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If you’re like most students, you will face big challenges every day, from studying for exams and making time for work and college to facing money troubles and taking care of family members. At some point in your college career, things will go wrong no matter how much you plan ahead and how hard you work. When you’re facing such challenges, how you think and especially how you feel have a huge effect on your ability to keep going.

What if you have a work shift this afternoon, and a test tomorrow, and you haven’t studied enough? What if your car breaks down on the way to pick up your kids and you have a paper due tomorrow? In these tough moments, how you think and feel will make all the difference. If you feel powerless and overwhelmed, you’re more likely to give up—to skip studying, miss a shift at work, or may even leave your kids stranded! But if you believe you can overcome these challenges, you’ll feel energized to keep going and figure out solutions.

The good news is that everyone faces tough moments like these and that you can learn the skills you need to handle them. And remember, you’re not alone. Although your classmates might not admit it, many of them share your challenges and fears. In this section, we’ll go over habits of mind, and we will give you strategies that will help you achieve your goals. These include staying motivated, keeping a good attitude, and developing a growth mindset, all of which we’ll explain below.

Motivation

Among the most important factors that will help you to achieve college success is your motivation—your desire to make an effort. Motivation involves having a high level of commitment and energy that you will focus on a goal. When you are motivated, you are determined to follow a course of action. You keep making an effort, and when you hit obstacles, you make adjustments to work around them, or you deal with them head on. Sometimes being motivated involves pledging to yourself and to others to do your best to reach your goal.

Different people are motivated in different ways. You might need a better car and a bigger apartment or want to work in a career field that truly interests you. You might want to build a better life for yourself and your family so you need to earn a college degree to earn more income. Perhaps you can no longer meet the physical demands of your construction job, and you need to earn a bachelor’s degree in order to qualify for a management position. Or perhaps you’ve enjoyed working as a physical therapy assistant and have decided to go to nursing school because you are truly committed to helping others and are ready for more responsibility. Whatever your motivation for attending college, you need to stay mindful of the goals you want to achieve, particularly when you face challenges on your path.

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In general, there are two kinds of motivation. Intrinsic motivation comes from a desire inside yourself to make something happen, and the internal reward is the feeling you get inside when you achieve it—like the nursing student we just mentioned who wants to help others. Extrinsic motivation comes from the hope of an external reward or the fear of an undesirable outcome or a punishment—like the student training for a management position fearing that his days doing manual labor are coming to a close. In real life, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation work together. As the construction management student spends more time in classes, he enjoys getting to know his instructors and finds he has a lot in common with them. He feels less nervous about becoming a boss and no longer being “one of the guys.” This excitement becomes the intrinsic motivation that will help him keep going over the long haul. The future nurse will not only be helping patients, but as she comes to appreciate the good salary she will earn, this hope of external reward becomes part of her motivation for becoming a nurse.

Attitude

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Attitude is the way you are thinking and feeling in relation to the events around you. Attitude has a lot to do with how well you can stay motivated, whether it’s being motivated to land a better paying job, to do well in your college courses, or to get to the gym or the grocery store. Attitude is an important part of staying motivated because your attitude shapes your behavior. For instance, if you have a bad attitude about math because you’ve had trouble in math in the past, you will be likely to give up on your math courses before you even give yourself a chance to do well.

Whether positive or negative, attitudes often come from our previous environments and experiences with others. Have you ever wondered whether you were “college material”? Has anyone, a family member or teacher, ever told you that you aren’t? How has a comment like this affected your attitude about starting college? Or maybe a friend or family member has told you how proud they are that you are in college, and this has made you feel determined to work hard.

A good starting place to developing a more positive attitude is to think honestly about the attitude you’re likely to have in certain situations. How would you handle stressful or surprising situations such as these?

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Any of these things can and do happen to students just like you. Most college students have many responsibilities, which can make it hard to maintain a good attitude and stay motivated. When you face these kinds of frustrations, do you get really stressed or mad? Do you expect the worst? Do you stay relaxed, do your best, and keep going?

If you’ve been told by people who know you well that you’re negative or pessimistic or you realize that you always expect the worst, maybe it actually is time for an attitude adjustment:

Mindsets

Another way to look at motivation is to examine what are called “mindsets.” Mindsets refer to what you believe about yourself and about your most basic qualities such as your personality, intelligence, or talents. If you have a fixed mindset, you are likely to believe that your characteristics and abilities—either positive or negative—are not going to change through any adjustments to your behavior or effort. A growth mindset, however, means that you are willing to try new approaches and that you believe that you can change.¹

People with a fixed mindset are often trying to prove themselves, and they’re very sensitive about being wrong or making mistakes. They also think that having to make an effort means they are not smart or talented. Many new college students are “fixed” in their beliefs about themselves and their abilities. People with a growth mindset believe that their abilities can be improved—that there is no harm in being wrong or making a mistake. They think that the effort they make is what makes them smart or talented. Some of us have a different mindset for different tasks. For instance, you may find that you have a fixed mindset for your athletic abilities but a growth mindset for music.

Consider Amber, a second-year college student. Amber was her high school’s valedictorian, and before college she had never earned a grade lower than an A minus. Her high school was pretty small and lacked some advanced courses, but Amber assumed that she was prepared for college. During her first college year, however, Amber earned Bs, Cs, and even a D in college algebra. The extrinsic motivation that had come from good grades was long gone, which turned her fixed-mindset world upside down. For several months, Amber was disinterested in almost everything; she completely lost her motivation to study and learn when earning an A had seemingly become impossible.

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Slowly, though, Amber turned things around. She began watching how others studied and interacted with instructors. Not all the examples were good ones. Some students would brag about skipping class and staying up all night to study instead of managing their time better. But others had a deliberate plan that included taking really good notes, studying every day, trying to sit close to the front of the classroom, and talking with instructors after class. Amber started adopting these behaviors. Little by little, she practiced new study strategies, began to accept criticism without falling apart, and gained an understanding that sometimes she could learn more from her mistakes than from her successes. It took Amber about a year to regain her positive attitude and a willingness to do her best, no matter what the outcome. She stills likes to see an A at the top of a paper, but she has realized that she is motivated intrinsically more by what she learns than by what grade she earns.

How would you describe how Amber’s mindset changed? How would you describe your own? What can you learn about your mindset by walking through the exercise in Table 2.1?

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Whether you’re in your college classes, your job setting, or your home, your mindset—similar to your attitude—can influence how you think about yourself and others, your opportunities, and your relationships. A fixed mindset will cause you to limit the things you do, the people you meet, and even the classes you take in college. A growth mindset will help you be more willing to explore classes and activities out of your comfort zone. It will help you stay motivated because you will see disappointments or failures as opportunities to learn.