Imagine the situation. You’re about to receive the results of one of the most important exams. But throughout the year you’ve only managed to open your books four, maybe five times, in total outside of school hours.
Your parents and teachers had both been pushing at you to study more and every day you would attempt it, but then say you’ve done enough.
You receive your results and… there’s a big, fat “F” on the page. What follows is an endless amount of “I-told-you-so’s.”
Or there’s this situation. You studied everything in your coursework, but not for infinite hours each day. You open your results on exam day and you find out you’ve passed everything. In fact, it’s even better than that – you’ve earned an A2!
Now you can turn around to fellow students, parents or teachers who didn’t believe in you and raise the middle finger! So how can you do this?
Believe in yourself
We play some games with ourselves when it comes to avoiding failure. Research by UC Berkeley professor, Martin Covington, found that our fear of failure is linked to our self-worth. If a person doesn’t believe he or she has the ability to succeed, that person will begin making excuses in order to preserve his/her self-worth in their own eyes, as well as in others.
If you doubt your own abilities you may find yourself making excuses, such as you had little time to prepare for an exam.
According to Covington, students who don’t expect to succeed may believe that if they extend a lot of effort but still fail, this implies low ability, therefore low worth. But if they don’t try and still fail, this will not reflect negatively on their ability and their worth will remain intact.
You need to begin thinking in terms of success, rather than concentrating on failure. And what is the best way to overcome our fear of failure?
By learning about it! Studies suggest that we fear what we do not understand or are not familiar with. But when you take charge of learning about your fear, you are proclaiming power over it.
In the study know
Studying typically isn’t everyone’s favourite thing to do, but once you know the right way to go about it, you won’t mind doing it as much. Find a study space you feel relaxed in – your room, your sitting room, your bathroom if you wish!
Make a study plan and stick to it, so that you can keep track of what days and times you studied at. This also makes studying a lot less painful when you break it down throughout a week rather than having to study large chunks at a time.
Keep your desk tidy. It seems basic but researchers at the Princeton University Neuroscience Institute discovered that when your environment is cluttered, it restricts your ability to focus.
So now that you know that you CAN prove those who doubted you wrong AND overcome your fear of studying, keep a close eye for upcoming posts on HOW you can study effectively.
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