Ready for the Ivy League Challenge?

Transcript

If you're like many other really ambitious teenagers, the school has been in session for a week or more for some of you. It's even been in for a month. You're getting to the point where you're starting to think, how can I get more done? How can I accomplish more during the time that I have? I want to propose a solution that perhaps you haven't considered before, but it is absolute whereas considering, in fact, almost certainly, it is the answer to your question, and that is to get more done by slowing down.

Let me tell you just really quickly the true story of when I was not a teacher and I was in business; I was doing something that was extremely important. I got a really urgent email that email caused me to feel frustrated. It caused me to feel upset, and I was not going to go through all the details, but I felt a sense of urgency to respond immediately.

And so I typed out the email. I proofread at once to make sure that everything was correct and that all the grammar and everything else was okay. And then I sent it off and not quite immediately, but soon enough, I regretted acting so quickly. When we have that desire that needs speed, we just need to get something finished quickly. Almost always, that is the first clue that we should slow down. Do the exact opposite. In fact, I cost myself countless hours of time because I sent that email, whereas if I had slowed down and thought about it, I probably would have sent it to someone. I have a trusted friend that if I have something emotional that I need to write about, and it's an email, I send it to my friend, and I get feedback, and almost always, that email gets changed, and it gets changed.

Always 100 %. If it gets changed, it changes for the better. Because of my need for speed, I often don't see things clearly. I sent the email off, and it required several additional emails, a few meetings, and lots of putting fires out all throughout the business because I needed to get that email sent out quickly and what happened. It slowed everything down. When you go too fast when you have that sense of urgency, you feel like you need to move quicker than you can; oftentimes, going quickly actually slows you down.

So let's talk about how this is one of those contradictions that are really worth exploring in skill development. This has been top of mind because I have two young children. For those of you who listen in, if you've joined my master classes, I've talked about them a little bit more, but I have a 5-year-old and a 7-year-old.

The 7-year-old now has been playing the violin for a couple of years, but when he first started, he was frustrated that he had to spend so much time just learning where his fingers go on the bow. But his teacher reminded him that actually learning to put your fingers in the right place in the bow; your bow hold is something that's going to speed things up later on. If you hold the bow incorrectly, it's going to take a lot of time; of course, correct it after the fact. It's much better to slow down, don't even hold on to the violin. Just practice over and over and over again with all these different exercises. Practice holding the bow correctly and moving the bow, correct bow hold. That's kind of frustrating if you're anxious to learn the violin and if you're so anxious to learn the violin that you insist on learning your first song before how to hold the bow. Guess what? It's going to take you a very long time to learn the violin, much longer than if you're willing to go slowly.

Another example that is happening in real-time in my home is my 5-year-old, who has just begun to play the piano. And he loves the piano. But he loves it in part because we don't have a lot of screen time in our home, but he gets to use an app to learn the piano, and he loves progressing through the app. He wants to go as fast as possible through this application. Right? He wants to earn new badges and get to new levels and unlock new songs, and all of that. And so one of the things he did at the very beginning is he played the songs with one finger instead of sitting and being really intentional and playing with all of his fingers. We noticed that, and we slowed that down. We made a rule. You can't play with only one finger cause we understand his desire to go faster, right? It's easier to use his one-pointer finger than it is to discipline himself and focus and figure out how to move all those other little fingers.

Now, he's also discovered that if he plays notes sequentially, he can get the first note wrong. And if he plays the second note fast enough, the app doesn't pick up that he got it wrong, always. So sometimes, he can cheat the songs, and it allows him to progress faster. Guess what? You don't have to wonder what's going to happen. He is slowing himself down significantly.

Now, even with a simple explanation, I think you can understand that skill development is almost always this way. If you insist on winning at the expense of fundamentals, you'll never be great. If you're willing to be bad first because you're willing to focus on the fundamentals, you're willing to focus on the things that lead to success later on; then you have a chance to be great, right? If you stick with it, you will be great. College prep is interesting, isn't it? Because not everything is under your control, and how here you are in middle school or high school. And probably, if you're like most teenagers right now, it feels like there is too much to do. So there's no time to find your core values.

For example, there's no time to think about what you really want on this planet. There's no time to think about how you might invest your time for some future outcome. You're just trying to keep your head above water, which means you spend your time right here right now. There's no time to do what you want most or what you're most curious about or most interested in. There's no time to pursue any of that. There's no time to develop yourself. The irony is it feels that way, but that's not the reality. The reality is stopping. When you feel that need for speed, when you feel that urgency, when you feel like there is too much to do, stop and take a break, take a breath, stop, and take a step back, so you can gain perspective. The busier you are, the more important it is to stop, slow down, to focus on what you can control. You need a vision of your definition of success.

When you have this urgent need for productivity, you are going to make more mistakes. Think about multitasking. An excellent example. If you do the right activities together, you can do more than one thing at the same time, but certainly, if we're talking about schoolwork, learning, remembering, trying to make application between things that we've learned and new ideas and critical thinking, all of those things. No way. Multitasking is just procrastinating but inserting the procrastination into the middle of the task. So that it feels like you're not procrastinating. You're getting two things done, not one. No. We want to stop. Focus be intentional about being productive. Productivity happens when we are deliberate. The need for speed slows us down.

This is a real challenge when we're talking about school because you have lots of classes, and you have assignments that are given to you. You have tests, and you have all kinds of activities and clubs and responsibilities and commitments that you have made. And sometimes, it doesn't feel like your time is your own. If you have too many things on your calendar, you might be tempted to skip sleep. You might be tempted to do all kinds of things that increase your stress, decrease your focus, and ultimately decrease your productivity. I have heard countless times from countless parents and teenagers. Man, I would love to do the ivy league challenge. I would love my child to do the ivy league challenge. I would love for them to figure out their core values, and they desire so much to make an impact on their community. This would be perfect for them. We just can't do it right now. And as months go by, we still can't do it. We still can't do it. The busier. You are the more important. It is to stop to slow down, find your core values, make decisions that align with those core values, to define what success means to you.

Let me make this even more clear. If you have a desire to get into one of the most selective colleges in the united states, the worst thing you could do is fill your schedule with so many activities that you're overwhelmed that you don't have time to figure out your core values and figure out who you are.

Why would that be the worst thing you could possibly do? You might feel like everyone else is doing it. If I don't do that, I can't stay ahead. There's no way I can keep up. But you've already answered your question, haven't you? Everyone else is doing this. Everyone who is trying to compete for a spot in the most selective colleges is doing too much. They're filling their schedules so full that they have no time to figure out who they are. They have no time to be self-reflective. They have no time to identify their core values. Let alone align their lives with those core values. And they have no time to create an impact project to make an impact because they have identified core values. And they have identified problems in their community that violate those core values if you are filling your schedule so full with activities and clubs and sports and music and classes.

And after class activities and test prep and tests and more, you don't have time to figure out who you are stuck in a spiral that is not going to get you where you want to go because when you finally do apply to college, you're going to be frustrated that you worked so hard, but your application doesn't stand out in the pool.

Every single year, I hear from parents who feel absolutely overwhelmed and just beyond frustrated because they feel like college admissions at the most selective colleges are just a lottery.

Look at all these people with these outstanding statistics, outstanding test scores, outstanding grades, outstanding everything, and they got rejected from every single school. And the parents' reply. And I understand I'm not blaming parents. I can see where you arrive at this conclusion, but let's talk about it. So we can see this more clearly. So many parents are going to say my goodness if a 4.0 unweighted, 4.8 weighted GPA with a fifteen fifty sat wasn't good enough.

Then what is good enough? And everyone is ignoring the fact that college admissions officers have been saying for over a decade but have certainly been making it very clear that it's a holistic process. They're not looking for only the smartest people or only the hardest working or the most quote, unquote, qualified. They already know that's a fool's approach. They're trying to compare thousands of applications. And all of them are super impressive when it comes to just grades and test scores. Even when you add activities like this person did 20 clubs + great grades plus great test scores. There are sure in, and they got rejected from everywhere. Clearly, it's just a lottery, or it's rigged, or there's some other issue. But when you look at what admissions officers have been saying, it becomes clear what they are looking for. They're looking for a rich, diverse class of students. They're looking for people with different values, different backgrounds, different interests, different languages, different cultures, different ethnicity, different political views, different everything because they want a rich, diverse class that can come together and create this ecosystem that supports the entire class.

The last thing they want is 2,000 clones of the same kind of person. If you don't communicate clearly what your core values are, how do you expect the admissions officer to figure out how you fit into this rich, deep, diverse class? And then, in the end, it looks like it's not a lottery. If you don't slow down and align your choices with your core values, how do you think the admissions officer is going to figure out how you fit into this class? If you haven't clearly articulated what your values are, how is the admissions officer going to be able to figure that out? The answer is they won't.

And so they'll put you in that pile of students who have worked really, really hard to get outstanding grades and great test scores and tons and tons of activity and demonstrated leadership and some kind of factor. They'll put you in a pile with all of those students, which happens to be by far the most competitive pile. They'll say we do want some people who work really, really hard and get great grades and great test scores. We don't really know what their values are. We want a few of those people. So among these 40,000 who all fit that category, let's pick some of them. And then we want some really eccentric poets, and we want some people who are just the glue, people who value empathy and kindness and can help two groups come together and work together.

And we want a few of those, and we want a few of these other people, and we want this and that. We'll pull a few people from this group of organs that work so hard to be better than everyone at just everything. But that is the least strategic way to become competitive for one of these most selective colleges. So if you are so busy that you can't slow down to figure out who you are, then not only are you increasing your stress, you're decreasing your focus, you're decreasing your intention allergy, you're decreasing your productivity, you're increasing your mental health concerns, you're increasing your anxiety, decreasing your sleep like everything. About this is unhealthy for you and leads to a negative outcome.

And in the very, very end, when all is said and done, because you lacked that perspective that you could have gotten by slowing down, figuring out your core values, and then courageously living life. According to those values, you end up with an outcome that you don't want.

Anyway, you work so hard, sacrificing the time to slow down and be yourself because you wanted to get into this college. And the irony is that because you wanted that so badly and weren't willing to slow down, you are no longer competitive. You're far less likely to get in than if you had slowed down.

And so my friends, my listeners, I hope you're listening with both ears wide open and you're taking this in. Because I know many of you are feeling overwhelmed, and the busier you feel, the more important it is to stop, breathe, take a step back to slow down, and realign with your definition of success that's based on your core values. If you need help with that. That's what the Ivy League challenge is. I hope you reach out. I hope you sign up. I'm excited to work with you. And even if you don't join the Challenge, take this advice to heart; you'll get more done and move faster in the long run。