dream | act | succeed

As mentioned last time, I want to focus specially on my current exam phase, in order to get some real life experience into this blog. Therefore, today will be all about the experience I had yesterday, what I felt, what I tried to do and how it went.

First of all, the exam was quite ok, thanks for asking. Was it expected to be that easy? To be honest, not really. I have spoken with other students about it before and they told me that it would be a kind of a hard exam. Well, its never a bad thing to think that something will be harder then it actually is, right? I mean you are preparing yourself for the worst and if it is much easier then that in the end, you are well prepared and rock this thing. But lets wait until the results will be published before celebrating too early, right?

But that’s not what we want to talk about today anyways. We want to talk about my feelings and thoughts in this kind of situation. This was the first exam at the new university, so I couldn’t really know if the exams, generally speaking would be easier or harder compared to my last university where I was doing my bachelor. Therefore I felt kind of an uncertainty towards that one. But I guess that is just normal for me, because my mind is too active most of the time, thinking and being afraid about stuff that will not even happen after all.

But besides that, I felt actually pretty much prepared. The topic was something I am kind of interested in, not really super hard, but let’s say, it was enough to see a higher purpose in hammering these tons of information inside my little brain. Compared to the exam I still have in front of me, this was the one with the least amount of script pages, which is always a good measurement tool to figure out how much stuff there really is to know. But of course, it is never a guarantee. After learning the main stuff by hearth, I could go through the whole material in less than an hour, so, it wasn’t that much, really. About 75 or so different questions and topics. And I mean, I have invested a lot of time, so that was ok.

I did not felt really nervous, at least compared to my last exams for the bachelor, which was very strange. Actually, I felt way more confident and relaxed. I mean, I couldn’t sleep well for the last two days and still kind of experience that inside tension, but it was nothing I couldn’t deal with. The minutes before the exams are not the hardest for me. I kind of have the peak anxiety and nervousness around an hour before the exam. But after talking to myself about the fact, that this thing will not be hard, and that I am well prepared, and that the outcome doesn’t matter, and the statement, “you are close to getting 25 years old these days, what the heck are you doing? This is just a small little test. Get your shit together and don’t be such a pussy!” I felt actually a little bit better, but only my secret strategy could bring me back into this moment and forget about the anxiety and stress.

If you are following this blog, you probably know that I kind of love Porsches for a long long time and that I am on my journey towards getting one as soon as possible. So, I use this goal to actually get some momentum out of it. How? I tell myself why I am doing this. I make sure, that I see the bigger purpose in everything I am doing. So, getting my little Porsche model from the shelf, holding it up in the air and racing around the books on the table might sound a little bit childish, but if it is stupid but it works, it isn’t stupid, right? So, I felt confident, relaxed and ready for this exam. I walked up to the room, well it was more the canteen then an actual room, but anyways, got my pencils and stuff and just talked a little bit with my friends before the exam started.

While for some, it might be actually quite hard to get into the zone, I mean, I have seen someone with earplugs today. I don’t have that problem anymore. If you focus on professionals and analyze what they are doing, then you can easily work on that and get into the zone much faster. I have done that and it is working brilliantly. It takes me literally just a couple of seconds to be right there, ready to tackle the test or whatever there is in front of me. But I guess, that is a topic for another time.

Well, after 90 minutes, it was already over. As already mentioned, it wasn’t that hard, so my feelings towards the exam where in an ok level. I didn’t freaked out before the exam, but felt the tension, but that was it. No ultra hard cold sweat, or anxiety moments or something like that before the exam. The question is, why I did not experience that. I guess, the thing is, that I focused so much on my reactions, because I tried to analyze what I was doing and feeling in the different stages of the process, in order to be able to write this thing about it. Well the theory goes as far as to say, that I guess that is the reason why I didn’t freak out. I was to busy with analyzing how I felt, that the moment something negative came up my way, I was just instantly noticing it as that and pushed it away. Someone might say, that that is in fact the result of my meditation training, but I am not so sure about that. Because after the exam, I went into a kind of a panic mode, which resulted in some hours of feeling miserable. It feels like I could prevent this from happening before the test, but afterwards couldn’t hold it back. So, I don’t want to give you the impression, that everything is fine, because its not. Actually, there is a long long way to go, until I can just handle these high stress situations better. But of course, that was a start! A good one! But let’s see how next weeks exam will be like and if I can actually do the same thing all over again, or even better.

For today, I guess that is it. I am not quite sure, if I should analyze it more in detail, in order to figure out what really triggers my emotions and reactions, or if I should wait until the high stress situation is over. But I guess, the right answer to that thing would be to split it up, trying to use the situation I am currently in, to practice my meditation skills for getting back into the normal mode. What I experienced, by the way, is that I change my breathing rhythm quite heavily, which has of course a huge effect on the whole organism as well. So, it seems like I should finally start with HRV training. Let’s consider that.

See you next time!