is a sensation of wanting to do something. Why do you get motivated? Well, because your body wants you to do things that'll make it feel good. When you are hungry, you are very motivated to eat. When you are thirsty, you are motivated to drink. And likewise, when you want to accomplish your goals in life, you will experience motivation to do that because your body enjoys that wonderful feeling of dopamine that it gets whenever you do something right. I want you to think of motivation like the HP bar in like a role-playing game, right? That's the one bar above your head that tells us how motivated you are. When you're at full strength, you're ready to go, you can do anything, and it seems like no task is too much for you. But when you hit zero, yeah, you're not getting anywhere. The thing to understand about this mysterious motivation bar is that it's constantly depleting. Every waking moment of the day, that bar is getting smaller and smaller and smaller. Every time you make an effort to do something, that also depletes your motivation. And every time you experience a setback, like a gigantic swing from the enemy's sword, you also lose motivation. It's a lot easier to lose motivation than it is to gain motivation. How do you keep your motivation up? Okay, so potions like coffee can give you a temporary boost to your maximum HP, but they're only temporary. They don't last forever. So how can you raise your motivation more sustainably? Well, it turns out that really the only way to increase your motivation is to accomplish your goals. Oh, that sounds really easy, Meacham. I didn't think of it like that. I would have just accomplished all my goals a long time ago. Thanks for that advice. Trust me, there is some logic to this. See, whenever you accomplish a goal, your HP bar recovers and it gets bigger. You actually get more HP every time you accomplish your goals. So that'll make it easier for you to accomplish more of your goals in the future. You'll have more motivation to work with. So how do we min-max this? How do we minimize the loss of motivation from day to day life and our setbacks while maximizing the motivation that we can get from accomplishing our goals? The first is to manage your expectations. Expectations are basically your brain's way of preparing for an event to happen. And if your brain is prepared correctly, it'll have a reduced emotional response. And that means a lower impact on your motivation. Now this kind of works both ways. If you, for example, expect amazing things to happen and then nothing good happens, that's going to create a big hit to your motivation. On the other hand, if your expectations are really low and things work out well, that could be a big boost to your motivation when you do accomplish that goal. Of course, I would like things to go better in life. I would love to see this video get like a thousand views tomorrow, but I know that's probably not going to happen, so I don't worry about it. I'm not going to let that take away my HP. Managing your expectations is one of the most important things and it applies to your university life as well. You might have a very idealized version of what you're going to get at university. And you look at these beautiful websites with these beautiful campus photos and it's very easy to get enticed by those things. It's easy to get your expectations way up here. And then you get there and it's not exactly what you expected. So keep your expectations realistic, expect the unexpected, expect for some things to not work out according to plan. Second thing you can do is to keep your eyes on the prize. That means you need to stay focused on your goal. If you don't look for the goal, then the actions you're taking are going to feel kind of meaningless and pointless. Now, this can be really tough if the goal in question is really far away, which tends to be the case when we're talking about applying to universities. It's hard to stay focused on a goal that's more than a year away. So what can you do? Try to make your goals smaller. I'm not saying don't think big. You definitely want to think big, but you've got to take your goals and break them into smaller pieces. When you make your goals smaller, you increase the frequency of those HP gains. Every time you accomplish a small part of your goal, you get that little boost to your HP. Instead of waiting to try to make it all the way to the end of the level and cash it in, it's like you have little checkpoints along the way. I'm about to be grandpa meacham here for a second, but back in my day when we played video games, we didn't even have the ability to save our video games. You had to write down a password on a sheet of paper, and if your mom threw that paper away, then you lost all your progress on your goal. Really there was nothing more discouraging than losing your password sheet. It meant you had to do a complete start over. It was a sad day. So whatever you're trying to do, break it up into smaller pieces, focus on those little things that you need to do, and every time you get one done, do something that lets you know that you've finished that task. Whether that's ripping off a sticky note from your monitor, like I do, or crossing it off a list on a piece of paper, do something physical that says I did it. That's how you activate the reward center of your brain and let it know to release some of that sweet, sweet dopamine into your bloodstream. Appreciate the little victories. And while this might sound kind of cliche, you need to stop and appreciate those little moments in your life that have been successful. If you got a really good letter of recommendation from one of your teachers, appreciate that moment. If you got a really good essay that you finally put together for your common app, appreciate that. Ask yourself how much time would you spend moping and complaining and feeling bad about something that didn't go well? I want you to take that same amount of time and use it to celebrate all the things that go right. So even though you have to stay focused on your main goal and keep working towards it, don't forget to take a moment or two to look at what you have done and appreciate that work on the topic of appreciating work. Appreciate others. When you show gratitude to other people, you generally get a better feeling and it makes you want to continue doing stuff. It's a little shot of motivation that you can carry with you anywhere you go. All you got to do is just take that moment to say thank you to someone. We thank you so much for this bountiful harvest of dominoes, KFC, and the always delicious Taco Bell. I'm grateful for the fact that I have other people around me at score that support what I do and allow me to make these videos, even though I don't generate any revenue for the company at all. People support me and that makes me happy and that motivates me to do more. And when you give thanks to other people and show them gratitude, they're more likely to do the same for you. So what I believe you are trying to say is thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. And that will increase your motivation as well because another source of motivation is other people around you. Surround yourself with positive people who also show appreciation for the things in life that are going well. The vast majority of people who give up on studying abroad don't give up because they're incapable of studying abroad. Truth is almost everybody is good enough to study abroad. Many people drop out of this process when they get stuck on a setback or when they feel like their goal is too far away or impossible to reach. If you're motivated, then you will be persistent. Persistence is our ability to keep our HP up and to keep working towards our goals. I found myself wanting to talk about this today because making these videos requires persistence and sometimes it's hard to stay motivated. You know, there's times where we want to see results that we're hoping for now. And I came into this with an expectation that I probably won't see this channel get any sort of traction for at least a couple of years. And knowing that even then it's still difficult sometimes to sit down and put in the hours to make a video. But I do it because I focus on those little victories and I'm grateful for the people that do watch this. So to those 136 people who've subscribed to this channel, thank you. I appreciate it. You're the reason I'm doing this. I wanted to share this method with you guys because I know that it works and it's worked wonders for me and it's one of the biggest reasons why I consider myself a very productive and generally happy person. And I want you to be productive happy people too. So keep in mind this is how we work at score. And if you need some assistance with your university process, sometimes having a helping hand is just what you need to overcome some of your own shortages in the motivation department. So if you need some help, go to prepwithscore.com or check us out on Instagram at prepwithscore to see how we can help you to overcome the challenges of your university admissions process and keep your motivation up. And now before I get discouraged and demotivated, I'm gonna go start making another video. I'll see you guys next week.