Thirteen-year-old Wande so much wanted to do well in school but he was an average student at best. His parents knew he had the ability to do much better than his grades indicated, and so did his teachers. Despite several discussions with his teacher and his parents, along with a new resolve to try harder, his grades remained average.

As the new school year approached, Wande feared the new year would be no different from the previous years unless he changed his approach. His former approach of trying harder would not suffice, this he knew for sure. Observing himself, he realized that he could best assimilate information in small chunks. Upon this realization, he developed a new approach where he would break up his reading assignments and read no more than two pages at a time.

Rather than trying to knock out his assignments in one stretch, he would break them apart, and focus on small chunks at a time. This took much longer. He had to make sacrifices; the focus and self-discipline required every strength the teenager possessed. In between classes, when he would formerly aimlessly goof around with friends was now used to go over class notes. Even a portion of his ride home from school was used to get a jump start on his reading assignments.

His grades improved almost immediately. The results encouraged him to continue on this new path. Only now did he realize his potential. His self-confidence grew because he grew. He had learned to demand the highest of himself and the highest opened itself to him. At the end of the first term, he was third in his class. The initial difficulty of first observing the reason for his mediocrity and then taking action to rectify this constraint was no longer difficult but simply a normal way of life. Smiling he recognized that everything is difficult until it becomes easy.