For Students Who Need Another Chance, It’s Time to ReSet™

Lots of students need a second chance. Lots of students need a do-over. Unfortunately, many of those students who are given a second chance squander the opportunity, not because they aren’t capable of completing their education, but because they don’t possess the mindset to re-write the negative experiences that have lead to failures with education in the past. Consequently, those experiences keep negatively affecting their decisions to “stop out or drop out” of school.​

All of our past experiences are stored in the neurons of our brain – not just the experience, but also how we felt about those experiences. Our emotional history is attached to it. With the accumulation of many experiences and many emotions over our lifetime, they build up to become our truths, or our reality. This includes all the Habits, Attitudes, and Beliefs that have become automatic inside. Inaccurate or accurate, it has become the truth as we know it. As Dr. Daniel Siegel explains, the brain is “an anticipation machine,” structured to take experiences that happened in the past and use them to come up with expectations about what will happen in the future. This means that “prior learning shapes present perceptions.” (Fogel, Steven Jay; Rosin, Mark (2014-03-06). Your Mind Is What Your Brain Does for a Living: Learn How to Make It Work for You (Kindle Locations 1440-1443). Greenleaf Book Group Press. Kindle Edition.)​

​The problem, with all of this reality we have stored in our subconscious, is it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure, a downward spiral of taking two steps forward only to fall two steps back in the near future. Then, darn the bad luck, it happened again. Once we make up our mind that:

1. I can’t learn that;
2. I’ve never been good at that;
3. I’m not capable of getting my diploma or degree;

all of which is based on the accumulation of experiences and emotions over our lifetime, our creative subconscious goes to work to help us maintain that reality, that truth as we know it to be stored in our subconscious mind. So, we end up with the same outcome in spite of our best intentions.The creative subconscious isn’t interested in helping us reach our potential. That’s not its job. Its job is to maintain the reality that we have stored in our mind, to make us act and behave like we know we are. If we know we can’t do something, i.e. “I can’t do math,” “I can’t give a presentation,” “I can’t get all my work done,” “I can’t make it to class every day,” it has to prove that we are right. But, is that accurate?​Norbert Weiner, the founding father of the computer, had a saying. He called it the GI/GO principle – Garbage In, Garbage Out. If we put misinformation into a computer, don’t expect the right answers to come out. How does that apply to our students who have been met with disappointment in the past with education? When considering acquiring a new skill set, graduation, a new career, and a new income, these students get drawn back into their negative past experience, “garbage in” information that is inaccurate or untrue. Consequently, they are stuck under-living their educational potential. ​

According to Neurobiologist Dr. James McGaugh of the University of California at Irvine, “The purpose of memory is to predict the future.” In order to get on the other side of those negative, hurtful, painful past experiences that have lead me to the past decisions to “stop out or drop out” of school in the past, it is time toReSet™ and change the mindset in order to make decisions for the future based on what is possible rather than what has happened in the past. ​

​Editor’s Note:ReSetsurrounds these “second chance” students with the efficacy-building, effective thinking education expected from The Pacific Institute. Supporting you and your efforts at bringing these students back to their original goal of higher education is a significant priority for The Pacific Institute. Gathering its high- performance concepts and focusing them toward adult students, who have tried life without that much-needed degree or certificate, is a natural progression of the Institute’s educational mission.

​For more information on theReSet™ program, click here.