Answer: Practice staying calm in safe test situations.
Here’s an example.
Watch this short video of this mathematician taking a test that assesses some aspect of natural maths ability. He seemed pretty stressed taking it, and I felt stressed watching him! After all, the whole world was watching!
Now you take the test. But before you press the final button to do the test, prepare yourself first.
For instance, you might want to:
1. mentally rehearse pressing the B and Y keyboard keys for blue and yellow a few times.
2. remind yourself to pay attention the whole time–if you blink or get distracted at the wrong time, you’ll miss the lightning-fast stimulus!
3.remind yourself not to fret about making a silly error but instead to keep focusing on the “now”.
4. tell yourself to slow down if you find yourself impulsively responding without thinking properly.
It’s actually a very stressful task — at least I thought it was. So much is happening, and it’s pretty distracting being told whether each answer is correct or not.
That is why it’s such a great task to practice our “not getting flustered” skills on!
You get to do the test as many times as you like. If you’re like me, your second performance will be heaps better than your first. But the challenge is to try not to let anxiety spoil your first result too much.
Are you ready? Click here to take the test:
“How Good is Your Gut Number Sense?”
Do you want to try another tough test where your performance gets compared with other people of your age?
Remember to prepare yourself beforehand so you don’t let anxiety and “flustering” spoil your performance.
Again, you can do this test as often as you want, and your performance probably will improve with practice and familiarity:
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