9 Steps to Forming an SAT Prep Habit: Step 6
Step 6: “The Secret” of Forming an SAT Prep Habit
When you believe something will be true, you make decisions that support that truth and strengthen it.
Mentality and mindset, combined with hard work, leads to real results.
But you have to leave yourself enough time to see the results!
Read the rest of the 9 Steps to Forming an SAT Prep Habit.
Do you remember The Secret? It was a big deal about ten years ago, at the end of the first decade of the 2000s. I remember being introduced to it by an opera singer friend, Bea, who had me come over to her house and insisted on playing the 80-ish minute video for me. It was certainly something.
If you’ve never heard of The Secret, it’s a book/movie/infomercial phenomenon whose basic thesis is that if you believe it, you bring it into being. It’s pretty similar to “if you build it, they will come.” This might sound stupid or airy-fairy, but it’s not:
The underlying psychology is that when we believe something will be true for sure, we make a million decisions that support that truth and strengthen it.
Because we have no reason to question it, we treat it as truth, as opposed to a possibility. When we rely on things, when we assume them to be true, we operate much differently than when there’s an “if” involved.
Two examples:
When you assume that your teacher is always going to be in class the next day, collecting homework, you have every reason to do your homework at night.
If you believe that your best friend has your back, if you hear a weird comment she’s made, you’ll assume it was taken out of context or misunderstood.
It’s a way that we as humans have of filtering information according to likelihood. We can’t act on everything we think COULD happen - because it COULD rain meatballs at any time. Not likely, but ya never know. So we reserve the majority of brainpower for things we assume WILL happen, and make decisions that bolster those likely outcomes. Back to the teacher example: When we assume a thing will happen - like your teacher collecting homework in class tomorrow - there are a million small building blocks/decisions we make that support our future belief.
We:
do homework
get sleep for school
pack a lunch
get dressed before school
brush our teeth before school
eat breakfast before school
bring our backpacks and materials to school
make sure to bring the homework to class
get on the bus or get driven to school
If you didn’t think that your homework would get collected tomorrow, you might not do any of those things. If you have a good reason to believe school will be cancelled the next day (like a huge snowstorm), you likely will not do your homework.
So this all makes sense - it’s pretty straightforward. How does it apply to habits in general?
Let’s go back to my friend Bea, the opera singer. She would write “I WILL sing in A houses" (the highest level of opera house in the US) thirty times every day on a piece of notebook paper and tape them to surfaces all over the house. Kinda crazy - except it’s not. Because when you believe that you’ll be a world-class opera singer, and sing in A houses, you will:
ALWAYS make sure you get a good night’s sleep - because you’re just an audition away from your big break.
ALWAYS dress well and wear full makeup, because you never know when you’re going to get asked by Luciano Pavarotti to sing.
ALWAYS be working on your sight-reading, because TOMORROW the phone call could come from some opera company for you to learn a role in a week (physically impossible, by the way) and that will be your big break.
CONSTANTLY learn new roles that you’ve never performed, because the Met might call NEXT WEEK and need you to go on for a sick diva.
You get where I’m going; Bea took herself and her art very seriously, and I was really impressed by that.
Okay, fine, opera singers are crazy. True. What does that have to do with an SAT habit?
When you believe that you’re capable of getting a 1500, you will never settle for less.
If you KNOW that you can do a perfect math section, you will painstakingly look up every problem you got wrong, figure out where you made your error, and find some way to keep you from making it again. Some folks buy every book they can find and do ALL THE PROBLEMS. Whatever you do will work, because if you believe you can break a 1500, you won’t give up until you do. You’ll try everything and hold onto what works for you and discard what doesn’t. And you’ll keep pushing until you get the score you know you can. And in that sense mentality and mindset trump method any day of the week. Hard work pays off. When you combine that with working smarter, not harder, given unlimited time, there is no way you won’t achieve your goal.
Notice I said “given unlimited time”.
The biggest mistake a lot of folks make is not leaving enough time to prep for the SAT.
Prepping for the SAT traditionally takes 6 months to a year, and if you’re trying to move a score a tremendous number of points, it will take longer. That’s just real. So PLEASE leave yourself TOO much time. What a great problem to have!
