Sipho Ngcobo plays Mozart while he’s studying and visualises getting 100 percent for his exams.
The 31-year-old also says that if we set goals that are appropriate to us, we won’t have to fight too hard to achieve them, because “they will draw us towards them in accordance with the laws of nature”.
“When your goals are exciting they create a pulling power,” he explained. “This is the secret which highest achievers do not share - although they set clear goals, they do not have to work towards them, but instead just let the universe help them to achieve them.”
Ngcobo is no mystic waxing lyrical about metaphysics, but a physics Master’s student at the University of Zululand, recently appointed to the council of the national body of the South African Institute of Physics.
At the institute he will be the student voice – a role to which he is accustomed, having formerly represented postgraduates in the institute’s specialist group on nuclear, particle and radiation physics, which is also tasked with ensuring that the country’s educational system is producing enough suitably qualified people for its future nuclear needs.
Ngcobo, who hails from the village of Impaphala near Eshowe, said physics helped him to understand the fundamentals that govern our universe and to probe unexplained mysteries.
“For example, I visualise my exam script as having a 100 percent mark on the paper, and if you get excited about your goals, it does create a pulling power,” he said. “It is metaphysical andbeyond our current understanding, which I find fascinating.”
He is in his second year of a two-year Master’s degree in nuclear and materials sciences run jointly by Unizul’s department of physics and the Western Cape’s iThemba Labs, in collaboration with international experts. His research is on radiation shielding and protection using computer codes.
He puts his 84 percent first-year Master’s mark down to the goal-setting training he had at the hands of the South African Creativity Foundation, while he was lecturing in engineering at Umfolozi College after graduating and before he resumed his studies.
He said that as an undergraduate he had concentrated so hard on his studies that he had neglected basics like good nutrition and a healthy social life.
“I got very sick and I started to search everywhere for solutions. I read books on health, spirituality and personal development until eventually I realised that cultivating a healthy, balanced lifestyle was the way to go.”
Now a vegetarian, Ngcobo said he also drank lots of water, meditated and exercised regularly, and enjoyed healthy relationships with all living creatures, from plants to animals and humans. “This helps me achieve the clear mental state in which to set my goals,” he said.
And he keeps setting those goals. After his Master’s he plans not only to enrol for a doctorate, but also to set up a career-coaching practice to encourage schoolchildren to study science. He will also mentor them on alternative techniques for achieving high marks and how lifestyle can assist them.
As well as being a dedicated scientist, he is a certified creativity coach with the Creativity Foundation and is interested in brain profiling.
“I sometimes use the analogy that your brain is a desktop and I have to look at where I am storing everything. I tell myself I am uploading, and then during the exam I am downloading,” he said. “Even though science is not for everyone, anyone can master it.
“We create barriers by saying a subject is difficult. But it is actually your thoughts and affirmations that create your own reality.”
Ngcobo said he believed it was essential to create the right environment in a classroom, so students could get fired up and excited about what they were doing.
“I also believe visual arts can help put science into context for many students,” he said. “The science community needs dramatic intervention and all of us must play our part, instead of blaming and complaining.” - Independent on Saturday