This strategy will work for any situation where you feel nervous or anxious. The thing to remember is that the physical emotion, what you actually feel, is the same if you are nervous or excited. It’s how we deal with it that changes what happens next……

Your mind has the ability to make you succeed or to make you fail.

Let me give you an example:

You are about to go into an exam in the school hall, everyone around you is nervous. You are nervous, you can feel it in your head and your body. You have revised for this exam and last night you felt okay about it. Now the emotions are taking control, if you listen to them and allow them to take over your body you will feel like you are spiralling out of control.

This is the point where you need to identify that these nerves and the anxious feelings in your body are a result of the situation. Who wouldn’t be excited or nervous, you’re surrounded by your entire year group and there is an exam coming up and you have no idea what will be asked.

So feeling all these emotions is totally normal, what you do next counts…..

Recognise these feelings in your body and tell them ‘I’m okay with it, it’s because this is new and exciting and I am challenging myself’ Remind yourself of the revision you have done, think of the specific subject you have revised for, think of a situation where this happened before and you were successful.

If you allow the negative scared feelings to continue….. they will….. and you will spend so much time thinking about them you will end up spending less time actually trying to read the exam questions and remembering the answers……

So allow them but then let them pass….. tell yourself you are excited not scared.

What you need to do from now is practice identifying the feelings of being scared/nervous or feeling excited. Notice how similar they feel in your body.

If you can identify the similarity, you can change the negative scared feelings into positive excited feelings.