Bismillahirrahmanirrahim.
Assalamualaikum.
How are you feeling today? I hope you’re having a great day!
I did not really write a lot these days. I really want to share everything with you, but some things are best to keep it for myself. That makes them special, you know. Sometimes the memories and moments that you have are best to treasure only by keeping them in your heart.
Life could be tough sometimes. There are times when you feel so motivated to do something and your heart beats aloud with excitement. There are also times when you feel depressed and emptiness just spread through your veins. You know, I’ve been unmotivated most of the time. Sometimes I have no motivation in studies. I have no motivation to work. I have no motivation to speak. And sometimes I even have no motivation to do anything in life. Maybe it’s just a natural feeling that flows as a challenge in life. Or maybe it’s just an excuse for me because I’m not ready to keep up with the challenge.
I normally feel unmotivated in studying. I remember I screwed up on my SPM because I always remind myself that I’m not an excellent student. I went to a high performance school or Sekolah Berprestasi Tinggi (SBT) with all those brilliant people. In school, results are the most important thing. Nobody actually will look up to you if you did not score well in examination. Maybe I kind of exaggerating things here, but at least that was what I felt back then. I am grateful though I could do well in the basic subjects but I totally messed up in science and additional mathematics.
I was really helpless at that time. I kept telling myself I could never keep up with rest of the students. I even told that to myself every day, without missing it once. I ended up not getting any As in additional mathematics and the science subjects. That explains how messed up I was in my high school years. And that was probably the biggest mistake I’ve ever done in my life. I lost my motivation, and I never even tried to get it back.
Thus I rejected my matriculation offer and tried to study art streams. I knew it would be a great challenge because I was in the science streams for five years. I told myself that I need to redeem my mistakes for losing all the motivation back then. The lessons were totally different. I used to study the science subjects in English. But my new subjects were in Malay. I mean it’s not that difficult, but reading a business book in Malay is kind of something new to me. And memorizing the facts was much tougher than memorizing the History. But I was the one who stood up for the challenge, right? I tried a shot and my first trial was actually not bad. Alhamdulillah. And I kept trying afterwards though I never really get any results that could satisfy my parents. Well at least I think my performance was better than the past.
The reason I’m posting this is because I want to share the secret of my motivations. The things that motivated me to do better in studying. I created my fake enemies. Enemies? An enemy is something that harms something else. In other case, I looked up to certain people and tried to compete with their results. They’re my fake enemies with no such intention to harm me anyway. It’s one-sided challenge or one-sided love or anything you name it. It’s just one-sided. When you create your own competitor, you’ll have this burning desire to beat their marks. I’m telling you, this fake enemy technique really works.
There were so many brilliant students. Even there’s a lot in my class. I’m not going to lie. Even the class monitor and his assistant gave me the nerves. There were so many awesome students in the class. There’s this one girl who could draw very well. There’s a student who could memorize things in a blink of an eye. I even lost to her in a challenge with the teacher once. There’s a student who could performed well despite being sick. And there were a lot of competitors from the other classes too. I’m amazed with how many good students existed.
Therefore, I set up my clear targets and try to get my marks above them. You don’t know how a fake enemy or a competitor can be so useful in your life. A competitor is the one who keeps your motivation up. A competitor is the one who secretly telling you to keep alive without knowing himself. The reason why I keep struggling the whole time. It is not a sin to create a fake enemy. It is okay. It is normal. There’s nothing bad in it, unless you personally takes it in a wrong way. By creating my own fake enemy, I managed to at least ranked top three. I managed to beat my competitors. I managed to feel alive, and told myself I’m not really that bad in studies. Not feeling the emptiness at certain point of my life.
Thank you for those who secretly became my fake enemies. It was you who made me feel alive again.
But there’s this one competitor whom I never managed to overcome her achievements. She, who ranked the second in batch at that time. I never did overcome her. I really hope we’ll meet again. And by that time, I’ll definitely defeat you, my worthy fake enemy.
