How to manage stress in the lead up to exams by Edel Walsh
It is important to have realistic expectations of what you can do in your given time frame. If your study plan is too rigid and there is no flexibility, it can feel stressful, causing you unnecessary pressure. Your plan should just give you a bird’s eye view of what you hope to cover in your study.
Where you can, try to get 8-10 hours’ sleep a night. Be aware of your caffeine intake, especially energy drinks. Energy drinks can give you the boost that you might need to get you through a study session. However, everything that goes up must come down.
What I mean by this is, while you will get that boost of energy from energy drinks, you will also experience a crash in energy when the effects of it wear off.
Exercise increases the hormone level in the brain and releases endorphins. Exercise helps with sleep, relaxation, staying calm, low mood, and clarity of thought.
Meeting with friends and family for a coffee or a chat can go a long way to relieving some of the pressure you are feeling.
The thing with deep breathing though is that it needs to be practiced. If you start deep breathing when you open your exam paper, it may have a calming effect but is unlikely to have the optimum desired effect.
To use an analogy, if you want to build muscles in your arms, you will go to the gym and you will practice lifting weights. The same is said for breathwork. It needs to be practiced. The practice of deep breathing only needs to be for a few minutes every day. Include this as an activity on your regular breaks. Rather than picking up your phone and scrolling on social media, google the following guided breathwork routines:
- Square breath
- Rectangle breath
- 3-4-5 breath
You don’t need to subscribe to an app to get access to guided breathwork. There is a huge number of resources available to you free on the internet.
This article sign posts you to some of the ways you can curb the stress you might feel while studying for your exams. In addition to what I have discussed here, have a think about what has worked for you in the past when you were feeling stressed or anxious. Lean into the strategies that work for you!
BSc Finance, ACA, CTA