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hero_with_1000_faces
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Joined: 02 Jan 2016
Last visit: 17 Mar 2025
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Status:Studying 4Gmat
Location: India
Concentration: Strategy, Entrepreneurship
Schools: Darden '22 Marshall '22 AGSM '23
GMAT 1: 590 Q37 V33
GPA: 4
WE:Law (Manufacturing)
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Schools: Darden '22 Marshall '22 AGSM '23
GMAT 1: 590 Q37 V33
Posts: 329
Kudos: 162
Striking Thoughts - GMAT (Its not an exam, its a lifestyle) 06 Dec 2019, 04:30
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Hello!

Have been studying for almost 4 yours, I think I have come a long way, started from 260 in Mocks. Lately have been scoring in 700's.

I recollect when I had started, It took me couple of days to understand the process for addition of fractions and of cross-multiply.

However, I kept myself motivated and I would like to share sources and metaphors that kept me motivated.


The Journey up till here can be best described by the Poem:

The hallowing of Pain
Like hallowing of Heaven,
Obtains at a corporeal cost—
The Summit is not given

To Him who strives severe
At middle of the Hill—
But He who has achieved the Top—
All—is the price of All—

Emily Dickinson


I highly recommend following books:

Power of now - eckhart tolle
War of Art - steven pressfield
Turning Pro - steven pressfield
Striking Thoughts - Bruce Lee


FROM SELF-CONTROL, ITS KINGSHIP AND MAJESTY, 1905
By William George Jordan

At each moment of man’s life he is either a King or a slave. As he surrenders to a wrong appetite, to any human weakness; as he falls prostrate in hopeless subjection to any condition, to any environment, to any failure, he is a slave. As he day by day crushes out human weakness, masters opposing elements within him, and day by day re-creates a new self from the sin and folly of his past—then he is a King. He is a King ruling with wisdom over himself. Alexander conquered the whole world except— Alexander. Emperor of the earth, he was the servile slave of his own passions.
Any man may attain self-control if he only will. He must not expect to gain it save by long continued payment of price, in small progressive expenditures of energy. Nature is a thorough believer in the installment plan in her relations with the individual. No man is so poor that he cannot begin to pay for what he wants, and every small, individual payment that he makes, Nature stores and accumulates for him as a reserve fund in his hour of need.


"No steam or gas ever drives anything until it is confined. No
Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled.
No life ever grows until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined.” —
Harry Emerson Fosdick


FROM SELF-KNOWLEDGE AND SELF-DISCIPLINE, 1916
By Basil William Maturin
We do not endure [self-discipline] merely for its own sake, but for what lies beyond it. And we bear those acts of self-denial and self-restraint because we feel and know full well that through such acts alone can we regain the mastery over all our misused powers and learn to use them with a vigour and a joy such as we have never known before
It is as though one who had a great talent for music but had no technical
training, and consequently could never produce the best results of his art,
were to put himself under a great master. The first lessons he will have to
learn will be, for the most part, to correct his mistakes, not to do this and
not to do that; it will seem to him that he has lost all his former freedom of
expression, that he is held back by all sorts of technical rules, that whenever
he seeks to let himself go he is checked and hampered. And it is no doubt
true. But he will soon begin to realise that as he learns more and suffers in
the learning, possibilities of utterance reveal themselves which he has never
dreamed of. He knows, he feels, that he is on the right path, and as the
channels are prepared and the barriers against the old bad methods more
firmly fixed, he feels the mighty tide of his genius rise and swell, he hears
the shout of the gathering waters as they sweep before them every obstacle
and pour forth in a mad torrent of glorious sound. All those days of restraint
and suffering are crowned with the joy of the full and perfect expression of
his art. The restraint and discipline he knew full well in those seemingly
unfruitful days were but the means to an end. The end is always before him,
and the end is positive expression. The dying to his old untrained and bad
methods is but the birth throes of a larger and richer action


“Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.” —Michel de Montaigne

FROM ETHICS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE, 1891
By Charles Carroll Everett
FROM ETHICS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE, 1891
By Charles Carroll Everett
In speaking of the influence of companions, I said that a man tends to
imitate the persons by whom he is surrounded; and we saw that while this
tendency may work harm, it may also work much good: and that in fact the
development of civilization has been largely dependent upon this tendency.
Most of all, a man tends to imitate himself. The fact that he has done a
thing once, in a certain way, makes it easier for him to do it again in the
same way. The oftener this is repeated, the more fixed does the habit
become. At last he cannot do the thing in a different way without great
effort. Finally it may become almost impossible for him to do it in a
different way.
It is interesting to see the force of habit in little things. In this way one
can most easily get an idea of its real power.
Notice its power in such a little matter as putting on one’s clothes, one’s
coat, for instance. Almost every one in doing this always puts the same arm
first into the sleeve. With some it is the right arm and with some it is the
left. Probably very few, if they were asked, could tell which arm they put in
first; but as soon as they undertake to do the thing, the arm which
commonly goes first makes its movement; and it is only by a strong act of
will that it can be made to give way to the other.
Observe, farther, how skill is acquired in any handiwork, so that at last
the work goes on better when we are not thinking of it, than when we attend
to what we are doing. The fingers of the skillful pianist take care of
themselves, and the old ladies can read as they knit.
Notice now the good results of this tendency of habits to become fixed.
In some cases, like those to which I have referred, the life of the person is,
in a sense, doubled. As was just said, the old ladies knit and read or talk at
the same time. So in very many things, the body that has been trained does
the work while the mind is left free to busy itself as it will.
Another great advantage that springs from the fixity of habits is found in
the fact that, by means of this, our lives may make real progress. What we
have gained is secured to us.
Think how hard it would be if we had continually to start again from the
beginning. How the soldier shrinks when he first goes into a battle; how
gladly he would flee. It is said that green soldiers are sometimes placed
alternately with those that have been seasoned in many a fight, that the
stability of the veterans may keep the raw recruits in their place. The old
soldiers have got so in the habit of marching and standing as they are told,
that it has become with them a matter of course.
Consider, too, how a man who is in the habit of handling money lets it
pass through his hands with hardly a thought of the possibility of keeping
any of it. In such cases habit may sometimes be a better safeguard than
principle that has not hardened into habit. Principle untrained may
sometimes give way to a temptation which habit would withstand.
This fact applies to everything that we do, and to every relation of our
lives. We can make a habit of honesty, of industry, of kindliness, of
attention, of courtesy, and of whatever we will. Indeed, Aristotle, one of the
wisest men of antiquity, defined virtue as a habit of rightdoing.
Consider what power we have thus over our lives. We shape them to a
large extent as we choose, and then, through habit, they tend to harden into
the shape that we have given them, as the plaster hardens into the shape
which the artist has chosen.
The matter has, very obviously, another side. Bad habits form as readily
as good ones. I am not sure that they do not form more readily than good
ones, because virtues require more effort than faults. We drift into faults;
but to make the best life we have to take control of it and guide it.
Indeed, a bad habit is the last thing that most of us are afraid of. We think
that we are acting always from our own choice, that it is no matter what we
do now, because another time, whenever we wish, we can do differently.
But all the while a certain habit is forming and hardening, until at last we
find ourselves almost helpless. Thus, even our tastes, our amusements, our
selection of books, the tendency even of our most secret thoughts, are
becoming fixed, and we are becoming permanently the persons we meant to
be only for the moment.
If the artist takes such pains with the plaster that he is forming, so that it
may harden into a shape of beauty, what care should we take of the habits
which are to effect so strongly and permanently our bodies, our minds, and
our hearts.

I'll Keep updating this post with new material