We have received enormous amount of stress rescue requests from candidates. Especially when the exam is approaching.
We do hope parents and educators are paying kind attention to this post.
All of the candidates are pouring their hearts out to us, crying for help, because there is really no one listening to them or helping them.
Here are some of their cry out:
- Fear of failing.
- Not being able to recall stuff I just studied,
- Not enough time!!!
- I’m so scared right now! Do you think there’s any chance I might improve in time for my examinations?
- Pressure from teachers and parents.
- Feeling like I’m not worth anything or good enough.
- I feel myself getting everything and understanding it but if I try to solve anything, it just doesn’t happen and it’s extremely frustrating.
- My teachers do not seem passionate with teaching, they are interested in being given more money incentives on top of their salaries, they want money, my school is poor to pay more money.
- I am scared from the examinations.
… and many many more.
Therefore, in this article, we will discuss how to “handle” your stress. Hope this would help you not only in your exam, you probably will carry this throughout your life. 🙂
Can We “Handle” Stress?
Contrary to popular belief, we CAN NOT “handle” stress.
Stress does not exist. It is NOT a thing that you can hold nor eat 😉
Stress is a feeling resulting from your thought.
From your ‘negative’ thought to be precise.
When your mind constantly thinking on negative thoughts, for example: you are scared to fail, or not getting an A*, or not good enough comparing to your older brothers or sisters, etc…; you create a bad feeling inside your body from all the negative thoughts.
The bad feeling that you feel, is what you call ‘stress’.
The more you want to “handle” your stress, the more you think there is something wrong about you. Then, you put more pressure and create more unwanted negative thoughts about yourself.
Why would you do that then?
Shall we agree from now on you don’t try to “handle” your stress anymore?
We only take “YES” as the answer 😉
So what should you do then? Keep reading…
1. Admit You Have Negative Thought(s)
There is really no big deal to admit we have negative thoughts. Everyone has them.
Just the courage to admit we have them, we have already eliminated most of the bad feelings.
Aren’t you feel lighter now?
Know that you can’t fight darkness with darkness. You can only fight darkness with light. By admitting the existence of negativity, you have inserted the light of positivity.
That is the most important starting point, and it is essential for you to continue to the next step.
2. Change Your Thoughts
Now that you know stress is the bad feelings you created from all your negative thoughts.
All you need to do now is – Change Your Thoughts.
Here are some steps for you to start doing that:
- Start by imagining the positive outcomes that you want to see or to have. For example: imagine you score A* in Maths, then feel the happiness feeling when you see your result slip.
As Albert Einstein said: “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.“ - Make a list of things that you are afraid or frustrated of. Next, write the positive opposite of it. For example: I am scared of exams. The positive opposite you could write: I handle exam with ease / I write smoothly in the exam / I am entering the exam hall with full energy and I can’t wait to put everything I know down on the paper to show that I deserved an A* 🙂
- Know that examination is just a method used to see if you have understood the theory thoroughly and know how to present it out.
- Examination is also a way to let you find out what is your best talent. You will notice a trend that you tend to do well in certain subjects, but not the others. So, there is really no big deal if you can’t do well in Physics but trump in Arts. Because that is your best talent that you are meant to be the best in order to contribute to mankind in the future.
When you are making your list, you will notice that you have a shift in your feeling.
You will feel must lighter, your mind is clearer, you have so much energy that you want to jump into the exam hall right now, and most importantly, you will notice a big smile on your face because now you are a much happier person!
The final step is, you must train yourself to keep this happy feeling and not let yourself slide backwards again to the negative thoughts.
Step 3 will show you exactly how to do that.
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3. Get Good Results By Keeping The Positive Thoughts
The best way to keep your mind on positive thoughts is gratitude.
If you make a search, you will discover many great minds had always said the same thing about gratitude, and what kind of miracle it would bring to you.
Here are some of them:
“When you are grateful, fear disappears and abundance appears.” ~ Tony Robbins
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” ~ Albert Einstein
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity. It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events.” ~ Melodie Beatty
Make gratitude your daily dose in your daily life.
You could be grateful for the chance to study, the ability to read and write, to be able to attend your exam at your comfort, to have a comfortable bed to sleep on each night, the luxury of clean running water and electricity, the money that have been given to you so you could continue your education, the fresh air, all your favourite food that is always available at your reach, etc etc etc …
The list is so vast that we simply couldn’t put everything here. But you get the idea of where to start 🙂
Pay attention to how you feel. If you are not feeling good, that means your mind is currently broadcasting negative thoughts.
Immediately find anything you could be grateful for to shift to positive thought.
***
Last but not least, please know that you are a worthy human being. Everyone is.
We are all here to do something important. We are all equipped with a special talent that only we have, no one else.
And we are meant to find out what we are good at, so we could contribute this talent to mankind. When you are contributing your best talent for the benefit of mankind, you will be rewarded handsomely (a.k.a earning a lot of money). 🙂
So now, go out there and score A*!




325 responses
Majority of the people are saying that they are studying hard and they cannot achieve there goals
well, i don’t study much for exam and now i feel very useless , my boards are starting with in 5 days and now i’m so scared that i will fail .My friends also started saying that i’m going to fail for the boards because you don’t know anything in any subjects , So i pretty sure that i will fail in boards.
my aim is not to get A* in every subject but overall i need atleast 70%.So can you help me to achieve my aim and i very much know that i am very late. So plz help me ! to do something which help me in this last minute
Hi Joe,
Just stop listening to your friends that told you “you’re going to fail”. Concentrate your mind on your study instead.
If you have already “fixed your mind” that you “pretty sure you will fail”, then it will happen. Why not change your thought? Read the article above 🙂
I recently did my mocks and I did quite well. My hard work paid off but for some reason even though I am prepared I am nervous .When I am in class i am physically there but I am mentally somewhere else.I basically cant concentrate because of unwanted thoughts even though I am working hard . What should i do ??
Hi Kartik,
Read the above article again. Everything is really in your mind. If you finally “decide” to do it, do it.
Please, for anyone in the IGCSE team has taken the ICT exam, what if you can’t remember whether your name, centre number or candidate number was written on every page of a 4 page print out (Evidence document)? How do you try to relax and recall clearly? The only thing that I am sure of is that I wrote my details in the header of the document and that the screenshots for each step were complete. Please help me as I am really afraid of not being able to get an A* in ICT.
I think that once you put your candidate information in the header of the first page, then it will appear on all the other pages by default.
That’s generally what happens in MS Word 2010 and 2013. I don’t know whether that’s applicable to other versions of MS Word or other word processing software.
Once you type in your candidate information in the header/footer of the first page of your document, then it appears by default on all the other pages of the document.
That’s what happens in the newer versions of MS Word, at least. I don’t know if this applies to the older versions of MS Word or other word processing software.
hey, Meika it’s general function in all word docs whether it is ms word or libreoffice i hope you receive an a* as the paper was to easy as i also gave the exam
Hello.. I have yay boards coming like in 5 months and I just had my school terms and results weren’t upto the expectation . I had studied a lot this time. I don’t know why I can not focus on studies. My mom also dreams of me getting a* in all, subjects and tells me everyday. Iam too stressed. I jut know know what to do. I feel iam dumb
Hello Rhea,
Just relax, and read our article above.
please help me out….