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This is the Successful Archi Student’s podcast, Episode Two. Welcome to the second episode of the Successful Archi Student’s podcast. That’s right, today is number two. It doesn’t really sound right. Anyways, today I’ll be talking a little bit more about what I was talking about in the last episode about the number one tip for success as a student. In that episode, I talked about the importance of fixing your mindset, which I understand is quite difficult to understand if there’s no further clarification on that. So I’m going to try and clear some things up about what I meant by that. A lot of people and students talk themselves down and have a lot of negative self talk and thoughts without really noticing it. And it really limits their potential and their skill level. Telling yourself you can’t do something immediately closes off that as an option.

So, what I mean by this is say, if you’re telling yourself you can’t get a job after you graduate, because there’s no jobs out there, or if you’re trying to get into university and you’re telling yourself, you can’t afford it. Or maybe you’ve seen some other student’s work on Instagram and you’re telling yourself your work will never be as good as that. These objections only become true when you realize them as being true. Until then they are completely achievable. So rather than saying it’s not possible, ask yourself, How can I make it possible? If no one is hiring? Well, that’s the perfect opportunity to start your own work. If you can’t get into university because you can’t afford it, you’re living in the the age of fundraising, you know, there’s a million and one ways to raise the capital. Or, you need to be able to go to university and just telling yourself that you can’t afford it. It’s just kind of an excuse for not being able to do it. If you’re telling yourself your project will never look that good. Rather than doing that, ask yourself, How can I make my project look as good as that or better? So this would take time and practice to turn this into a habit. The idea of replacing I can’t with how can I? But I truly, truly believe that once you start implementing this idea and this habit, you’ll be opened up to so many more opportunities that you never realized before.

When I told my friends and family that I work over 30 hours a week in my part time job and study full time, obviously putting in a lot of hours into my education. And I mentioned that I want to start my own brand to help students succeed. They kind of just laughed at me and told me it’s not possible. And if I had listened to them, and said, Oh, yeah, it’s not possible. I don’t have time to be able to do that. Then, you know, I wouldn’t be here today talking on this podcast. Instead, I respected the idea that this is their opinions. And instead, I asked myself, how can I make this possible? How can I work over almost full time hours at my part time job and work forward? I’m studying full time as well putting in close to 80 hours a week and still have time to work on successful Archi Student.

The answer involved a lot of late nights and kind of sacrificing some of the more luxurious things in life like sitting on the couch and watching Netflix and scrolling through social media, but I fully committed to this. And now I’m waking up every morning working on something I’m truly passionate about. But often when I talk about delaying gratification, and putting off kind of the luxurious things in life now so that you can have them later in life at a multiplied level, they aren’t usually luxurious things at all. Things like scrolling through social media, or sitting on the couch and watching reality TV shows. They’re not really fulfilling things in life, I’d much prefer to be working on something that truly gets me fired up and something I’m passionate about. And we kind of just get carried away in this day and age with these things we react to. We get caught up reacting to these things. Instead of creating our own stuff and working on something that we plan to have done. That’s why procrastinating is really popular at the moment, because we do just get carried away with these “instant gratifiers” that just carry us away to be reactive rather than productive.

I do think this kind of happens because of a fear of missing out. We feel we’re missing out on watching the new show or, fear of missing out that we’re going to miss one of our friends post and we’re not going to like it and they’re going to notice that and they’re going to roast us about it. But I truthfully believe that we’re fearing missing out on the wrong thing.

But how do you build up that passion to be to be doing something you love every single day, working on architecture, working on cool buildings, and doing what you love every single day? It’s like, if you’re aiming at a dartboard blind sighted trying to hit the bullseye, you’re not really going to hit it. If you’ve got a blindfold on or yours eyes are closed, it’s hard to hit that bullseye. If you want to hit the bullseye, you have to be clear-sightedly looking at it, aiming at it using all your attention on that and truly being tunnel visioned on it so that you you’re only focused on that.

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And that’s exactly like life, if you’re trying to get somewhere in life, you want to run your own architecture firm, you want to be successful at architecture, you have to have a clear vision and a goal of how you’re going to get there and what it actually is, if you actually know what you want out of life, it makes it so much easier to start working towards it and start structuring a plan and working towards that goal.

So I think my kind of call to action here is to is to write down your goals and constantly come back to them and revise them and rethink them and restructure them. And then over time, you’ll find yourself just being way more motivated and and keen to succeed because of this. You can actually start making it happen just by having that vision in mind and knowing what it is you want to achieve.

It does involve discipline and hard work but that’s just a requirement of success. It’s something that needs to be done. So you may as well to do it sooner than later.

So to recap over this episode, stop telling yourself negative things. If you’re saying you can’t do something, then you can’t do it. But if you’re asking yourself the question of “how can I achieve this, how can I make this possible”, then it makes it easier. And you’re not limiting yourself to not being able to achieve that thing. Once you start writing down your goals. And you start to realize the life that you want to live and you have a bigger vision of that, then you start to realize you fear missing out on some really silly things such as social media and sitting on the couch watching Netflix.

The idea of that it takes time and hard work and discipline to be successful. So you might as well put in that hard work, discipline and time sooner than later. So that’s the number one tip I have for architecture students is to know what you’re aiming at. It makes it so much easier to achieve stuff when you’ve got a vision of it and you can start to plan and schedule towards that to make it possible. Thank you guys so much for watching the episode. I really appreciate your guys support and until next time, enjoy your studies.