How to Deal with Stress during Competitive Exam Preparation?

If there is something that you cannot control in your life, it is the action of stress-inducing sources. It is especially applicable if you are a competitive exam aspirant. Therefore, if you try to control the action of these sources while dealing with exam stress, all your energy will go in vain without providing you with the desired results. You must learn to let go of things and focus on your goals. This is because one of the studies has concluded that nearly 45% of American students have more than average stress levels. In addition, it also found that stress affected a significant part of the remaining folks in a certain manner.

So is the tension of exams and fear of failure giving you stress?

Well, there is no need to worry as you are not alone who is dealing with exam stress.

Several students feel the pressure and stress to perform their level best in competitive engineering exams such as UPSC ESE and GATE exams. Most often, a layer of pressure exists due to the expectations of family, friends, and peers with the negative preaching of society. Such pressure is usually a self-imposed stress. This is due to the unreal and imaginary pedestal on which most of us tend to place such people and environment, which will not matter in the long term.

This blog post will help you tackle this issue of exam stress that exists among the UPSC ESE, GATE Exam, SES, and SSC-JE aspirants (to name a few) and find a suitable solution for it. If you want to succeed in your target exam, you must ensure that you choose the right steps for dealing with exam stress. Let us proceed towards the main part of the blog post to understand the effective ways and methods to deal with exam-related stress.

What is stress?

In simple terms, stress is the normal human reaction that mainly includes mental and physical tension. This is due to one or more situations that trigger the respective individual to cause stress. The body’s natural defense to cope with specific demands and events against danger is closely associated with stress. This causes the respective individual activates the concerned hormones to help a person to stay focused and deal with the respective challenge like a pro.

The stress in the body leads to various physical reactions in the body. This includes:

1. Increased blood pressure
2. Heightened muscle preparedness
3. Sweating
4. Alertness
5. Feel confused (even in simple cases)
6. Find difficulty to make decisions
7. Surrounded by a feeling of overwhelming
8. Lack of motivation to perform the activities which you loved the most earlier
9. Irregular sleep pattern and lack of willingness to get out of bed
10. Nail biting and teeth-grinding.

Reasons for exam stress:

The various reasons that cause stress can include:

1. Worry of failure
2. Lack of proper preparation
3. Worry to perform well in college or competitive exams
4. Don’t have much time to study
5. Lack of achievement of desired results
6. Reduced self-confidence
7. Find it hard to understand the related topics
8. A lot of pressure from the family’s end to score a particular range of marks
9. The thought to compete with others instead of focusing on yourself.

These reasons are primarily responsible to cause stress in our daily lives. This often leads to unnecessary activities that affect the overall performance of the respective individual concerning the UPSC and GATE exam preparation.

Now, let us walk through the next crucial part associated with the ways of dealing with stress. These ways solve the purpose to deal with stress without letting it affect your mental and physical health along with the study sessions.

How to deal with Exam Stress?

In the case of some students, exam stress acts as a catalyst that works towards pushing them harder towards their goals. On the other hand, exam stress works like a discouraging factor for certain students who are unable to handle such stress-inducing situations at the right time. It all comes down to how you will deal with this exam stress and not let this stress affect you in any form.

Most effective ways of dealing with exam stress include:

1. Know the exam well: Most of the time, the reason for stress is a lack of awareness. Therefore, do not jump into the competitive exam preparation mode just because your close friend or relative is doing it. Instead, you must research the respective competitive exam properly and find out all the required information associated with it. It will help you stay clear in your head about what you must expect from the exam. Apart from this, you must check out the toppers’ interviews and learn their approach towards competitive exams such as UPSC ESE, GATE exam, and SSC-JE exam. Along with this, you can go through and watch the positive affirmations from the top faculties specializing in the respective competitive exams.

You need to become completely aware of the exam, as it is the first step to avoiding stress at the root level itself. Therefore, get set to brainstorm with the help of popular search engines to find out the relevant and important details such as exam syllabus, exam pattern, and dates with the number of posts available through the respective exam. You can get the required resources for this exam before you kickstart with the full-fledged exam preparation.

2. Set Realistic Goals: Do you know our goals have the highest potential to cause a significant amount of stress in our daily lives? You must remember that unrealistic and impractical goals are one of the crucial reasons that cause stress. During the exam preparation phase, exam aspirants must ensure that they must refer to the exam syllabus and exam pattern properly to prepare well for the respective exam. In this way, they must make sure that you stay prepared for the respective challenges during the critical phase associated with the exam preparation.

Therefore, you need to ensure that when you are creating a plan for dealing with exam stress, you choose a realistic plan that will guide you toward achieving your goals.

3. Keep your body active:

Several research studies have shown that when an individual is stressed, the adrenal gland releases cortisol (a stress hormone) to manage it. This cortisol also affects your body, so taking care of it is important. Some of the things that one must do to keep their body active include:

1. Reduce sugar intake: Cortisol also affects your blood sugar level. Therefore, a lot of sugar intake influences the stress levels in our bodies. Also, eat a high-protein breakfast, including eggs, peanut butter, oats, or nuts. Eat 4 to 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. You can have dark chocolates, herbal tea, fruits, and veggies as per your choice and diet schedule.
2. Exercise daily: With consistent exam pressure, exercise seems like a waste of time to students. However, you need to keep in mind that if you exercise daily and follow a healthy lifestyle, it will act as a great stress booster. It energizes your body and makes you feel fresh inside out. Therefore, even simple exercises can help you in dealing with exam stress effectively. Even if you are not exercising, try to get out of your residential place and go for a walk. This will refresh your mind and calm you down. Research has shown that high-intensity aerobic exercise has positive effects on one’s well-being in the upcoming months to years.
3. Hydrate yourself: Water is an essential requirement of our body, but with the everyday hustle, we forget to pause and drink water. This activity might seem to be a simple one, but it proves to be a stress buster for several decades now. You can use modern-era apps and ensure that you do not skip drinking water timely. This actively is one of the natural and most impactful ways of dealing with exam stress.
4. Enjoy the sun: Another effective way to keep your body active is to increase your exposure to sunlight. Decent exposure to a minimum of 15 minutes of sunlight per day offers the required energy, satisfaction, and hormonal balance in the long run.

4. Don’t isolate yourself: This might come as a surprise as most people say that competitive exam aspirants must isolate themselves during the exam preparation phase. Well, you must decide this smartly. You must remember that every individual’s life comprises certain distracting and disturbing elements. However, at the same time, you must have seen and experienced certain people with whom you can talk and discuss without any worry if you ever feel low. These people can be your family members, friends, or someone from your network.

5. Clear your mind and surroundings: A cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind. Therefore, before you start studying, you must de-clutter your mind and study area. Apart from this, you must be confident and focused on your intention and effort to achieve your goal. Keep away from negative thoughts and do not let any external factors disturb the silence of your mind with unnecessary talks. You must also avoid smartphones as certain studies have mentioned that these devices cause stress with a negative impact on one’s mental health. You can clear your mind effectively with the following mentioned tips:

1. Practice mindfulness: Mindfulness-based stress reduction also known as MBSR is a scientifically proven technique that works like a charm when dealing with exam stress. It is the process of being aware of your body and mind. When you have completed it, you realize the aspects that bother you and how you can tackle such cases with ease. It will help you in reducing stress, stay focused, and be dedicated to the exam.
2. Deep Breathing: Different studies have concluded that deep breathing reduces your cortisol levels largely. Therefore, practicing deep breathing, whether it is morning meditation or belly breathing, both are much effective in calming yourself down. Therefore, you can get rid of exam-related tension and stress.

While keeping a clear mind is crucial, keeping your surroundings clean is also essential. The clutter in your workspace is inversely proportional to the concentration associated with the exam preparation. This is because your brain gets bombarded with distractions. Therefore, before you begin studying, clear your desk, and use drawers to keep the essential materials properly.

6. Time Management: We have talked about different aspects of Time Management several times earlier. However, it becomes important to utilize time wisely right from the beginning of competitive exam preparation. It is not just an important aspect of preparation but also helps in dealing with exam stress. Experts performed a research study involving students. These students were taught certain time management techniques. The study result shows that the students who practiced time management diligently showed lower levels of exam-related anxiety than those who did not prioritize time management.

Effective time management includes mainly allotting enough time for studies with other activities such as consuming meals, sleep, and recreational activities.

7. Believe in progress and not perfection: Lack of confidence in the race to achieve perfection has always been one of the key causes of stress among students. Therefore, never aim for perfection. Instead, you must aim for steady progress in your UPSC ESE, SSC-JE, and GATE exams preparation. It creates the possibility to do better in these engineering competitive examinations.

The thought of perfection brings a lot of stress, so you need to focus on the progress you are currently making instead of your perceived failures. Therefore, celebrate your success, take out time to do things that you enjoy, reward yourself, and always aim for progress and not perfection.

8. Enjoy the Solitude: Most people are too afraid to face themselves during the challenging phase of exam preparation. Always make it a priority to be your own best friend first. Therefore, you must engage in self-talk sessions and write down all that troubles and bothers you. Along with this, create a gratitude journal and write down everything that you are grateful for in your life.

You can also enjoy your hobbies such as reading, singing, and listening to music while dealing with exam stress. These hobbies will help you to calm yourself during the exam preparation phase. Treat your hobbies as the happy place of your healthy lifestyle. You can easily get lost in this to take good care of your mental and physical health.

9. Meet a Therapist: If you are taking too much stress and finding it difficult while dealing with exam stress, and any of the above methods do not work, you can meet a therapist. It will help you speak your heart out to receive expert guidance. In this way, you can express your emotions without affecting your privacy in any manner. In this way, your emotions will not pile up and cause major mental or physical illness in the long run.
10. Stay Positive: No therapy and no medicine will be effective if you do not trust yourself. Therefore, you need to be positive and choose positive self-talk to uplift yourself from time to time. You can combine this activity with positive affirmations to calm down and say goodbye to those exam butterflies.

While exams are just a matter of a few hours of activity for some students, others feel overwhelmed and confused during the exam preparation phase and a few days before the exam.

Always keep in mind – It is not the load that breaks you down, but the way you deal with it.

Now, let us find out the most frequently asked questions related to exam preparation.

FAQs:

1. How do I find the right mentor for my exam preparation?

Ans. You can research online and find out your mentor depending on your short-term and long-term goals. You can even enroll in the best ESE and GATE exam preparation courses to receive the required guidance from the experts. In this way, you will find the best mentor for your competitive exam preparation who will ensure that you do not get distracted from your goals.

2. What are the most effective ways to beat exam stress?

Ans. If you are looking for different ways to beat exam stress during the exam preparation phase, then there are many methods. This includes choosing a healthy lifestyle with daily exercise, meditation, time management, and using positive affirmations.

3. Is therapy useful to treat exam stress?

Ans. Yes. If you are experiencing exam stress, you must opt for therapies with experts. It will help to deal with exam-related stress in the best possible manner.

Therefore, while stress does not do much harm, the way you deal with it at the right time can determine its effect on your health and studies. Therefore, implement the above-mentioned points for dealing with stress like a pro. Exam aspirants cannot avoid exam-related stress completely, but it is possible to ensure that utilize the above-mentioned ways for a stress-free life.

Hope you found this blog post useful!

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