How to bell the CAT – Goal Setting

This is 1 of a 5 part article that I intend to write, to share with you what actually went into scoring a 99.49 percentile in CAT after scoring average marks throughout my academic career.

This is for all of you, who don’t have a 90 in boards, haven’t gone to an IIT, BITS, or SRCC etc, and lastly those who doubt their own caliber and potential to eventually become world beaters.

Through these five articles I will give you an overview of what actually goes into the preparation for CAT right from Goal setting, road map building to developing the winning attitude.

(Just to inspire you further, my 10th, 12th, and Graduation marks are 86, 76, 64.5 respectively and my graduation was from a private college in north India, which is 6 years old.)

Goal setting is a self explanatory term, but why emphasize on it so much to write few hundred words on it.

On the outset I would like to attend to those of you who haven’t yet dared to dream big. Well there are many apprehensions, the first one is I don’t have 90 in tenth and twelfth boards, hence, I am not good enough. My command over English is as good as my command over french. Or the most common one, we are not from IIT, NIT or BITS, hence, how do we compete with guys from those planets.

Well to begin with, yes, there will always be people who are “better than you”, who have better opportunities, better infrastructure, better “brains”. But accepting defeat that we can’t beat them, is an excuse that we give ourselves just to run away from struggle and hard work. This is the biggest illusion you create for yourself.

So goal setting, many of you reading this would be either in your college or just out of it working somewhere which you are not satisfied with. What is your dream at this point? Yes, I understand you ultimately want to crack the CAT hence you are here, but your realistic dreams are just getting a placement from college. Hoping that you won’t have to sit idle after you pass out. But then what, assuming you get that job which pays you 15 K a month, then what. Would you be happy? A job where you realize that a domestic cook earns more per hour than you. A job where you will realize that buying that dream motorcycle will have to wait, even when you are spending a better part of your day there.

Ask yourself, is this dream worth it? Is this what you want to end up with few years later? and to those of you stuck here, isn’t it time to dream big. To give your dream life that one final shot.

Hence, dream. Dream big. Dream of becoming something that will give you enough money to fulfill those unreal materialistic and social aspirations you have.

It could be anything becoming an actor, a bureaucrat, a naval commander, an entrepreneur, a CEO, a designer, a technocrat. Anything.

You introspect and find out your dream, and believe in it. Day dream, think about how life will be when you achieve your dream. Create those images in your mind. Don’t let that fear of failure creep in and spoil those images. These images need to be powerful because these are what will drive you when you are burnt, fatigued, disappointed and down.

 

My dream was to earn a lot of money and at the same time enjoy what I was doing. Making that sound more specific I wanted to be in marketing, but in a designation that gives me a lot of money, and also experience to start a venture of my own at some point. I also dream of becoming a writer and a corporate trainer. So barring writing, doing MBA was the stepping stone into these careers.

So my goal was CAT, not MAT, CMAT or MHCET etc. I don’t have anything against them, it’s just that when you have to aim, aim for the best, the simple reason is when you dream, you dream of the best. Do you ever dream of a 100 CC bike? or of 800 CC car, so when it comes to education why not dream for the best.

Well I hope after reading this you have got a fair idea about how and what to dream.

 

Next article would be on drawing the road map on how to reach there.