Test Prep Books/Effective Study Skills for Test Taking Anxiety

Take a moment to breathe

New Year’s greetings to everyone, far and wide!  May it be a year of peace, health and prosperity for all.

Since the beginning of a new year is usually filed with resolutions– which are really thinly disguised attempts to change habits — I’m going to begin the year with a series of posts on habits.

Habits determine the quality of our lives. And they are fundamental if you want to reduce your stress around taking tests.

Life is made up of habits. Think about it. As you are reading this you are breathing (whether you are aware of your breath or not).  As Read the rest of this entry »

Are you all tied up?

As I write this I am in south India at an Ayurvedic retreat.  Ayurveda is the oldest system of healing arts known to man. It dates back thousands of years to the writing of the Vedas, or ancient texts.

One of the pillars of this remarkably comprehensive and far-reaching system is to establish and maintain balance of body, mind and spirit. Since this corresponds so directly with the work I do as a stress psychologist I want to take a moment, at year’s end, review this foundational aspect of good health.  Let’s start out with  Read the rest of this entry »

Calmness observed

After a long day at work yesterday I walked down a main and very busy thoroughfare in Portland. My head was full of the day’s events.  I was still carrying around a pile of cares with me as well as all of the anticipated concerns about tomorrow.

Unexpectedly I came across a fountain with a beautiful sculpture. I stopped. The calmness radiating from the white marble and the sounds of the fountain gently permeated my busy mind and tired body. I stopped walking and took in the sight and sounds of what I’d just stumbled upon. I took a long deep breath.

The noise in my head and the tension in my body faded quickly and then I was left simply taking in the statue and the fountain. I walked around it, looking at it from all sides. Then I caught its reflection in the window of the skyscraper behind it. Something about that was soothing.

Reflecting the peace within

It was like seeing the still center within all the movement around me.

As you go about your day look for the quiet spots, the silent spaces, the moments of respite. Let yourself become absorbed by them. Breathe deeply down to your belly. Feel your feet on the ground.

Revel in the peace. It’s around us —  and inside of us —  all the time.

Please share with us what you discover.

What can I learn?

Finding myself all worked up about not hearing back from a colleague in response to an email I’d sent a week ago, I started feeling disregarded, marginalized and unimportant. In a word, “angry.”   My wife and I talked about this situation at length and concluded the best thing to do was to face the situation directly: talk to the person I’d sent the email to and find out “wassup?”  Even though I don’t like fault-finding and placing blame, I found myself finding all kinds of things wrong with the other person (“What’s the matter with them? It’s rude not to answer emails!”).

As I considered the situation in a more methodical and detached manner I felt Read the rest of this entry »

Take the time...

I was on my bicycle yesterday and I came to an intersection with a red light.

Before being hit by the taxi, when I was biking around town I would routinely sail through red lights and stop signs if I didn’t see anyone coming (well, full disclosure: even if I saw someone coming, if I judged I could sail through the intersection before they got there, I would).  Post-taxi, I honor every red light and stop sign.

So here I am, facing a red light, at a completely quiet intersection, no one coming in any direction.  The light says “Stop!”, and stop I do. Suddenly, I feel

Read the rest of this entry »

What's your body doing?

Let’s start out with this rule of thumb: 

When you are thinking of of an upcoming test (or anything else in the future), remember to breathe.

Here’s a very common experience for test-takers:  “My test is next Tuesday (or tomorrow). YIKES!” Your heart rate goes up, your blood starts rushing, your stomach wrenches. You know the routine.

I don’t know about you, but often, when I’m thinking about something that I have coming up later today or tomorrow or next week (and it doesn’t have to be as stressful as a test), I find myself getting a little amped up. What do I mean by “amped up”?  Read the rest of this entry »

One of the chief ways we become distracted is by our own thinking. We start thinking about the past or the future or about something else other than what’s going on now, in the present. When we’re distracted we lose focus and then it’s much harder to progress towards our goals.  Our stress goes up and our performance is compromised –  whether it’s on a test or when we’re facing any challenge in life. We literally fall off the path.

An example of this is when we become distracted by our own old fears. I can’t handle this, I’m not good enough, I can’t keep it together…and other negative thinking. “Negative” here means minus-ing, taking away from.  But taking

Read the rest of this entry »

Are you tense?

At a recent lecture I gave at the University of California San Francisco medical school, I was teaching the first year students how to use the calming tools:  breathing, grounding and sensing.

Breathing is by far the most important of all 9 tools in the performance model. So much has been said and written about breathing, and no wonder!  When we don’t breathe regularly it causes all sorts of mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual problems.

After we worked on grounding, one of the students had a brilliant observation.  First, to remind you:

Read the rest of this entry »

Why are we stuck listening to the negative voice?

A student I am working with has a problem. Here’s what she says about it:  “Every time on a test when I’m not sure if my answer is right, I immediately have negative thoughts, ‘You’re not going to get this right,’ ‘You don’t know the material,” ‘You can’t figure this out.’ Why do I always think these negative thoughts?”

This is a great question and something I’ve wondered about for a long time. It’s a very common situation: in a difficult or doubtful situation most of us usually veer towards the negative. What’s going on?  In a series of posts I’m going to address this issue. Today we’ll look at one cause  and one method of dealing with it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, I met a student who was anxious about taking the LSAT.  She came to my book launch, brought by her sister, to get help for her test taking anxiety. The student was skeptical, but her sister bought her a copy of the book anyway.

A month later I received the following email from the student:

Read the rest of this entry »