Note: As a mindset mentor to law school grads and 3L’s prepping for the bar, I major in solutions. Not problems. But without a proper foundation for understanding the solution, you may gloss over the all-important methods that have gotten client after client of mine results. Get the foundation below and grab a hold of the solution while it’s still freely available on this page (limited time download).
Let’s get to it!
HOW TO GET PAST BAR EXAM FAILS: AND WHY YOU HAVEN’T BEEN ABLE TO DO IT ON YOUR OWN
One of the reasons it's difficult to release past bar exam failures is because we identify with the failure.
You leave the situation saying:
"I am bad at multiple choice."
"I am a bad writer."
"I am undisciplined."
Even if you're good at these things, when your results aren’t ideal, you’ll still search for an explanation of said results. And the explanation almost always results in a negative "I am" statement.
Don’t believe me?
Say you are truly disciplined, but family members made demands on your time during bar study. Looking back, you realized you weren't physically and mentally present enough to learn the material and that there was something you could’ve done about it.
This situation occurs a lot among people who come to me for mindset help around the bar exam. The resulting “I am” statement I often hear is "I am bad at setting and enforcing boundaries".
See how that works?
[There is a deep-seated reason behind the inability to enforce boundaries. Stay tuned to my FB group for my live video training on this.]
The reason it's so hard to get past bar exam failures is that, whenever one seeks an explanation for results, the human way is to make the result mean something about the person who got the results. We take the results and extrapolate conclusions about ourselves; thus identifying ourselves with the fail.
We become the fail!!!
This is a clear example of the cliche about letting results define you.
Your bar exam results don't define you...unless you make it so.
How do you fix this situation of self-identification based on bar results?
First, get a clear idea of how you are defining yourself. If your results don’t define you, what does?
If you don’t know who you are, how can you know what you want, where you are going and how to tell when you’ve gotten there? A lot of people get lost in the bar journey because they are following it without meaning or purpose. Knowing yourself is the first step to infusing your bar journey with motivation for passing (and it will help you stop identifying with your results).
Second, stop riding the roller coaster.
Have you ever experienced feeling great and enthused about study when you were getting questions right, and feeling down and demotivated when you got questions wrong? This emotional roller coaster is a key indicator that you are identifying yourself with your studies.
You can’t let go of the fails without letting go of the passes.
You have to let go of both.
You read that correctly. The negative and positive are flip sides of the same coin. How can you hold heads in your hand without also holding tails.
You can't just separate yourself from the negative results.
Results can be positive or negative. To separate yourself from results you have to separate your self identification from all of it.
If you allow yourself to be “a great test taker” “on point” “so studious” etc., when you’re doing well, you will also take on the opposite when you’re doing poorly. You have to disengage from it all. None of it, good or bad, defines you. It’s just a thing you are doing--like brushing your teeth.
You are either attached to the results, making them mean something about you, or you're not attached—there’s no in-between.
So what do we do instead? Solution.
The mind frame to adopt here is that the positive results don't mean you are studious, deserving, hardworking or smart. Positive results mean nothing about you. They are just the results you've gotten.
Now that you've read and understood these concepts are you ready to apply them to your life and actually get over past bar exam fails?
If so, dive into these tools I’ve prepared to help you take your first steps.
Download and engage with the self-identification worksheet (linked right above). This helps you clarify how you see yourself (and separate yourself from bar exam fails).
BONUS ALERT!: I added a bonus sheet to help motivate you around the bar.
If you’re on FB, add yourself to my FB support group. It’s meant to support you as you work through my free and bite-sized offers.
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