It’s exam time. Sometimes you may feel so anxious that you cannot breathe. Let’s see if we can give you some pointers to help you give your very best. 1. Accept your tension as natural. If you were an athlete waiting for the starting whistle, you would experience the same symptoms, but you would see it as “psyching yourself up” rather than “stressing out”. You are faced with a test of your abilities. Your whole system is preparing for that. That’s natural and good – provided it doesn’t overpower you. To prevent that from happening: 2. Have a schedule and stick to it rigidly. Go to bed at the same time every night, get up early, and set to work. 3. Start every day with a five-minute meditation. You can find an easy guide in the Thought for the Week titled Find your quiet centre. It will put you in control, rather than being at the mercy of the emotions you’re trying so hard to suppress. 4. Reread our Thought for the Week of a month ago, Fear of Failure. This is the bogeyman that is threatening you, the dark shadow in the corner that scares you so much you can’t think. Face it to deal with it. Name it to tame it. 5. To help you do that, let’s go back to basics: the ABCDE of Resilience. |
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| A is for the Activating event: What is the cause of the problem? B is for Belief: What belief is triggered by A? C is for Consequence: How does this activated belief make you feel? D is for Dispute: Is this belief the only possible interpretation? Dispute questions: 1. Do you have evidence to support the connection you made? 2. Is there a possible alternative interpretation? 3. Really? Are you sure you’re not exaggerating? 4. Can you choose a more positive interpretation of what happened, which would make you feel happier? E is for Energise: Having gone through this thought process, energy becomes available for making new plans to work on the problem. |
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Let’s see how this will work in practice. Take this example, which came up in one of StudyTrust’s mentor visits to campuses: A third-year IT student from a deep rural background overcame huge obstacles by not only making it to university, but also all the way to third year. He did very well in his June exams, obtaining three distinctions. But now all was in the balance again. To graduate, he had to complete six months of “experiential learning” – he had to find somewhere to work for six months. |
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| A: The Activating event was not getting a position to complete that training. B: The Belief it triggered was, “They don’t look for achievement, they just pick.” C: The Consequence was that he felt completely discouraged. D: The mentor helped him Dispute the connection between A and B on the basis of information from other students. The evidence did not support the connection – other students had found placements, and this did not seem random. An alternative interpretation was that success was not random. The successful students had applied for more opportunities (9 on average, as opposed to his 3); he did not communicate well, using the “eish, ja-né” type of interaction; and he did not prepare well for interviews, because he did not believe it would make a difference. He was not exaggerating the impact, but … All the factors mentioned in 2 were under his control, which lifted the feeling of helpless discouragement. E: From this process Energy flowed, which allowed him to plan new actions to change the situation: practicing to communicate better, applying for more positions, improving his CV, and making use of his network. |
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| See if you can apply this process to your fears and worries at the moment. Perhaps even ask a friend to help you work through the ABCDE, guiding you with critical questions and prompts. All of this involves the frontal cortex in the brain, putting the emotional “inside brain” back in its place. Once again, good luck in the exams. We’re all rooting for you. Yes, you can! From the GRAD team |
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