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Mindset Best Practices

jhbm_nycjhbm_nyc Alum Member
edited August 2018 in General 568 karma

We all know to meditate, sleep, exercise, eat healthy, and establish a routine. Any other tips for attaining the right mindset for test day?

• Write your test anxiety away. Research shows that writing about your fears and anxieties before a test boosts test scores (http://science.sciencemag.org/content/331/6014/211). Write about what you anticipate will be on the test and your worst fears about how test day will play out. Setting it down on paper can be cathartic.

• Practice self-compassion. It's a better motivator for self-improvement than self-criticism. In one study of students taking a difficult test, those who wrote about their mistakes from a compassionate perspective were more motivated to study than those who didn’t (http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167212445599). Identify a weakness or mistake, and then write about it from a compassionate and understanding perspective.

• Build confidence. Visualize success. Imagine getting your target score in the mail.

• Use positive affirmations or mantras. You can have a specific one for each section, like @AllezAllez21 did. You can tell yourself you're good-looking, à la @"Cant Get Right".

• Be grateful. When you're sitting at your desk, right before you take the test, take a moment to express gratitude. This test is a lot of things. An opportunity is one of them.

• Take deep breaths. Stress accretes over time, and test day adrenaline only makes things worse. No matter what, stay calm.

• Compartmentalize and do damage control. If you're faced with an impossible question, think of it as question 101. If you have a bad section, tell yourself it was an experimental.

• Be an observer, not a participant. Don't participate in the frantic, nervous energy at the test center. Stay in the zone by staying above the fray.

• Look forward to test day. You have done all the work. Test day is just a chance to show them what you've got.

• Treat this test like just another PT. Remember you can always retake.

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