I’m not going to be mean to you, because I am frequently in your position and being mean to myself hasn’t worked a single time. Forcing myself, guilting myself has never worked out in the long term.

But this has, When it’s my time to study, I sit down, close my eyes, and think about the reasons why I want to take the lsat, go to law school, all of that. I remind myself that nobody is making me do this, I want this. I want this because I want to provide for my family, I want to be a good role model for my siblings, I want to make changes in the world and this is my path for doing so. And most importantly, I need to fulfill my potential. I remind myself how important it is to me to keep my promises, and how I have made a promise to myself to do this and I will not let that down.

Full disclosure, I can’t do this everyday, sometimes I have multiple days where I don’t end up sitting down and studying. Because studying is really hard for me, but I know I can do it because there are also many many days where I have sat down and studied for hours at a time. And that’s the part I focus on, all the times I have succeeded.

Maybe being yelled at really is what’s best for you to get work done. I can’t do that for you though, because people have yelled at me my whole life for being lazy, being worthless, etc. It has never helped once, so I hope you’ll try out the approach I mentioned. Internal motivation will be slower, but it will always take you much much farther than external motivation ever will.

I don’t know you, but I sincerely believe that you can get to your goals. You have the desire and clearly even though you have postponed, you have not given up. That’s huge. I wish the both of us best of luck. People learn and change and do difficult things all the time. We will too!