Present moment awareness for children’s exams

Photo by Chris Liverani on Unsplash

In the northern hemisphere, this is the time of the year when we have come to within one or two months of the end of the academic year. For many children it’s a very stressful and tiring time as many have to take “open exams” like O Levels, A Levels or IB finals, and so the stakes are high, or so the story they are told or they tell themselves.

 

I see kids are super stressed by exams. Schools teach subjects from chemistry to history, from maths to literature, but generally they don’t teach how to train our minds to deal with what’s in front of us.  Kids have to choose: either succeed or fail. “To succeed, you have to get good grades. If you don’t get good grades, you are a failure. “. Schools teach kids to get results, but are not very good at transferring the right feelings and effective mental models to them.

 

So some kids choose to succeed and decide to “study hard” and get good grades.  

 

Education is hard. I applaud kids who are encouraged to accept something is hard, really hard, and still go and do it.   Just like people who volunteer to run a marathon. It’s hard. But hard mainly on the mind.

 

In most countries kids have very little help in dealing with the emotional and mental challenges involved in facing such stress.

 

This is like joining a marathon and deciding to not only finish it but to be at the top of the list.  There is nothing wrong with that except that life as a marathoner could be much more effective, productive, less painful and even enjoyable, if we take care of some of the basic things to do with our mind.

 

One of the skills kids need to learn is where to put their awareness. At times when they are faced with super high stakes, the most mentally tiring thing is to be roaming off into the future, and start experiencing failure in advance (basically picturing things going “wrong”)……also known as anxiety or worry, or going to the past and switch on the self critical voice, telling oneself that one had not revised enough, or “should” have done this or that.

 

These two inner stories of going to the past and the future is the main source of  mental stress.

 

Especially the stories of future going “wrong”, and finding faults with the past (like I didn’t do whatever “properly”).  These stories we tell ourselves rob us of our peace of mind.

 

The way to reduce this stress and mental noise is to remind oneself to be aware of the present moment, by discarding the past and the future. “I am not concerned about the past, whatever I did or did not do enough”, nor am I concerned about the future, which means letting go of the attachment to results. Let go of all worries about the results .  At this stage thinking too much about the results is counter productive.

 

Just be aware of the present. Then let go of the inner speech. Let go of everything except what is in front of you.

 

If you have to revise, be fully present to revise. If you are eating, be fully present with the eating. If you are sleeping, be fully present with sleep. You have no business with the exam or revision. Just let go of everything and sleep.

 

If one can totally let go of the past and future, and be fully in the present moment, one’s mind can really focus on doing what it needs to do.   And still be really glad to have had the privilege of learning to face such hardships, remove big hurdles, make some mistakes, enjoy the marathon…………oh it was so tough I almost collapsed but I enjoyed it.

 

I am curious, how many kids get to do some meditation in between revision and exams?