Welcome to LearnLawBetter, where today I want to help you understand why motivation and
grit are essential to success in law school, and in life.
Stay to the end and listen to the ways that some people found the motivation to succeed in
law school.
Hi, this is Beau Baez, and today we are going to discuss motivation and grit, which are
the words that are synonymous with perseverance.
It’s that desire you have when you want something so badly, that you will stop wasting time
and you're going to figure out what you need to do to succeed.
First, some people develop grit after failure.
Henry was academically withdrawn from my law school.
When Henry reapplied a year later, he came back with a new determination to succeed.
He was constantly in my office looking for feedback, which I gladly gave him.
Henry made the decision to do things differently, and went from a weak student to the top 10%
on his second attempt.
By the way, Henry was not any smarter the second time around in law school.
The thing that changed was his motivation and grit.
The second way to develop grit is through fear of failure.
To paraphrase Samuel Johnson: when you know you are going to be hanged in the morning,
it concentrates the mind wonderfully.
Now Jeremy was a weak law student, who got into law school with an LSAT score below a 140,
and then he graduated law school with a 2.3 GPA. By all accounts he should not have passed the bar.
In fact he was told that he was going to fail the bar unless he made some radical changes to
his life.
And boy, did he make those changes.
After graduation, he got to the law school when the doors opened at 7:30 am and he would stay in the school
till near midnight.
He stopped looking at Facebook, personal email, and all other distractions.
He avoided conversations in the hallways with other students.
In other words, he made the conscious decision to focus solely on passing the bar exam.
I am happy to report that he passed the bar the first time out.
Now Interestingly, many students that fail the bar the first time pass the second or third
time.
Why?
It’s not that they got any smarter, but rather they looked inside and found the resolve to
succeed.
Now for some people, they develop grit for others rather than for themselves.
I’ve seen this happen when somebody gets married or has a child.
Suddenly, this person stops failing because others are relying on them to succeed and
failure is no longer an option.
Now unfortunately, some of these same people lose their desire when that external factor is gone,
like when a spouse dies.
So what are you doing to develop motivation and grit?
Are you at that point where you want something so badly you can taste it?
Now, I don’t believe you can accomplish anything in life with motivation and grit,
but you can accomplish a lot with it.
As the saying goes, if you don’t have any plan then you will certainly achieve your
goal and not accomplish anything.
Successful people, the ones with motivation and grit, share certain traits.
They are laser focused on what they want, and they make the sacrifices necessary to
succeed.
This means not getting 8 hours of sleep every night.
Right now, I am filming this after 11 pm and am looking at getting about 6 hours of sleep before
I get up for a 7 am meeting.
Do I like sleep, yes!
But this episode had to get filmed today and this is the sacrifice I made to get it done
on time.
Successful people also tend to say no more often to demands on their time.
Now be careful here, you need to find some balance.
But if you are always ready to go out with friends whenever they call, that's just not going
to work.
Successful people are also not satisfied with mediocrity and the status quo.
Now confession is good for the soul, so let me share part of my story with you.
After my first semester of law school I got a bunch of B’s.
Now rather than trying to do better, I decided that B’s were okay.
I lied to myself, and I regret not figuring out what to do better.
I accepted mediocrity.
Finally, are you wasting time playing games and spending too much time on social media?
Those who have grit and motivation focus on the important things and eliminate the rest.
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Thank you for watching.