Frustration to Confidence: The Trick That Made Four Engineers

We all carry mental barriers. They sit quietly in the back of our heads, and we rarely notice them. But they chip away at our confidence. They make us bitter and frustrated. And they stop us from doing things we are fully capable of doing.

You don't believe me? Then think about the last time a thought like this crossed your mind:

"I'm not sure I'll qualify the JEE. Honestly, I'm pretty sure I won't. But I keep preparing because I can't bear to see my parents disappointed in me."

That's a mental barrier.

Or this one:

"My cousin went to Kota and couldn't even clear the JEE Main cutoff. How am I supposed to do it without coaching?"

Another barrier.

Here's what's happening. When a task looks hard, your brain tries to talk you out of working on it. So you start hunting for excuses. And the excuses sound clever:

"I didn't even sit for the JEE this year — I knew my prep wasn't strong enough. Why waste the money?"

Sounds wise, doesn't it? It isn't. It's just fear of failing, wearing a smart disguise.

Today I want to tell you about four students. I tricked them into becoming engineers. Yes — you read that right. I tricked them. Let me explain.

Kota isn't the right place for everyone

Wait, that can't be true. Hundreds of students crack engineering and medical exams from Kota every year.

True. They do.

But what about the thousands who come back with nothing? Frustrated, drained, and low. The honest success rate is small — around one percent, maybe less.

And Kota isn't the villain here. Neither are the teachers or the institutes. The problem is that many students hand over everything to their teachers and stop driving their own learning. That never works. Sometimes even the basics stay fuzzy.

Here's a question I love to ask a student the first time we meet:

"When you walk, does friction act forwards or backwards?"

You'd be surprised how many Kota returnees say backwards.

My four students did exactly that. They came home empty-handed after spending a lot of money. When we met, they couldn't even look me in the eye. Shoulders down. Eyes on the floor. I could feel the hurt in their voices when they talked about their results.

I asked them, "Do you want one more shot?"

They said yes — but they weren't sure they could pull it off. No confidence left at all.

So came the hard part: lifting them back up. Nothing I said was landing. Success stories didn't move them. Great quotes bounced right off. I needed something stronger than a pep talk. I needed a magic pill.

And then I remembered the trick.

The trick that changed their lives

Think about why people pray. We pray because we trust something bigger than us, and we ask it for guidance.

When I was a teenager, I watched a movie. A girl was loved by two boys, and she couldn't decide whom to marry. She liked them both. So the boys came up with a plan: write each name on a folded chit, drop them in, and let her pick one. Whoever's name she drew got to marry her. Let fate decide.

Neat idea, right? You can probably guess what happened next. One of the boys quietly bribed her friend, and every single chit had only his name on it. Predictable — but funny.

So I sat my four students down. "Let's play a game," I said. "I know your hearts are broken. But let's sort this out. Let's ask for a sign."

"How?" they asked.

"I'll write a few careers on a few chits. Each of you picks one. If you draw engineering, you promise me you'll forget every past failure and work like your life depends on it. If you draw something else, you take that path instead. Simple. Let fate decide."

They agreed.

I sent them out of the room. I prepared the chits. (You already know my little secret.) Then I called them back, one by one.

I honestly wasn't sure it would work. But the moment they unfolded their chits, their faces lit up. This was what they wanted all along. The desire was never gone — only buried under a barrier that needed breaking.

After that day, they transformed. They threw themselves into their preparation. They stayed in touch, telling me how it was going. And when the JEE Main results came out, all four landed seats in good engineering colleges.

The chits didn't decide their future. They did. The trick just gave them permission to believe again.

Fake it until you make it

You can watch motivational videos on YouTube all day. That kind of motivation feels great for an hour and then fades.

Real confidence doesn't come from a screen. It comes from inside — from believing in yourself, and from quietly convincing your brain you're a winner until you actually become one.

Think of a plate piled with a thousand rasgullas. Terrifying. But eat them two or three at a time, and you'll clear the plate. Same with the syllabus, same with your doubts. Give your brain small wins, again and again, and watch it start to trust you.

So fake the winning streak until your brain stops noticing the difference. Act confident long enough and one day you simply are.

The fist-pump habit

You know how to do a fist pump. Throw your fist into the air like you just cracked something hard. That's the whole move.

For five minutes a day, do that fist pump and say one of these lines out loud as you do it:

• I can. Yes, I can. Yes, I WILL.
• My train stops at one station — clearing the JEE.
• When I try, I win.

Pick any line. Five minutes a day, for seven days. That's the whole experiment. You will feel the shift — in your confidence and in your prep. And if it works for you, keep going. Turn it into a daily habit.

It feels silly the first time. Do it anyway. Silly things that rebuild your belief are worth far more than clever excuses that protect your fear.

Your turn. Write down one mental barrier you've been carrying — the excuse you reach for when prep gets hard. Now read it back and ask: is this a real reason, or is it fear in a smart disguise? Then pick one fist-pump line above and say it out loud, right now.

The one thing to keep

Your brain will keep offering you clever excuses. That's normal — it's just trying to protect you from the hard thing. Your job is to recognize the disguise and work anyway.

Break the barrier. Stack small wins. Fake the confidence until it's real. The desire to do this is already in you — same as it was in those four students. You just have to stop letting fear pick your chits.