Study Coach

Coaching Quotes by Study Coach Ernie Aragon Jr. Part 2 December 31, 2007

This is the second installment of my distasteful self-quoting hahaha.

“Think not only why things don’t work but how you can make them work.” – Ernie Aragon, Jr. 

There’s nothing wrong with figuring out why certain things don’t work.  That’s part of learning and discovery.

However, there is a point when it becomes an excuse.

I’ve had life and study coaching experiences where I was giving some suggestions for my coachee to try out and the coachee would give me a lot of reasons why that suggestion won’t work without actually giving it a try first.

I make another suggestion and that person would come up with even more reasons why that idea can’t work.

I was coaching another guy on how to improve his memory using the Power Memory system I developed.  After the session, I heard him talking with his girl friend that the techniques were not applicable to complex biochemical pathways that they were taking up in med school.  

He continued to list down other areas he thought my Power Memory would not work in.

When I got home, I took out a medical book and thought how I could make the system work for biochemical pathways.  

Within ten minutes, I was able to remember the Tricarboxylic Acid Cycle, a pathway I wasn’t able to commit to memory in college in spite of taking it up in ten of my subjects.

I got back to the guy and showed him how to do it.  You can’t imagine how surprised he was.

Why didn’€™t he find the solution?  It is because he focused to much on the problem.  He magnified his doubts and skepticism.  It was his mindset.

My mindset was to look for solutions for problems.  Our mind tends to find things we look for.  

You look for obstacles and you find them.  You look for solutions and you find them. 

That was how as a study coach I developed Power Memory.  

The memory systems are age-old since the days of Aristotle.  I’ve heard many criticisms even from psychologists on why these techniques are not effective or have limited effectiveness.  That was their mindset.

Mine? I asked how I can make acquiring skills easier.  I asked how I can improve the techniques so that they are not just good for parlor stunts and everyday stuff but also for hard academic stuff.  

Power Memory was born and has spread throughout the Philippines and is going around the world. Why?  Because the right questions were asked. 

Coaching Quotes by Study Coach Ernie Aragon Jr. Part 1 December 31, 2007

I know it’s kind of distasteful to quote oneself but here are some personal quotes that I’d like to share and popularize because I believe in them so much.  Feel free to quote me hahaha.  

“If something is truly worth fighting for then there will definitely be a fight for it.” – Ernie Aragon, Jr. 

As I coach people whether it is study coaching or life coaching, I have observed something very interesting.

I ask people to write down worthwhile life goals so that I could coach them on how to attain them.  After this process, most people are full of zest and excitement, ready to take on the world to pursue their goals.

However, after facing a series of obstacles to their goals or even their first major obstacle, some quickly get discouraged.  Some doubt if they made the right choice in choosing their goals.

With this, I patiently sit down with them and ask if they consider the goals they’ve written down as worth fighting for and they would say yes.  Then I would tell them that they should not be surprised then if there is a fight for it.

If there’s no competition or fight or struggle for something, then it probably isn’t really that worthwhile.  Challenges are part of reaching for our dreams.  

I guess that’s part of what makes them so fulfilling and worthwhile. And partly that’s what life and study coaches are for: to help you keep on track when the challenges come.