How to Develop the Capability of a Super Student

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How to Develop the Capability of a Super Student

 

A brand new, good quality computer works better than an old, inferior computer. It’s faster, has larger capacity, and is more compatible to new software. With better capability, new computer can get work done faster with great efficiency. If you are using an antique computer, it would be wise to upgrade it or just get a new one. This is the same as you. If you want to be better than your current self and perform well at school, upgrade yourself until you become as capable as a super student.

 

There are many areas of capability that we can develop. I simply categorize them into 5 areas, namely mental, physical, emotional, social, and spiritual. It’s a good idea to balance the progress of these 5 aspects to achieve a synergy of wholesome capability.

 

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Mental

 

I would say that mental capability is the most relevant aspect to our study because it affects our academic performance directly. This is the area where people commonly associate super students to having high IQ or being genius. Lucky for us, it’s possible to develop our mental capability.

 

Most students rather spend 8 hours doing repetitive homework than doing 20 minutes of mental training. This is sad because homework may help us in a specific subject but it won’t be with us for life. But a developed mind benefits us for the rest of our life. We become powerful learners and study well not just for this one semester, but all the way till we graduate and even in our working life.

 

There are many areas to develop our mental capability, such as memory, thinking skills, creativity, and many more. It’s best to focus on the areas that are most relevant to our study subjects. For example, focusing on improving memory for your history lessons is appropriate.

 

Having powerful memory helps in school and gives us an advantage in exam. I have written an article on improving memory here. Thinking skills is useful in analysing things and making decision. Other mind skills include creativity, imagination, and speed reading. There are many books out there that help us to develop our mental muscles. Tony Buzan and Edward de Bono are famous for their work in this area.

 

There are quite a few ways to sharpen our linguistic mind. Reading good books stimulates our thought and imagination at the same time fills our mind with information, which will make our knowledge substantial. Keeping a diary will improve the flow of writing and develop unique writing style. Building up our vocabulary by learning at least five new words a day gives us the power of language where we can understand articles well and write better. Word power also gives us more room to express our idea and makes us artists in creating beautiful sentences.

 

Physical

 

Our body is the temple for our mind. It contributes greatly to our study and every day life in general. Neglecting our health can cost us a lot down the road. Imagine losing interest in study because you get tired easily and sick always. You want to be as fit as a raging bull to cope with all kinds of challenges in life. Life will be much easier that way.

 

Sleep is commonly neglected by modern folks. People think that sleeping is non productive and can be sacrificed to do other more interesting things (like playing games and watching movies) – big mistake. Sleep is vital to health. It’s the time where your body grows and heals itself. We need to sleep to get recharged so that we can function properly the next day. Bad sleep leads to bad day, every day.

 

If you find yourself feeling sleepy and tired while studying, something is wrong with your sleeping habit. It might be fine if this problem persists for days or one or two weeks but dragging this problem on and on for months will make you kaput eventually.

 

We need to sleep with both quality and quantity. Improve your sleeping position and habit. Sleep around 8 hours for optimum amount of sleep. And don’t forget to sleep at fixed time every day to avoid disturbing the sleep cycle.

 

Food gives nutrient to our body and mind to function properly. If you are under 24 years old, always eat proper three square meals every day so that you can grow up properly (that includes your brain). Eat a balance diet, and if possible, try detoxing food like lemon juice, grapes, phylum husk, and other kinds of fruits and vegetables. If you are doing physical exercise, tailor your diet for such activity, such as eating more protein to develop muscle and carbohydrate for aerobic exercises.

 

To build a powerful body, we can’t escape exercise. There are a few types of exercises like aerobics, energy work, resistance training, and stretching. From my experience, aerobics and energy work helps my study the most, by making me energetic and mentally sharp. Therefore, it’s a good idea to focus on these two areas. If you have extra time, you can do resistant training and stretching to develop muscles.

 

I strongly recommend running for aerobics exercise. Sprinting, endurance running, and interval training are popular running activities, and I suggest you to do all of them. That’s because sprinting and long distance running uses different energy system and muscle group; and interval training mixes both of them together and increases recovery rate of heart and lungs. Neglecting one of them might lead to insufficient development of overall fitness.

 

Energy work includes qigong, tai chi, yoga, chakra healing, and other spiritual and traditional practices. It develops our energy body and prevents or heals diseases. I have been doing qigong, a Chinese energy exercise, for years. I find qigong to be helpful in making me more energetic and healthy. It relieves pain and promotes blood circulation while strengthening my organs. It works well in concert with aerobics exercise.

 

We breathe every moment, 24 hours a day. If we can tap into the potential of breathing properly, we gain benefit every time we breathe, the whole day! Deep abdominal breathing is a way of inhaling large amount of air deep down to the abdomen. Deep inhale brings in a lot of oxygen to the body and deep exhale releases stale air from lungs properly. Doing deep abdominal breathing can energize us the whole day and prevent severe fatigue. It also makes the mind alert.

 

Emotional

 

Our EQ contributes to success more than IQ. This shows the importance of being emotionally healthy for students. A positive student with optimistic attitude will take action to improve his situation in bad times, and triumph at the end, which is far better than doing nothing and fail. Where else an emotionally troubled student is in dangerous situation, which might lead to disasters like dropping out of school or attempting suicide.

 

Stress is a horrible emotional bug that haunts students. There are many de-tress methods like exercising, meditating etc. Of all the methods that I have tried, I find Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) to be the most effective. It’s based on Chinese medicine and relieves stress by tapping acupressure points. Information on EFT is widely available on internet and you can watch some demos on YouTube. Sometimes when I have severe stress, I do EFT for about 60 rounds to kill it off and my effort pays off all the time.

 

Music is a way of altering our mood. The kind of music to choose for studying is up to individual taste but ideally it should be calm and soothing. Yanni, Kitaro, Enya, and Sarah Brightman are some of the artists who make excellent music for studying. Some experts suggest that Baroque music promotes study potential but I personally find it boring and demotivating.

 

Conducive study environment increases our productivity and keeps us happy. This means we should make sure that our roommates, neighbour, and surrounding are not disturbing our mood when studying. If you unfortunately get a roommate from hell, it’s time for you to seriously consider getting a single room, even if you have to pay higher rental.

 

Social

 

Our success has a lot to do with our ability to socialize. There’s a saying, “it’s who you know, not what you know that matters.” That’s why it’s wise to have a healthy social network, which benefits us in the long run.

 

Having a healthy social life enhances your study and exam performance. Your schoolmates and teachers can help you in many ways, from giving you exam tips to lending their work for you to copy. You can tap into the strength of your friends to help you to perform tasks that you are weak in and vice versa. You also can use the power of teamwork through study group.

 

Soft skills can be learnt for socializing. How you talk, listen, smile, and interact can be improved, if you want to. Reading books on soft skills is a good place to start. Soft skill is more than how you talk. It involves your body language and how you present yourself. For example, dressing up is important to show that you have respect for yourself and others, and make good impression.

 

Learn how to expand your network. You can try your luck on internet as there are many social network platforms that offer opportunities to meet all kinds of people. You have to develop your social circle in real life too by meeting new people, attending events, and keep in touch with your acquaintance. A super student is not a lone wolf.

 

Super students are highly visible. They participate actively in classes, contribute ideas, and join various activities. It’s not to show off and be a sucker, but to gain social advantages. When someone has goodies to offer, they always think of highly visible people first. That’s why opportunity always comes to highly visible super students.

 

Spiritual

 

Students may pursue their spiritual growth through their own respective religions. In my opinion, spirituality is more than just religion. A religious person might not be spiritual, as one may harm others, involve in corruption, and cause war, even if one is religious.

 

Our world seriously needs people to expand their spiritual values such as love, compassion, forgiveness, and peace, which should be upheld and practiced in our daily life. There are too many discriminative barriers amongst humans such as gender, skin color, nationality, political ideology, and many more. These barriers prevent humans from living peacefully with each other. We can help tearing down the barriers by being good examples ourselves, by choosing love and understanding. If we meet a new friend, instead of identifying him according to his gender, skin color, or political party, we should see him as one who “has one head, two hands, and two legs” – a human being just like you and me. And make peace. That’s the spirit of universal brotherhood of human kind.

 

People hold a lot of emotional baggage in their heart and are not willing to let it go. We should forgive the past, let go our baggage, and move on anew. There might be people who badly hurt us in the past but we should forgive. You don’t have to hang out with them to forgive, what you need to do is just not keeping the grudge in you so that you can let go of the past and move on.

 

Being a student is not just about studying, taking exam, and graduate. It’s about living your life. It’s a journey to enjoy. Appreciate little things, add values to other people’s life, enjoy life experience, and live happily in the now.

 

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Sorry guys, I have to sacrifice my writing style for the sake of content/substance.

 

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