Why Does the Tortoise Win?
The fable of the tortoise and the hare can be applied to many different lessons. Instead of starting with the whole lesson, let’s first understand what the tortoise did to win. Well, the first thing that he did was he started the race! If you don’t begin to undertake new activities, no rewards will come your way. In the next section I will share some simple tasks that you can undertake in order to comfortably start that race. The next thing – and this is the key lesson you always hear from this fable – which the tortoise did, was that he continued with a consistent effort. Starting is necessary and sometimes daunting, look at his competition in this race! But, it is the consistency of effort that brings the rewards.
Simple Tasks
As you start to look for little things you can do to make a difference, it is actually better to start the race to academic financial freedom with a long road ahead rather than just a short sprint. By that I mean, if you begin when you or your student is in middle school, you will have a slower pace to keep than if you only start thinking about such things when your student is a senior in high school.
The most straight forward task is to put a little money aside each week. It could be $5 or $15 or more, but make sure that something is set aside (for ideas on the best ways to do this and to make this effort pay dividends check out the guaranteed Full Ride Scholarship Program!) something each week.
Another simple task that you should do is set aside 30 minutes each weekend to capture what activities, service, accolades, etc. your student accomplished that week. List games played, contests entered, service rendered, awards won, and connections made. Trying to look back over several years and remember all of these things is difficult, time consuming, and piecemeal at best.
These are just a few things, there are many other simple tasks you can develop. For other ideas, watch the FREE Reducing College Costs videos!
Developing Habits
The goal of each of these simple tasks is to help you to develop habits that will allow you to automatically do the right things that will help you Eliminate College Costs! We are all creatures of habit. If you don’t think so, let me challenge you with a few questions. Which hand do you use to brush your teeth with? Do you remember all of the stop lights that you passed through from the way from work to home today? Where did you put your keys when you came home? As you ponder these questions, for some or all of them it is likely that you started doing those things in a certain way – because it helped you – and you continued to do so to the point that it takes little or no thought to do those very things.
Now, imagine if you were to establish very similar habits that again helped you, but this time they helped you Eliminate College Costs! Those would be very valuable habits to develop indeed. Imagine for the amount of time and effort you expended to brush your teeth, you could have eliminated $1000 each year from your college expense. I’d be brushing my teeth morning, night, after every meal, and probably finding excuses to do so at other times as well.
Take a few of the ideas described above and on the videos or in the Full Ride Scholarship Program and turn them into habits that will pay real dividends for you and your family!
Summary
Take a little time to assess which actions (like eating an apple a day) will provide the greatest returns for you and then decide to turn those actions into habits of the best sort! Check out the free videos that are available here. Or if you like, try the guaranteed Full Ride Scholarship Program for a simple and complete system to ensure you are able to eliminate large chucks of you college costs!
John Mitchell
Dr. John W. Mitchell
President, Scholarship Keys
