On November 23rd, a Thriving Mind Oxbridge Conference was held at the London Bloomsbury Baptist Church. Of the many talks we were given, the one that stood out to me the most was on four things that make a difference to outstanding achievement, delivered beautifully by Dr Chris O’Neill. 

 

Number one highlighted Edison and perspiration effects, summarising how achievement is not down to innate talent inherited at birth, but is down to the amount of hard work you put in. However, the real basis of excellence is deliberate practice, which does not involve the mere execution or repetition of already mastered skills. To achieve outstanding achievement, you must identify something specific you want to improve, how to go about improving and deliberately completing the tasks on your own with full concentration repeatedly. There is no abrupt increase in mastery without intense practice. 

 

The marshmallow and stickability effect is the ability to persevere at a task in face of adversity or temptation, and working against the nature of instant gratification. This is essential because, let’s face it, practice is often tedious, hardwork and it’s often painful to push on. As strange as it may sound, self control is the better predictor of exam success than either IQ or SAT scores, and as Dr Chris O’Neill quoted on, “Self regulation failure is the major social pathology of our time”. Luckily, if your self regulation isn’t as strong, you’d be glad to know that our self-control can be developed - like a muscle. We can develop it by practising holding out on any urges, habits or distractions that help build self-control as well as build useful habits to deliberately avoid predictable temptations. 

 

Another key factor is having a growth mindset, rather than a fixed one. Instead of holding the mentality of “I can’t do this”, think “I can’t do this yet” - in fact, the book “Mindset” written by Carol Dweck beautifully summarises how mindset can contribute a massive difference to our successes in life. It centres on the fact that intelligence is expandable, not fixed. A key way to know how to change our behaviours for the better, is by getting good feedback from trusted sources.

 

Lastly, receiving discerning encouragement from others is the ability to not only see you where you are right now, but also recognise the potential of what you can become. Sometimes, we aren’t able to grasp our full potential and need a little nudge from outside influences to achieve our highest.