Motivation | Make This Your Last Time

July 22, 2023July 22, 2023 - No Comments

5 Reframes to Power Up Your Mind and Emotions for the Bar Exam Right Now

Preparing for the bar exam forces you to cycle through various emotions over weeks and months.

One moment calm, feeling like you’ve done all you could. Panic and anxiety the next moment. Frustration. Utter confusion. Overwhelm. Back to relief. Rinse and repeat.

Your heart is beating uncontrollably, your thoughts are becoming irrational, and your palms are sweaty! 🥵 You’re feeling HOT!

Go from hot ⤵

To cool

When you’re in trouble, breathe and go back to the fundamentals.

Reality can betray the most reasonable of your expectations and daydreams at whim, coloring the past with regrets and the future with despair.

But it can also present us with gifts if you look carefully. Some days you have to look much harder than other days.

If life only gives you lemons, you weren’t looking out for the oranges.

Here are five philosophies you can apply right now to mentally reframe how you feel about the bar exam:

July 15, 2023July 16, 2023 - No Comments

Tired of Bar Prep? Guarantee Motivation to Beat the Bar Exam with These 5 Reminders

How often do you see motivationals like this?

I wanted to pass the bar exam. But I’m not into infantilized platitudes.

So instead of preparing for it, I made an image of a bar license card with my name on it using Microsoft Paint. You know, for visualization and manifestation like random people suggested online.

I’m not even kidding. This image file has a “last modified” date of July 2, 2013. Look:

July 1, 2023July 3, 2023 - 3 Comments

Common Traits of Bar Passers & Why Mental Fortitude Is Important for Bar Preparation

They say knowledge is power (and you can never have too much power).

But why is it that with all the information out there, we don’t always get to where we want to go? Why do 80 percent of New Year resolutions fail by February? (Remember those? LOL)

“If more information was the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.”

Knowledge applied correctly is power. Knowledge is potential energy. It’s what we DO with the knowledge and the desire, not the fact that we have them, not the fact that we simply declare our desire.

But even then, the top hurdle that I’ve encountered with people taking the bar isn’t skills or knowledge.

It’s, uh, mindset. I lowkey hesitate to use this term because it’s sometimes associated with impractical woo-woo and things like visualization.

But the point remains: The hurdle is often internal.

If you have the raw material but can’t bring yourself to make a sand castle, if you can’t turn that potential energy in your mind into kinetic energy, what’s the point?

"half of bar prep involves preparing oneself mentally"

"the bar exam is all about your mental fitness and your ability to retain a crap ton of information without going crazy. Take care of yourself this time around."

It’s getting harder to pass the bar exam…and that’s exactly why you should go for it.

It’s not going to get easier. But when the bar is set high, it’s actually an opportunity to stand out more.

How?

If you take the time to observe people who have passed the bar exam, you can kind of tell why. There’s something about their behavior:

June 3, 2023June 3, 2023 - 18 Comments

How to Maintain Motivation and Momentum While Studying for the Bar Exam

You’ve seen all the euphoria from people who passed the bar exam.

You’re probably “inspired” and “motivated” when you look at success stories and accounts of people who excitedly announce they passed the bar exam.

When that happens, we say things like “if they can do it, so can I” (true). Or “I needed this today.”

Today?

That’s some “new year, new me” type energy. I’m not letting you off the hook like that.

Anyone can desire to pass the bar. Anyone can fixate on the goal and SAY they want it.

These are people who come to me desperate and lost… get “inspired” or gain “perspective”… and then return to the same old cycle looking for hits of relief.

May 6, 2023May 6, 2023 - 1 Comment

The 3 Things You Need When Starting Bar Prep (Live Stream Replay)

“What should I know when I’m starting bar prep?”

I did a live stream with Jennifer Duclair to talk about how to take the guesswork out of bar preparation and get a better sense of direction as you start studying for your next bar exam.

It was fun! Japes and nuggets of insights were dropped, and I’m pleased with how this turned out. (Maybe I’ll do another one next year…)

Here’s me throwing Kaplan under the bus:

What to do with your schedule when starting bar prep

Here’s the recording (go to 8:12 where I talk about the study schedule shown above), along with timestamps so you can jump to the parts you’re most interested in: