Awesome Dude asks: “The only reason I am into LOA (which I truly believe in) is for drastically improving my grades. Two years ago I entered this cycle of getting uninspired to study and procrastination. I wait till the day before the exam to study, and I end up failing my exams.

I want to feel inspired again to study, and start my study-drive (if that’s a word). It’s high time now. I am currently in 12th grade and my board exams are 3 months away. I need to turn the tables around now. Get inspired. Use the universal forces to help me achieve my dream of being a top scorer.”

Of course you can use the Law of Attraction to get good grades. You can attract anything you want in life, including awesome grades. But, as with anything, you can’t get what you want unless you focus on it without contradicting yourself. Let’s break it down, shall we?

It’s not about the grades

First of all, no one really cares about grades. We think we do, but we don’t. We care about whatever we think good grades will get us – approval, pride, future opportunities, etc. But we’ve been taught to focus on grades almost exclusively. In fact, the education system seems to care more about the grades than if students are actually learning (the one is not indicative of the other), and pressure from parents doesn’t help. But, the truth is that grades, in and of themselves, are not a goal; they are a means to an end. And, as such, it makes no sense to focus on the means, especially since there is never just one means to any end.

Am I saying that you should just blow off studying altogether and stop caring about grades? Well, yes and no. Yes, in the sense that an intense focus on grades and how they aren’t where you want them to be will not help you to change them. In fact, it will work against you. So, it’s best to stop doing that. No, in the sense that if you care about doing well in school, and you’ve been taught to care at an early age, you’re not going to be able to just turn that off like flipping switch. In that case, not studying at all won’t feel good. It’ll increase your stress level significantly, because you won’t believe that you’ll be able to reach your goals without getting good grades. Also, when you have a test looming near, that’s not the best time to start making changes to how you approach your studies. The trigger of having that deadline will most likely be far too strong for you to make massive changes to your belief system. So, even though theoretically, you could just focus on the end goal and that would line you up with the way to get there, practically speaking, you’ll have an easier time working with the belief structure you already have in place instead of fighting it. In other words, it’ll be easier to get inspired to study and/or learn than to find a way to feel truly great about dropping out of school (for example).

Identify what’s really important

Why are you studying? Why do you want to get good grades? Why do you want to go to college? What is it that you’re hoping to ultimately achieve? This may require some digging, because, chances are that you’ve never really dug down into these questions beyond pleasing your parents, just believing the system and hoping that good grades will guarantee you a better future (they won’t), or simply not wanting to be disapproved of. But, if you want to attract better grades using the Law of Attraction, you’ll have to figure out how they tie into something that you actually care about. Perhaps you’re hoping to be an engineer, for example. Taking stuff apart and putting it back together brings you more joy than ice cream. In that case, you could focus on the end goal – to be not just an engineer, but an amazing engineer.

“But, what if you don’t yet know what you want to be?”, I  can hear you asking. Well, if you have no specific future goals yet, then focus on being happy. That’s what all of our desires come down to anyway, and if you haven’t yet identified any of the activities that light your fire (don’t assume there’s just one), then just see yourself being happy, smiling, laughing, having plenty of money and friends and time to pursue activities you love. You could see yourself engaging in activities you like, such as travelling or snowboarding, etc. These may or may not be incorporated into your job later, but you don’t have to define that right now. Even if you’re not yet sure what you want to do when you grow up (keeping in mind that you can change your vocation anytime you like, you don’t have to commit yourself to one choice), you will have decided on certain qualities that mean “success” to you. Identify those and focus on them.

The one rule you must observe when figuring out what your real goal is, is that it must feel really good to you. “To finally freaking graduate”, “to get my parents off my back”, or “because that’s just what you’re supposed to do”, are not good enough reasons to get good grades. They feel flat at best and downright powerless at worst. The Ick Factor is high with those statements.

Fear-based goals have little power

If you have trouble coming up with something really meaningful, you’ll begin to understand just how meaningless grades really are and why you’ve been so uninspired to change them. Most people are taught to focus on grades from a place of fear (failing is bad. It has horrible consequences. Get good grades not to achieve something, but to avoid the terrible fate that comes with not getting good grades). The good feeling goals like getting a good job, etc, are usually secondary.

But fear-based goals are not nearly as powerful as passion-based ones. In other words, if you are trying to get good grades in order to avoid getting into trouble or becoming a jobless loser, you’re going to need an awful lot of motivation to help you achieve your goal. And, if you’re like most people growing up today, you’ll have little tolerance for forcing yourself to focus on something you don’t give a crap about. So, you procrastinate, do as little as you can get away with, and actually fail to achieve your goal because you just can’t seem to make yourself study. And then you beat up on yourself for being undisciplined, lazy and a failure. None of that is even remotely helpful.

So, find your passion-based goal. Again, this may not be the easiest of tasks, as you may never have been encouraged to think this way before. But you MUST find a reason that you’re going to school, that you want to get decent grades and that you want to go to college (if applicable) that actually makes you feel good. If you CANNOT find a feel good reason for going to school, then you may want to reevaluate why you’re there in the first place (or what you are studying. If it doesn’t float your boat, that’s a message, too!)

At the most basic level, people go to school because they don’t want to be losers. The desire that’s actually behind that, is that people want to succeed. They want to be happy. So, again, if you can’t figure out a specific reason for being in school, focus on being happy and successful (whatever that means to you). You have a belief that going to school will help you to get there. As I said, instead of shifting that belief (which is possible but in this case, it’ll be the hard way of doing it), we’re going to work with the belief.

Visualizing what you TRULY want

Once you’ve determined what your good feeling goal is, visualize it. See yourself happy, successful, knowledgeable, helpful to others, effective, affluent, balanced, calm, enthusiastic, surrounded by likeminded people (your co-workers or team), having a fantastic time. You know you’re making a wonderful contribution. You’re doing an amazing job. Your boss/clients/patients tell you so all the time. Really have fun with this and build it up. If you’re focusing more generically, just see people praising you, see yourself feeling proud of yourself, and people telling you how much you helped them with something, or what a genius you are, etc.

This should be your main visualization. This is the real goal. Lining up with this goal will cause you to be inspired to the actions and circumstances that will bring that goal about, and this may or may not include fantastic grades. The more lined up you are with your main goal (or just feeling good, the ultimate goal), the more you’ll be able to attract everything you want, including good grades (this is a desire too, and you don’t have to give up on it, you just have to allow it to happen by putting your focus on something that feels good).

Once you’ve built up this main visualization, and you’re feeling really fired up, you can begin the process of pre-paving, which is simply visualizing very specific events that will happen in the very near future.

Pre-Paving your study time, classroom time and exams

What you focus on when you’re pre-paving depends on what time of the year it is. Note: These smaller visualizations should be done after the main visualization, not instead of it.

At the beginning of the semester/during the summer break: This will be the easiest time to pre-pave, since you’re not being triggered by specific events such as a paper being due or a test coming up. See yourself sitting in class, learning and discovering something you’re really interested in, engaging, having fun, and understanding what you’re learning easily. See yourself relaxed and smiling and basically having a good time. This visualization may run counter to how you normally think of school, in which case it’ll feel really weird at first. Keep at it, and let this become your expectation. School can be easy and fun. But you have to be willing to let go of the idea that it has to suck.

During the semester, when a paper/homework is due: As you focus on the main goal and do the pre-paving exercise I just mentioned, you’ll notice that your class room experience will change. You’ll hear what’s most important for you to hear (either what will get you the best grades, or what will lead you to more knowledge and clarity that will help you achieve your goals, etc.). You’ll take notes differently and you won’t be as bored. You may even notice that your teachers are becoming less boring, more animated and more creative. Remember, it’s your reality and it must morph to reflect back any changes you’re making in your vibration. So, if you start feeling good about school, school will have to bring you more to feel good about.

Before you even sit down to study or write that paper, take a few minutes and see yourself getting the homework or test back and smiling from ear to ear about the result. See yourself being proud of what you’ve achieved. Visualize yourself getting a grade that makes you feel good (for some that might not be an A+. If that feels freaky, you might feel better going for a B). Visualize the teacher saying “Well done” to you. See yourself high fiving a friend or telling your parents or celebrating the result in some way.

Next, if you’re studying for a test, see yourself actually taking the exam. You’re calm and you feel confident that you’ll do well. See yourself reading the questions and immediately knowing the answers. You smile at how easily they come to you. You finish the test early, and you KNOW you’ve done well. Spend as much time as you need to on these visualizations until they feel really good. Then, and only then, should you actually commence studying. If you approach studying from a high vibration, aligned with the outcome you want to achieve, your brain will pick up what you need quickly and easily. You won’t have to read everything twenty times. Things will click faster, you’ll remember and understand what you need to, and you’ll be inspired to remember more than you ever thought you’d learned during the test.

In other words, if you approach studying not from a place of fear that you’ll fail, but with an expectation that you’ll do well, you’ll get drastically different results.

How fast will your grades change?

While you can use the above techniques to get a good grade tomorrow, the real power of this method comes over time. The effects accumulate. As you approach school differently, the entire experience will change. You’ll hear and understand what you need to (to achieve your goals, whatever they may be) during class. Studying for tests will be more like a review of what you already know than a cramming session. If you stop seeing school as a useless prison and as a means to an end – an end you actually want to achieve, you’ll enjoy yourself more, you’ll get more value out of it overall (even traditional schools have a lot to offer you, experience wise), and you’ll no longer feel like you’re wasting your time.

That being said, you’re going against some pretty ingrained beliefs here, so make sure you give yourself enough time and that you take it easy. There will be times when you revert to your fears and feel stressed out about an upcoming test. That’s ok. It’ll happen. Just gently but firmly guide yourself back to your main visualization (the more you’ll have practiced this, the easier it’ll be), or in other words, go to your happy place. Focus on what you want your experience to be instead of how you’ve been taught to create it. Create your own reality. Make it your own, the way you want it, free from the rules of those who came before you. Just because they got here first, doesn’t mean they got it right. You get to make all the changes you like. All you have to do is focus and be relentless about feeling good. Oh, and I thought I’d just point out that this last sentence is really the formula for how the Universe works. So, you know, really learn that bit, and you’ll be set for life. Class dismissed.