Category Archives: Pressure

How to bounce back – resilience

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Like many I have been spending my time working from home, exercising daily and talking to colleagues and friends on a variety of video conferencing platforms. The news is of course dominated by the Coronavirus, in fact it’s hard to believe that anything else is happening. This is an extra ordinary time, never before have so many countries around the world all faced the same challenge, having to restrict the movement of individuals and prepare for the economic tsunami that will almost certainly result. The feeling that it is everywhere gives the impression there is no escape, and nothing you can do, it’s out of your control. Depressed yet!

Yet some people don’t feel like this, are they just out of touch with reality or eternal optimists, thinking it will be all right when we know it won’t. Alternatively, they might have higher levels of resilience which helps them recover and bounce back far more quickly. It’s not that they are ignoring the facts, they are fully aware of the situation with many of the same concerns but its just not affecting them in the same way.

Resilience can go an awful long way – Eddie the eagle

What is resilience
Resilience is recovering quickly from a failure or adversity, not just to the status quo but in some way improved, effectively having learned from the experience. But how can you do this or is it a consequence of your genetics in which case you can always blame your parents. There is evidence to show that some people are born with higher levels of resilience, the range is somewhere between 30% – 50%, it’s impossible to be more specific because of the levels of complexity resulting from interplay between the genes. But even if it’s as high as 50%, where does the other 50% come from, maybe its learned?

In his book, The Emotional Life of Your Brain Professor Richard J. Davidson states that signals from the prefrontal cortex (planning and decision making) to the amygdala (emotions) determine how quickly the brain will recover from an upsetting experience. Apologies for that but as with many of our emotional experiences it’s important to show that we can now identify exactly what is happening and that it’s not a subjective experience, we can observe the brain actually changing.

To summarise, resilience is real, we can see it happening in the brain and although some people have a head start with higher levels of “genetic resilience” we can all improve our ability to bounce back.

One final point before moving onto the practical guidance. There has been considerable research into resilience, specifically with regard to the military and its importance in combating PTSD. (Building Resilience by Martin E.P. Seligman) In addition it is considered a high priority given the current focus on mental health and an important contributory factor to economic growth. Arguably the reason that some countries will do better post Covid 19 will be more a result of the resilience of its citizens and less the impact of the cash injections made by the countries bankers.

Learning to be more resilient
The back drop for this blog is the current Covid crises but resilience is a skill that would benefit all students, after all it’s a way of recovering quickly from setbacks and nothing at the time can seem more of a setback than failing an exam.

Its important to remember that everybody has resilience, there is no evidence to show that resilient people experience less traumatic events or have fewer barriers thrown in their way. They have just found better ways of dealing with them, but what do they do?

Change the narrative – when you are faced with a setback it’s easy to continually revisit the event looking for a reason as to why it happened. This is of course an important part of learning, after all you don’t want to make the same mistake. But there is little point playing the “if only I had done this” game. Change the narrative to, at least “I won’t make the same mistake again.” Ask yourself if the conversation your having is helping you get closer towards your goal of passing the exam and if not change it. One simple technique is to swap the word problem to challenge – its far easier to deal with a challenge than a problem!

Perspective (it could be worse) – seeing the event through the eyes of someone else can help put it into perspective. Most often the consequences aren’t as bad as you can imagine. Put what has happened into perspective by comparing it with something from the past or where the impact could be far worse. For example, I failed an exam before but I passed it in the end or perhaps, it could be worse I only failed one exam, how bad would it have been if I hadn’t past chemistry?

Support from others – in researching this blog, having support from others was mentioned more often than anything else as to what made people more resilient. A strong relationship with friends and family gives perspective as to what is important, being able to talk through your worries is a way of releasing pressure. As they say “a problem shared is a problem halved.”

Embrace the new and see the positive – change is going to happen, there are lots of things that are outside your control. The coronavirus was not something anyone was expecting but it has happened and we need to accept the implications and work within the boundaries it has created. That doesn’t mean you have to be happy nor do you have to stop trying to improve your situation. You didn’t put the mark on your last exam that resulted in you failing, accept it and then start thinking about what you have to do to change the result next time.

All of the above are important but resilience is not one thing it’s a combination of many. Unfortunately, it’s not permanent and you will need to reapply some of the techniques again. It is however easier to top up your resilience than start from scratch.

What does resilience look like – well you won’t get a better example than Captain Tom Moore who has not only raised £31m but has lived to 100 and inspired a nation. Happy Birthday Captain Tom 🙂

Test obsession and Test Anxiety

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Tests anxiety

“We live in a test conscious and test giving culture in which the lives of people are in part determined by their test performance”

Sarason, Davidson, & Lighthall

What’s interesting about this statement is, it was first published in 1960 and was based on students in the US, yet would not seem out of place in describing the situation in the UK.  The UK, as with so many other things has unfortunately caught up with the US and become a nation that tests and measures…everything.

Where a person’s worth is judged only by the tests they have passed it is perhaps not surprising that examination success has become so important and test anxiety increased.

But it’s not just the UK, this is a global obsession, take China for example where the pressure to succeed has become so intense that cheating in the Gaokao, the nation’s A-Chinese-invigilator-sca-010university entrance exam is a major problem. The government has not been slow to react and for the first time anyone found cheating will face a possible seven year jail sentence. In Ruijin, east China’s Jiangxi Province, invigilators use instruments to scan students’ shoes before they entered the exam hall, while devices to block wireless signals are also used to reduce the opportunity to cheat.

Test anxiety or stress

Stress is a broad term that is experienced when you find yourself in adverse or demanding circumstances, sitting an exam perhaps. Test anxiety is a situation specific type of stress, experienced by people who find examinations threatening. Recently, there has been an increased interest in exam stress and test anxiety in the UK and a need for it to be given closer academic scrutiny.

The research so far shows that test anxiety can actually impair learning and hurt test performance. And this is the issue, are students underperforming in examinations, which as stated above can have a significant impact on their lives not because of their lack of knowledge or even their ability to apply knowledge, but simply because the medium used to assess them is an exam.

In simple terms test anxiety effects exams results and exam results play a major part in people’s lives.

There are three components of test anxiety (Zeidner 1998)

  • Cognitive – the negative thoughts you can have during tests e.g. “if I fail this I will fail all my examinations” and the performance limiting difficulties experienced as a result of anxiety e.g. inability to read questions clearly or solve problems.
  • Affective – physical symptoms e.g. trembling, tension etc.
  • Behavioural – test anxiety creates an environment that encourages students to avoid studying or best delay it.

The reason people develop test anxiety is thought to be rooted in certain social issues e.g. how you are judged by others and the fear of failure in the public domain. It may also be related to the type of anxiety people experience when they have to make a best man’s speech, for example. Another aspect is that it is not always what others think, but what you think of yourself that is the issue and so the expectation of exam failure could impact on an individual’s ego and self-esteem.

Phase one is OK BUT

I think in the UK we are through the worst part of this, let’s call it phase one, and by that I mean we know that examinations and testing are not the answer, and that people are not their exam result. We have learned this the hard way by producing groups of exam qualified students, releasing them into the world of work, ill prepared to cope with the demands of the workplace. In addition, we have developed helpful techniques that enable people to better cope with test anxiety. Some of these I have discussed in previous blogs, Stress or Pressure – Don’t let the bridge collapse, Exam stress – Mindfulness and the “7/11” to name but two.

BUT………we still have some way to go with phase two, which involves answering the question, what do we replace exams with if they are so bad? And until we solve that, helping good people perform in the system we have just now is the best we can do.

 

“You never fail until you stop trying.” – Toms story

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The young Tom

The young Tom – inspiring us even then

I am not sure when I first met Tom but it was certainly early on in his studies. Tom was not your typical accountancy student, he was slightly older and perhaps more reflective, the two points may be related. Students studying for professional accountancy exams are probably around 25 and focused very much on looking forward, not back.

Tom started his exam journey in November 2009, his first 2 papers went well and he passed them first time. You need to pass 10 exams broken down over three levels if you want to become a member of the Chartered Institute of management accountants (CIMA).  Boosted by this Tom decided to sit the next 4 papers all at once, something he now thinks was a mistake, he passed just the one. By the end of 2011 however he had passed the other 3. That was 6 papers and two levels complete, Tom was back on track.

“Even though the ship may go down, the journey goes on.” – Margaret Mead

2012 was not a great year for Tom on a personal level which almost certainly had an impact on his performance in the exam room. As a result the whole of that year went by with only one exam success. Between 2012 and 2013 Tom sat one of the remaining papers three times and the other one six times, to quote Tom, that’s six, count them 1…..2….3…..4…..5…..6….. He finally passed that paper in November 2013.

It’s probably worth pausing at this point, how would you feel if you sat an exam twice and failed, let alone 6 times. At this stage your biggest enemy is your own mental attitude. You begin to question your ability, your intelligence and even your choice of career. On top of this is the boredom and stress of having to study the same exam over and over again, trying to do something different, fearing if you don’t you will get the same result. And of course as many of you will know when you are studying your life is on hold, making decisions about work, family/friends is difficult as you need to put your studies first.

In fact Tom did consider giving up, but there were two reasons he didn’t. One the support of his teacher, Maryla who remained positive throughout whilst working with Tom on what he needed to do to improve, and two Toms stubborn attitude, his determination and desire to get something good from all the hard work he had put in so far. To quote Tom, “all I kept thinking was I have lost so much because of this bloody course I have to get something positive from it.” When Tom finally passed that paper he felt excited, and as if he had slain a personal demon.

“Adversity causes some men to break; others to break records.” – William Ward

With only one paper to go Tom was still to face a number of challenges, and it was far from plain sailing.  Knowing a large amount of detail was essential for the earlier papers, now it was all about the big picture, prioritisation and time management.

He was told that gaining the qualification would open doors … So he imagined an open door, on the other side were green fields, money, cars, holidays, being the boss. This focus really helped motivate him to see it through. He passed his last exam on the 29th of May 2015.

It had taken Tom 6 years, in which he had sat in the exam room approximately 22 times. This is not the story of someone who always knew he would pass, destined for success nor of a naturally gifted student who simply needed the right motivation to bring out his talent. This is about what you can achieve if you are willing to make sacrifices, give everything you have and learn from failure.

Congratulations Tom you deserve your success.

 

Stress or Pressure – Don’t let the bridge collapse

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Releasing PressureI have long been interested in the way knowledge from one domain can help inform another and have had two very good examples of this recently, both leading in the same direction.

 

 

The first came from an engineering friend of mine who started a conversation about the meaning of stress and pressure in his world. He described stress and pressure as essentially the same except being applied in different forms. Pressure is applied on the external surface of a body, while stress is the internal resistive force per unit area of that body, which resists its elongation or compression.

Alternatively – Stress is generated within the material whereas pressure is the applied force.

The second example came from a stress management seminar* I recently attended, not so abstract you might say but it wasDont let the bridge collapse the analogy the presenter used that was interesting. He asked that we thought of a bridge, the cars going over the bridge created pressure on the bridge and as a result the bridge would experience stress.

No matter how strong the bridge, there was a point that if too many cars were on at any one time it would collapse.

How does this help?

Analogies can be very helpful where it’s difficult to conceptualise or understand complex ideas. For example the bridge will show signs of stress before it collapses. This is no different for people; signs of stress will be present well before the stress levels are high enough to cause problems e.g. short temper, lack of sleep, headaches etc.  Also if we carry on with the analogy, there are two ways in which you can make sure the bridge doesn’t collapse. One, don’t have so many cars on the bridge and two, support the bridge so that it can take more cars. This translates into reducing the number of external pressures you are under (less cars) and having coping strategies to help when you are under pressure (some support).

Pressures when studying

A lot of pressures when studying are time related, for example taking on too many subjects or having to study as well as holding down a responsible job.  But some pressure might be created by the way you feel about yourself, not being capable or clever enough. Also people often put themselves under pressure – interesting term “putting yourself under pressure” by having very high expectations or maybe those expectations are put upon them by others.

The simple answer – take some of the cars off the bridge, reduce the number of subjects your studying, lower your expectations etc. This is not to say that having high expectations is not good, but if it is affecting your performance in a negative way, then you have to do something. And I know it may not be easy to do this in all circumstances; do you step down from that responsible job, how practical is that?  Yet if you do nothing, the bridge will collapse and that has to be avoided at all costs.

The alternative to taking cars off the bridge is to add in extra support.

Strategies to cope

Lazarus and Folkman in 1984 suggested that stress is the result of an “imbalance between demands and resources” or results when “pressure exceeds one’s perceived ability to cope”. They came up with two types of coping responses.

Emotion-focused – These techniques work very well when the stress is or at least appears to be outside the individual’s control.

  • Keep yourself busy to take your mind off the issue – just keep working through the course
  • Let off steam to other students/partners, anyone who will listen in fact
  • Pray for guidance and strength – and why not
  • Ignore the problem in the hope it will go away – not always ideal but the problem may sort itself
  • Distract yourself – go for a run
  • Build yourself up to expect the worse – “I will probably fail anyway”

Problem-focused – These techniques aim to remove or reduce the cause of the stress.  These are similar to taking cars off the bridge.

  • Take control – being out of control is often the cause of much stress. Revaluate what the problem is, and ask is it worth it!
  • Information seeking, perhaps the most rational action. Find out what is causing the problem and look to solve it e.g. why do you have such high expectations, does it help?
  • Make a list, evaluate the pros and cons and put in order of importance.

Studying can be stressful and this can result in feeling under pressure but this is not altogether a bad thing stress and pressure are key motivational forces, so don’t think of stress as the enemy but watch out for any cracks that might appear in the bridge.

Watch this TED – Kelly McGonigal: How to make stress your friend.

Related posts – Exam stress – or is it your stress and Exam stress – Mindfulness and the “7/11”

* The course was delivered by the stress management society – click here for their website.