the pygmalion effect in the five years that i've had this channel i've not once talked about this
which is insane because it's such a fundamental part of achieving really high grade so if you've
never heard of the pygmalion effect then this video will be super important to you the pygmalion
effect is a psychological phenomenon where high expectations lead to improved performance in a
given area so basically it's the theory that high expectations lead to better performance
and low expectations lead to worse performance and both effects lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy
and will smith explains it perfectly he who says he can and he who says he can't are both usually
right and super quick before we start you've probably noticed i have a different background
we're in the middle of a lockdown here in vietnam so i'm not able to travel to my office where i
would normally film so for the next few videos my backdrop will be slightly different but it is what
it is i'll hopefully be back to my office maybe in three or four weeks so the pygmalion effect is
so powerful because once we really believe that we can achieve something it reinforces that behavior
and so we do actually go ahead and achieve it therefore reinforcing that behavior even more and
that was certainly the case with me back in high school so back then my grades were pretty bad they
were average at best but i didn't aim for higher grades because i didn't believe that i was capable
of achieving them so it would be a waste of time right or at least with my mindset
back then that's how i felt then at university i kind of went through this transformation where i
started to aim higher i started to believe that i could achieve higher grades so i aimed for higher
i started studying like a 4.0 gpa student which i'd never done before so just like the pygmalion
effect states this cycle started to form where i started to believe in myself therefore i studied
harder so of course my grades increased which made me believe in myself further therefore i studied
even harder and it was like this kind of circular mechanism that to be honest i'm still in right now
where i'm achieving more therefore getting more confident therefore aiming higher but there's
one problem here it's easy for me to say just believe in yourself and you'll kickstart this
cycle that will rocket you to success right and all you've got to do is believe in yourself it's
easy to say that but it's a lot harder to actually implement it so how do you just decide to believe
in yourself and i'll tell you how i did it back in 2013 i used a strategy called the immersion
technique and this is where you surround yourself with incredible people whether that's in person so
your friends your social circle or maybe an easier option for most people you do it through
the media you consume so every day you consume content from extraordinary people maybe you read
the biographies from the all-time greats and you listen to podcasts from world-class academics
in your field and you watch documentaries and you read books and every single day you're essentially
downloading information from all these sources into your brain and within even just a few weeks
of doing this but definitely after a few months you'll start to notice your mindset shifting
you'll start to realize that these incredible things that the all-time greats have achieved
they're literally changing the world so if they can achieve such incredible successes suddenly
achieving a 4.0 gpa in your exams doesn't seem that out of reach right and one of the ways i do
this one of the daily habits i have implemented to make sure that this level of inspiration and
motivation that i have right now is kind of topped up because i see inspiration like a bucket full of
water with a hole at the bottom you need to keep your inspiration topped up or eventually it will
run out right so one of the main ways i achieved this is i use an app from this video sponsor
short form now short form is a powerful way to learn the main ideas from non-fiction books
but i don't want you to think as short form as just another book summary app because it's so
much more powerful than that so i was actually using blinkist which is a book summary app every
day for months but i switched over to short form a few weeks ago and it's just so much better because
it collects kind of key ideas from the book and it gives you a really intelligent analysis
so you have what is essentially a kind of compact mini lecture and i've built consuming these kind
of mini lectures into a 20-minute daily habit because i think every day if we just learn one
new thing in a few months we'll be significantly more knowledgeable just from that small 20 minute
daily habit right so when i shower it usually takes about 20 minutes so i'll put a short form
audio summary on every single morning and this morning i just finished listening to atomic habits
by james clear a ridiculously important book when it comes to just getting more out of life
i read the book before but it was nice just to have a quick recap with a short form summary and
the app covers other genres like self-improvement productivity and education and so much more and
they drop new book guides and articles every week so subscribers can vote on what books to cover
so if you want to check it out click on the link in description where you'll get a five day
free trial and i think that is how you start to believe in yourself and essentially triggered this
pygmalion effect into working for you and i'll be honest with you it does take time right using the
immersion technique and immersing yourself with inspiration the effects won't be experienced
overnight and for me it probably took about six months of consuming inspirational positive
motivational educational content for at least two or three hours a day every single day for those
six months but when i started to see those changes in the way that i lived my life i was just so much
more motivated and i wanted to learn more and i wanted to do more and achieve more and because
i was achieving more it just kept feeding my motivation so at university it was the first time
in my education that i actually felt good about studying right because
i was achieving really quite good grades so naturally i felt good i felt like
i wanted to study i was motivated to keep going and it was this kind of uphill spiral that to this
very day seven years later i'm still riding on the pygmalion effect is so powerful in fact that
it even determines how other people treat you so the pygmalion effect is also called the recentral
effect named after harvard psychologist robert rosenschel and he designed an experiment where
he had a group of rats and a group of participants and the task of the participants was to train the
rats into completing a maze and the participants were told that half the rats were extremely
intelligent and the other half were extremely dumb in reality though the researchers are lying
to the participants and both groups of rats had the same level of intelligence but interestingly
the participants treated both these groups of rats very differently they put more effort into
training the intelligent rats than they did the dumb rats and this shows how even the
expectations of rats can influence how they are treated it's exactly why when i'm coaching in the
transform your grades in 30 days course i expect a really high standard for my students i don't want
to help them just achieve a small improvement in their grades but i want to see massive changes in
their grades as they progress through the 30-day course if i believe that they're intelligent and
capable then similar to the essential experiment i'll coach them accordingly but it's not just
that experiment but there have been so many other studies that show that high school students who
teachers have higher expectations about their future success are far more likely to graduate
from college and i have such high expectations for the students that i coach because well number one
i genuinely believe in them that they can achieve incredible grades if they put their mind to it and
number two i've had hundreds of students that i've seen massive improvements in their grades
so it is absolutely achievable and i know it is it really is quite incredible how little it takes to
influence our mindset and i think that's why it's so important to at least be aware of the pygmalion
effect i'm a massive advocate of this idea that you are the average of the five people you spend
the most time with right and if you're surrounded by people that are motivated and inspired to
help pull you up and become a better person then that's awesome however if there are people maybe
in your social circle that maybe have more of a detrimental effect on your mindset then that can
be a big problem now there is one disclaimer and it seems that these days i usually tend to have
at least one disclaimer in each video but it has to be said that you should be aiming for higher
grades you should be aiming for incredible grades but at the same time you need to be realistic if
you're getting i don't know d grades throughout the whole year but you aim for a grade next
week obviously that's not very realistic and it could actually act to demotivate you rather than
motivate you so do keep that in mind i think the term be realistically ambitious fits really well
here and of course it goes without saying it's no good setting these incredibly high expectations
but not putting in the action to achieve them right your actions should match your expectations
so if you're aiming for incredibly high grades then you should be studying for them too now
if you still need a bit more help in achieving higher grades and maybe altering your mindset so
that your actions start lining up with your goals i made a video called seven ways to increase your
productivity as a student it's a super important video you can click on the card on the screen
i'm not sure how anyone can achieve incredible grades without mastering at least some of those
productivity hacks but i explained it all in the video alternatively i made a video on why studying
smarter be studying harder you can click on the card on the screen whichever video you choose
i'll see you over there and once again if you're interested in checking out the short form app that
i mentioned earlier in the video there's a link in the description below for your five day free trial