Psychological Wellbeing During Exams

By Ms. Sweetie Jain Birla (Psychologist and Counsellor) –

“Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go, they merely determine where you start”. –  Nido Quben

We all face tension when we hear the word “EXAMS” as it triggers the fear of failure within us and the expectations from ourselves as well as of others from us. This very word expectations works as a catalyst to induce anxiety which hinders our performance. It is true that certain level of anxiety is necessary to perform well in any task but it becomes unpleasant when it starts hindering our Mental and Physical health. Every child is different and has different capabilities. They have their own pace of learning and performing. Thus, it need to be taken care of that one should not generalise the way of teaching and approaching a child in a same manner. Learning itself is a beautiful thing as it imparts knowledge but it becomes negative when it is forced. Thus, Semantic learning is the best way which helps a person to learn, retain and recall the learned tasks.Taking a test and having anxiety while doing that along with the apprehension of the result attached to it is all about how we perceive the situation as well as how confident are we on ourselves to perform. Thus test anxiety is always associated to the performance anxiety which is either induced by us due to self-comparison with others or keeping our standards of achievements and expectation form ourselves to high, or it can be induced by others that is our parents, teachers and the institutions which expects us to perform better.  This comparison and expectations fuels negativity in us which blocks our effort which we need to put in our examinations.

So the solution to all these problem is to believe in yourself. Make some positive affirmations for yourself along with positive self-talk which will help to motivate and make you feel happy about yourself. Feeling happy is very important and also feeling of being important and valued is too very important as it gives you a sense of belief that whatever the situation is you will be able to face it and come out of it successfully. Meditation, yoga, proper sleep with healthy food and deep breathing will give an opportunity to give yourself some time to think and reflect as how to work on your goals. Along with all these Spaced Learning is very important as one need to give space and time to learn things which help us to retain properly.

It is to be noted that, whatever happens, failure is the key to success. One need to accept failures in a positive way as it helps to move towards success more efficiently. Fear of Failure is the root cause of all the anxieties and apprehension.